Psychological approach

• Eysenck proposed three personality traits that can be measured on the EPQ (Eysenck personality questionnaire). The three personality traits are Extraversion, Neuroticism and Psychoticism.
• Eysenck and Eysenck tested a large group of male prisoners and found consistently high scores of psychoticism and neuroticism. They later replicated the study with females and found scores of all three, which begs the question of extraversions role in criminality.
• A limitation of Eysenck's theory is how it lacks explanatory power. It can explain traits associated to criminal personality but why they commit said crime.
• Another limitation of Eysenck's theory is that there in an unclear relationship between the personality traits and criminal behaviour. However, it may be a useful classification of distinguishing types of crime and then link back to the criminal. E.g A thrill seeking crime like Joyriding, could be linked with extroversion.
• Kohlberg's theory of moral development explains how individuals grow in their understanding of moral decision making and behaviour
• Kohlberg's theory has 3 level and 6 stages. Level one - preconventional stage(shaped by external authority figures). Level two- conventional stage(shaped by internalised rules). Level three - postconventional stage(shaped by moral reasoning).
• Level 6 is where criminal behaviour should happen due to the moral level being past "maintaining social order" however Hollin found that crimes that involve planning tend to be made by those in the preconventional level.
• Kohlberg argued that moral reasoning was complete at 10, which is the age of criminal responsibility in the UK.
• A limitation of Kohlberg's moral development explanation for criminal behaviour is that they used an all male sample in the development stages of the theory. This deems the theory as androcentric. Gilligan found that there is a gender variation of morality. Men are more likely have morals based on the law and females have more based on care and compassion.
• Another limitation of Kohlberg's theory is that Heinz's dilemma lacks ecological validity for children. Concepts such as marriage or medication is unknown to children and therefore it is not replicable of their real lives, therefore results may be unreliable and unrepresentative of their actual moral stage.
• Heinz's dilemma is a scenario that is asked to prompt discussion to distinguish moral level.
• Cognitve distortions refer to patterns of negative or exaggerated thought which can reinforce maladaptive behaviour. In some cases, they can lead to mental health disorders such as depression.
• Hostile attribution bias is a cognitive distortion which refers to the extent to which an individual is more likely to seen the benign and innocuous actions of another as hostility. Barbour and Davidson found that men who committed domestic violence were more likely to display HAB than men who were satisfied with their marriage.
• Copello and Tata found that adult male violent offenders were more likely to interpret ambiguous sentences as hostile.
• Another cognitive distortion is minimalization which is were a person plays down the severity of the circumstances they are in. It can also be known as denial. Kennedy found that convicted sex offenders tended to blame their victims.
• Sutherland's differential association theory explores offending behaviour as something learnt through positive association. These views and behaviours can stem from family and friends or the media.
• A strength of Sunderland's theory is how influential it was at the time. This is because it didn't just assume that crime was a result of different socio-economic brackets. Sunderland called this "white collar crimes" which provided an explanation to why wealthier people commit crime.
• A challenge of the differential association theory is that is assumes that people built up to committing crime in a process of making favourable associations towards criminality. However it is not always premeditated.