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Psychology and Crime
Criminal Thinking Patterns
(i)
Morality and Crime
(ii)
Social Cognition and Crime
(iii)
Rationality and Choice
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(i) Morality and Crime
An essential approach in understanding crime is whether the people who
commit offences think differently to non-offenders. The belief that criminals
have different morals to non-criminals or that they lack morals in some way is
a basic and fundamental explanation of criminal behaviour.
Kohlberg; Stages of Moral Reasoning
One of the most frequently cited researchers in the area of moral
development is Kohlberg. Through the use of moral dilemmas he was able to
categorise peoples’ moral reasoning into three stages which are each subdivided. The stages are passed through in a developmental process. However
Kohlberg did not tie them down to specific ages. The essential process of
moral development is this
Level &
Stage
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4
Stage 5
Stage 6
Governed by
Description
Level 1 – Pre-morality
Punishment &
Moral behaviour concerned with obeying
obedience
authority and avoiding punishment. The
consequences of actions are more
important than intentions.
Hedonism
Concerned with meeting one’s own needs
regardless of the needs of others, except
when a favour might be expected to be
returned.
Level 2 – Conventional conformity
Interpersonal
Concerned with general conformity to
concordance
stereotypes of what is good and gaining
the approval of others. Intentions become
relevant.
Law and order
Committed to social order for its own sake
with deference to social and religious
authorities, e.g. ‘Doing your duty to God
and the queen’.
Level 3 – Autonomous principles
Social contract
Individual rights acknowledged along with
democratically derived laws which are
approved of by the whole of society.
Universal
Justice, respect and trust may override
ethical
legal dictates in making moral
principles
judgements. Abstract reasoning of the
highest level, which few people achieve.
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It is argued (not by Kohlberg but by others) that criminals will be functioning in
the lower stages of moral reasoning. Is this the case?
Arbuthnot et al (1987) in a review of studies that all used control groups
concluded that - there are clear differences in moral attitudes toward the
acceptability of various offences. Most studies show delinquents to have
attained lower stages of moral development than non-delinquents. However
they also note that many delinquents are found to have higher stage moral
reasoning.
Palmer and Hilling (1998) compared moral reasoning between male
delinquents, and male and female non- delinquents.126 convicted offenders
in Young Offenders Institution, 122 male and 210 female non-offenders. All
were from the Midlands, and all were aged 13-22 years old. All participants
were given Socio-Moral Reflection Measure-Short Form (SRM-SF), which
contains 11 moral dilemma-related questions (for example, not taking things
that belong to others and keeping a promise to a friend). The delinquent group
showed less mature moral reasoning than the non-delinquent group.
What does the study below tell us about the role of morality and crime?
Hartshorne and May (1930) Studies in the nature of character. New York
Aim: to examine whether cheating was due to personality or situational
factors. The researchers predicted that moral behaviour would be consistent
across situations.
Sample: 12,000 11-14 year olds.
Method: a combination of observational and psychometric methods. Children
were observed in a variety of situations including school, playground, sports,
parties and at home. They were also given 20 tests designed to measure
moral knowledge and moral opinions.
Results: The results are surprisingly inconsistent. The researchers had
expected to find a correlation between behaviour in one situation and
behaviour in another situation but this was not found. For example a child who
cheated in one test would not cheat in another. They therefore conclude that
morality is situation specific.
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(iii) Social Cognition and Crime
It is believed, and there is some evidence, that criminals think about others
and their actions in different ways to non-criminals. Most of the points detailed
below, and those that you will read about, apply equally to criminals and noncriminals however it may be that people who engage in criminal activities
show more, or stronger, patterns of such thinking. This area of investigation is
known as social cognition because the emphasis is not solely on the
individuals thinking patterns but rather on how this occurs in interaction with
others.
Attribution theory is a central component of social cognition. We tend to
explain our own behaviour through attributing it to the situation, for example, “I
am angry because I haven’t had any sleep”, whereas we tend to explain other
people’s behaviour by attributing it to their personality, for example “He is
angry because he is a nasty person.” Thus, hostile attributions may be made
very quickly in a specific context like a pub or club and lead to aggression,
while responsibility for this outcome is conveniently avoided by externally
allocating intention. For example, “I just pushed you because you deliberately
knocked my drink (rather than it being an accident).
Palmer and Hollin (2000) found that self-reported delinquency in young
offenders was associated with increased tendencies to inaccurate attributions
of hostility, especially in ambiguous situations where it may be difficult to
accurately determine intentions.
Therefore, a person may consider committing a crime due to inaccurately
attributing another’s behaviour due to their personality and not the situation.
Palmer, E. and Hollin, C. (2000) The interrelations of socio-moral
reasoning, perceptions of own parenting and attributions of intent with
self reported delinquency. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 5 201-218
Aim: to consider the relationships between moral reasoning, perceptions of
parenting, attribution of intent and self reported delinquency among young
male offenders and non-offenders.
Sample: Two groups of participants all from the Midlands area.
Group 1: 97 convicted male offenders aged between 13 and 21. The offences
were typically burglary, car theft, joyriding and assault.
Group 2: 77 non offenders aged between 12 and 24.
Method: There are several different methodologies involved in this study. The
researchers are looking for correlations between moral reasoning, perceptions
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of parenting and attribution of intent with self reported delinquency. They are
also comparing two naturally occurring groups (offenders and non-offenders).
Data was collected using a number of psychometric tests which are outlined
below:
Sociomoral Reflection Measure (short form). This tests moral reasoning by
asking 11 questions such as whether keeping a promise is important and why.
The scores show the level of moral reasoning that the individual has reached.
Extracts from the Own Perceptions of Parenting (EMBU) which was
developed in Sweden. This assesses perceptions of parenting (by mother and
father separately) including rejection, emotional warmth and overprotection .
Attribution of Intent. This test investigates the explanations (attributions) that
people give for others behaviour. It included 12 scenarios of which four
involved someone acting with hostile intent, four involved someone acting with
prosocial intent and four are ambiguous. Participants have to imagine
themselves in the situation and suggest reasons for why people behaved as
they did. These reasons could be a. to be mean or horrible, b. to be helpful or
nice or c. not sure.
Self reported delinquency checklist (SRD). This is a self report scale of 46
offences and respondents must indicate which offences they have committed
and also how often they were committed.
Results: The SRD results confirm that the groups differ in terms of their
offending behaviours. The modal score for the non-offender group was 6 and
for the offender group it was 25. Some of the key findings included the fact
that offenders were found to have less mature moral reasoning than nonoffenders with the moral reasoning scores of the offender group being
typically at the stage where moral decisions are made on the basis of rewards
and punishments. It was also found that the offender group perceived both
their fathers and their mothers as significantly more rejecting (although the
effects were even stronger for paternal rejection). They also made more
hostile attributions of intent when the scenarios were ambiguous. Offending
scores correlated strongly with paternal rejection and incorrect attributions of
hostility and the researchers argue that these two variables are significant
predictors for SRD scores.
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(iii)Rationality and Choice
A current topic of research into criminal behaviour is the model that criminals
are rational decision makers - no different in their thinking than non-criminals
but rather that such individuals are faced by certain environmental situations
and triggers which will lead to a rational choice to engage in criminal
behaviour to be made.
The origins of this theory come from Jeremy Bentham's work (1748-1832) and
in particular his basic proposition: "The profit of the crime is the force which
urges a man to delinquency. The pain of the punishment is the force
employed to restrain him from it. If the first of these forces is the greater, the
crime will be committed; if the second, the crime will not be committed."
(quoted in Zimring and Hawkins, 1973, p75).
Cornish and Clarke (1987) stated that one needs to be crime specific when
analysing criminal choices and to treat decisions as relating to varying stages
of the involvement of an offender in particular crimes.
The rational choice perspective asserts that specific crimes are chosen by
offenders and are committed for specific reasons. We need to understand the
factors which are taken into account by offenders when they perform a basic
cost-benefit analysis of a range of factors, including the incentive, or
anticipated pay-off, the risk involved, and skills needed, all in relation to their
goals, motives, experience, abilities, expertise, and preferences. All of these
variations combine to make criminal opportunities differentially attractive to
particular individuals and groups. These are called choice structuring
properties.
As an example, listed below are possible choice structuring properties for
crimes involving cash, as taken from Cornish and Clarke (1987) 
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
Availability (number of targets, accessibility)
Awareness of method (technical know-how)
Likely cash yield per crime
Expertise needed
Planning necessary
Resources required
Solo versus assistants required
Time required to commit
Severity of punishment (if caught)
Confrontation with victim
Social status
Fencing (getting rid of any goods stolen)
Moral evaluation
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Whilst this approach has certainly emphasised the role of rationality it should
also be recognised that people will respond differently to equivalent criminal
opportunities because they differ, for example, in their willingness to take
risks, in their preference for honesty and in their evaluation of the profit from
crime. Indeed both profit and pain are evaluated differently by different
persons. It follows that changes in profit e.g. increase, will make crime more
likely to occur, however if the pain is increased it will make crime less likely to
occur. Inevitably, small changes in the probability or the severity of pain/cost
will affect only those close to the point of indifference. In other words those
who always undervalued the pain are more likely to commit crime and those
who always overestimate the risk are less likely to. Also those who overvalue
the profit are more likely to commit crime whereas those who undervalue any
profit gained by such an activity are unlikely to undertake such behaviour.
Research Findings and Evaluation
A study that supports rational choice theory in explaining how criminals think
comes from Rettig (1966). In this study, students were given a hypothetical
scenario describing an opportunity to commit a crime. Rettig (1966) gave the
students different relevant information about the crime (e.g. likely benefits, risk
of detection, likely degree of punishment) and found that the degree of
punishment exerted the most influence on the students’ decision to commit
the crime. However, remember that this study was a simulation (lacks
ecological validity) and were carried out on students. Therefore, results may
not apply to real offenders. Secondly, not all criminal activity is planned –
some crimes are impulsive acts (e.g. some murder cases).
A second evaluation issue is that the theory implies that in making their
decisions, potential offenders have full information about the probability of
detection and the level of punishment if they are detected. However it is the
perceived risks not the actual ones which are critical to the decision-making
process, thus the risks they perceive in committing the act are more important
– this could explain individual differences in crime behaviour and provide
reasons for why some are caught and others are not.
Finally we come to the issue of choice. One reading of rational choice theory
would have us believe that individuals choose to commit crimes and choose
not to commit crimes. It could be argued that this is a very naive way of
looking at criminal behaviour. There are other factors, as we have learnt, that
also are thought to contribute to crime that are deterministic, e.g. biological
accounts or the result of maternal deprivation. Therefore, it would seem
obvious that as one factor piles upon another, choice for the individual
becomes more and more limited.
For all these reasons, RCT cannot really be regarded as a theory of how
criminals think in general, but can explain how some individuals approach
certain types of crime.
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Yochelson, S. and Samenow, S. (1984) Inside the Criminal Mind. Random
House
Aim: to examine the thinking patterns of a sample of convicted offenders.
Sample: 255 male offenders resident in a psychiatric hospital in America.
They had variously been judged not guilty by reason of insanity, incompetent
to stand trial or had been referred to the authors by agencies such as the
courts, probation services or social services.
Method: Interviews within a Freudian therapeutic context.
Results: The authors suggest that criminals have quite distinct and erroneous
thinking patterns which differentiate them from non-criminals. They concluded
that they are essentially in control of their lives and their criminality is the
results of choices made from an early age. Further, they suggest that
offenders have cognitive processes which lead to a distorted self image and
result not only in criminal choices but also in denial of responsibility.
They describe the criminal personality as characterised by 40 thinking errors
which fall into three broad categories:
Criminal thinking patterns which are characterised by fear and
simultaneously a need for power and control. Other features in this category
include a search for perfection, lying and inconsistencies or fragmentation of
thinking and a lack of time perspective.
Automatic thinking errors which include a lack of empathy and trust, a
failure to accept obligations, a secretive communication style and a perception
of themselves as the victim.
Crime related thinking errors which include optimistic fantasising about
specific criminal acts with no regard to deterrent factors. This also includes an
unrealistic sense of invulnerability.
They are therefore suggesting that criminals are not necessarily impulsive,
that they have planned and fantasised about their actions and that it is these
thinking patterns which need to be confronted in treatment. Yochelson and
Samenow claim high success rates in getting offenders to accept that they
have a ‘‘criminal personality’ ’and changing their thinking patterns.
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Criminal Thinking Patterns: Evaluation Points You Should Know
Point 1: Problems with Kohlberg's Work.
Whilst there is some empirical support for the idea that criminals have lower
levels of moral reasoning there are numerous problems with this approach 1) There are a wide variety of crimes therefore we can not expect the thinking
behind each one to be the same, even in regards to morality.
2) There is a lack of longitudinal studies to investigate moral development, it
may be that lower stages of moral reasoning are a consequence and not a
cause of criminal behaviour.
3) Most studies have focused on juveniles and not adults, thus not giving us a
valid picture of moral development and crime. (Feldman 1993)
4) It may be that Kohlberg's work is male oriented and therefore not fully
applicable to all offenders. Certainly Gilligan's work emphasis the point that
women tend to have greater moral concern for others, which places them in
level two [Conventional morality], but why should concern for others be seen
as lesser than some abstract understanding of laws and rules - unless you are
a male researcher !
5) There is definitely a large gap between peoples thinking and behaviour.
Just because we know something is wrong it does not mean to say we would
not do it. Thus whilst Kohlberg's work may be useful in helping us to
understand the development of moral reasoning it does not aid our awareness
as to how morality influences action.
6) Finally, it may also be that the lower levels of moral reasoning found within
criminal populations is a consequence of criminal behaviour not a cause of it.
For example, it may be that as people engage in criminal activity one way for
them to justify this to themselves and others is to use lower levels of moral
thinking, i.e., it's only wrong if I get caught.
Point 2: Reductionism.
The whole of this topic operates with the assumption that if we reduce
thinking down to specifically testable and measurable components we will
understand the differences between criminal and non-criminal thinking. Thus
psychologists have looked at morality, rationality and social cognition as three
important parts of criminal thinking. Whilst this has the advantage of
simplifying the issues involved, nevertheless we can question whether this is
a valid approach to adopt in psychology.
The key problem with reductionism is that of not being able to explain
emergent properties. The argument is that only through understanding how
the numerous factors that are involved in making human thought occur
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interact together to making thought processes can we understand them. By
taking them apart we may lose what we were looking for. It is in the interaction
of these factors that thought processes are created, thus we need to
understand the interactions as well as the factors on their own if we are to
understand criminal thinking patterns.
Point 3: Determinism.
Related to the above point, we need to recognise the weakness of the
deterministic approach that is apparent in this topic. The cognitive approach
(which both rational choice theory and social cognition are based in) usually
assumes that thought determines action. This is not always the case, indeed
we could question whether it is ever the case. Surely there are many other
factors which shape our behaviour, such as habit, impulse, conformity and
peer group pressure. These factors as well as thought processes needed to
be investigated together if we are to understand how they influence (rather
than determine) criminal behaviour.
To expand on this point. It is worth noting that the material you covered in this
topic has been used to develop treatment and rehabilitation programmes for
offenders. Given that this is the case we need to question the usefulness of
such research since if it is adopting a reductionist and determinist approach to
criminal thinking patterns then it will be of little use when applied to helping
criminals adjust their behaviour. This is because the research is giving us a
partial and not fully valid understanding of the topic.
Point 4: Control Groups.
If any piece of research you have mentioned in the descriptive part of your
essay does not use a control group then we have very significant concerns.
How far can we establish that the criminal thought process is different to that
of the 'norm'? Further does not assuming that criminal thought patterns are
different to non-criminals make them seem as a group of 'others' that we can
distance ourselves from and label as deviant? Given that what we define as
criminal is a social construct then surely this is a morally dubious practice that
may further the prejudice and stereotypes surrounding criminality.
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Some more problems with Rational Choice Theory (Cognitive
Psychology)
Limited rationality: One of the principal objections which has been made to
Rational Choice Theory relates to its core assumption ; are there limits to
rational calculation? Cook (1980), who was one of the first researchers to
develop Rational Choice Theory, agrees that many offenders do not operate
rationally, particularly if they are young and/or intoxicated, in a state of high
emotional arousal, or are psychologically disturbed. These exceptions
encompass a high proportion of the perpetrators of some types of crime, and
Cook suggests that for such individuals it is more accurate to speak of 'limited'
rather than 'full' rationality. An additional problem is that humans are invariably
not totally rational when making decisions. We tend to use heuristics (rules of
thumb) - these are strategies which when applied in the past have been
successful so we tend to apply the same strategies to other situations even
though rationally this is not the best decision to make.
Bandura (1986) also agrees with the model of limited rather than complete
rationality. In particular for crimes of violence and situations in which the
cognitive control of behaviour has been weakened by alcohol, drugs, or a
temporary emotional state. He states "In general, people consider a few,
rather than all, aspects of a crime-related situation and are more influenced by
prospective pay-offs than by potential punishments if detected. Thus, criminal
judgments are not all that different from the way people generally go about
making decisions - they single out and overweigh a few factors and engage in
only a partial examination of other options. They tend to reflect more on
benefits than on punishments." (Bandura 1986, p277).
Decision Making: The second problem concerns the implication that in making
their decisions potential offenders have full information about the probability of
detection and the level of punishment if they are detected. However it is the
perceived risks not the actual ones which are critical to the decision-making
process, thus subjective appraisal, not objective reality is important. However
we should also note that some offenders, especially those who consider it
their profession, will hold more accurate information.
Choice: Finally we come to the issue of choice. One reading of Rational
Choice Theory would have us believe that individuals choose to commit
crimes and choose not to commit crimes. It could be argued that this is a very
naive way of looking at criminal behaviour. For example, if an individual has a
biological basis towards forms of criminal and deviant behaviour, is raised by
uncaring and excessively punitive parents, is encouraged and supported by
their peer group to undertake criminal activity, and has a personality which
would encourage such behaviours, then how far can we talk about choice? It
would seem obvious that as one factor piles upon another choice for the
individual becomes more and more limited. However if supporters of Rational
Choice Theory use the term choice in regards to simply the decision-making
process when engaged in criminal activity, for example which house in a
street to break into, then the use of this term is more appropriate.
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Attribution stuff which is just for interest really
Anger and Aggression
Another area that attribution theories have been applied to is that of anger
and aggression. As you are aware from the AS level study of Schachter and
Singer, one theory of emotion is that once physiological arousal has occurred
we need to attribute a cause to this and so given the right environmental cues
we could attribute anger to our arousal, thus potentially leading to aggression.
For example, Zillmann (1979) found that when P's were provoked to anger,
further arousal from extraneous sources, such as exercise, heat or erotica,
was misattributed and intensified aggression. Similarly Beck (1976) sees
specific emotions as the consequence of specific cognitive appraisals, such
that anger follows the appraisal of an unwarranted violation of ones domain.
Thus individuals who are prone to making attributions about their
physiological state based on anger are more likely to engage in aggressive
behaviour and therefore more likely to become criminal.
In addition to the above point, aggressive boys have been shown to be less
accurate in interpreting peers' intentions in unambiguous situations, and to
have a bias to perceive hostile intent in ambiguous interpersonal situations
having a negative outcome (Dodge 1986). This reflects quick responding to
minimal information, and selective attention to social cues, suggesting a
biased expectancy to perceive malevolent intent.
Perry, Perry and Rasmussen (1986) found that aggressive children had
strong self efficacy beliefs about their ability to enact aggressive responses,
relative to their less aggressive peers, and also held beliefs that aggression
would bring them tangible rewards and reduce aversive treatment by others
towards themselves. Slaby and Guerra (1988) using incarcerated Ps found
that those Ps rated as aggressive showed more positive and neutralising
beliefs about the consequences of aggression, such as self-esteem
enhancement and minimal suffering to the victim. Males consistently showed
more of these attributions than females, suggesting a more limited
consideration for interpersonal outcomes.
Domestic Violence
Whilst nearly all recorded instances of domestic violence centre on a male
partner physically assaulting a female partner there is increasing reporting of
'husband battering'. What limited research that has been undertaken in this
area in regards to the thinking patterns of 'wife beaters' is identified below Rosenbaum and O'Leary (1981) found that abusers showed more
conservative attitudes to women than did controls, and were also more
conservative than their wives.
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Walker (1988) found that male abusers tended to hold expectations that
females will protect them from harm and have unrealistic expectations of
intimacy.
Dutton and Browning (1988) propose that abusers have an exaggerated need
for power, combined with fears of intimacy, so that changes in the level of
intimacy in their relationships are perceived as threats to their control, which
instigate anger. In support for this, they found that physically abusive males
reacted more strongly than controls to videotaped scenarios portraying
abandonment by the female as an outcome of male-female conflict.
Child Abuse
It probably goes without saying that a person who physically molests children
has some serious distortions of cognition. Below are some findings in this
area Abel et al (1984) identified several cognitive distortions in child molesters,
such as beliefs that lack of resistance by a child implies willingness, the child
does not perceive genital fondling as an assault, the experience teaches the
child about sex, and that society will come to accept adult-child sexual
relationships.
Stermac and Segal (1989) found that child molesters compared to other
sexual offenders attributed greater benefits to a child, and saw greater
complicity on the part of the child in initiating sexual contact.
However whether such beliefs are a contributory factor to the determining of
their offending behaviour or they are post offence rationalisations is not
concluded.
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(i) morality and crime;
(study =
)
(ii) social cognition and
crime;
Criminal thinking patterns (study =
)
(iii) rationality and choice.
(study =
)
1
2
The four studies I am going to use for
my part B essay
3
4
1
2
The four evaluation issues I am going
to use for my part B essay
3
4