SUMMARY OF BIOLOGY - University of Minnesota



SUMMARY OF BIOLOGY

Modern biological theories of crime all incorporate sociological or psychological concepts.

Biology tends to relate to crime in an indirect fashion.

Biological factors may be corrected/modified

OLD Biological Perspective = single (immutable) factor directly causes crime

Psychological Explanations that will appear on the Exam

Behavioral Theories

Cognitive Theories

Personality and Crime

IQ and Crime

Behavioral Theories

Classical Conditioning

Pavlov’s dogs

Operant learning

positive/negative reinforcement, punishment

“Socialization process”

Token economy

Vicarious learning

Bandura’s bobo doll experiments

Criminal behavior is not “abnormal,” but the product of learning experiences

Aggression

Aggressive behavior must be acquired

Behavioral repoitoires are stored, used, discarded…

Depends on whether behavior is reinforced or punished

Humans have the ability to reward/punish ourselves

Social Learning Theories

Psychological

Big Al Bandura, Gerald Patterson

Sociological

Edward Sutherland, Ronald Akers

Cognitive Theories

How we think (patterns, processes)

Kholberg’s moral reasoning

Pre-conventional, Conventional, Post-conventional

Faulty thinking/cognitive distortions

What we think (the content)

“Criminal thinking errors” as negative reinforcement

Personality and Crime

Personality = a cluster of traits that are stable and operate over many domains

MMPI (Pd scale)

CPI (So scale)

MPQ

Negative Emotionality

Low Constraint

Personality: The Psychopath

Harvey Cleckly: The Mask of Sanity

Laundry list of factors that characterize the psychopath

Complete lack of remorse

Above average intelligence

Criminal history, leaching behavior

Superficial charm

Pathological liars

Lack of emotional depth

Psychopath II

Robert Hare

Behavioral component

pathological lying, criminal behavior, “leaching” lifestyle...

Emotional component

lack of affection, inability to love, lack of emotion

Developed the “Psychopathy Checklist”

Measures both behavioral and emotional

Findings from the PCL

Roughly 1% of general population and 15-25% of prison populations are psychopaths

Emotional and Behavioral component are strongly related (but not complete overlap)

PCL predicts recidivism among inmates very well

Psychopaths…

Played a card game with decreasing odds of winning longer than non-psychopath inmates

May have unique speech patterns, or “hiccups”

May have lower resting heart rate, cortical arousal

Controversies in Psychopath Research

Secondary vs. Primary

Do some psychopaths “feel” emotions?

Expert testimony

Not congruent with research, bias decisions

Is the psychopath just a severe criminal?

What the heck is “IQ”

Intelligence Quotient

Alfred Binet (French Scientist)

Developed “mental age”

Series of tasks (simple math, organization…)

Golden Rules for use

Eventually became:

Mental age / Physical Age

Search for the “feeble minded,” imbecile, high grade or low grade morons...

IQ and Crime

Empirical evidence: IQ weakly but consistently related to crime (8-10 pt difference)

Detection hypothesis?

Class or race bias in testing?

Two types of bias

True direct effect (Bell Curve)

True indirect effect (Hirschi and Hindelang)

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