Criminal Thinking Patterns
Criminal Thinking Patterns
Here the focus of the understanding criminality is on the thinking processes of the criminal – why do some people decide to commit a crime and others don’t? Do we all make rational choices or could some people be more susceptible to a criminal life through biology or psychological development throughout childhood and adolescence? Therefore, this module will be taking a cognitive perspective on crime and criminality – looking at the thinking processes that people go through and factors that may affect these processes. The three sub-topic areas that we will be looking at are:
• Morality and Crime
• Social Cognition
• Rationality and Choice
This topic we will be mostly looking at the following theories and studies: Kohlberg; Palmer and Hollin; Blair; Cornish and Clarke; and Rettig.
Morality and Crime
There are many theorists that believe that we develop many important skills and processes as we get older – through childhood to adolescence. Could morality be thought of as a similar concept? As we develop and grow older our morality – our ability to tell right from wrong – goes through stages getting more-and-more sophisticated? This is exactly what Kohlberg proposes with his theory of moral development.
Piaget supposes that a child will see situations, and their behaviour within those situations, in terms of how much damage their behaviour has caused. For example, a child might expect to be punished more harshly for spilling a glass of juice on a cream carpet while trying to do a ‘nice thing’ for their mum, while not as much for spilling it on the kitchen sideboard when told explicitly not to go anywhere near the juice. Therefore, nothing as complex as motivation is taking into account when morally evaluating the situation – it is simply based on how much damage they have done.
Kohlberg 1976 – Moral Development
Like other psychologists – most notably Piaget – Kohlberg puts forward a cognitive development theory (an individual’s cognitive processes develop as they grow) to understand moral development. Kohlberg’s theory breaks moral development into three stages, each with two levels, which a child will pass through as they get older. If a child doesn’t progress pass through the levels their morality will be affected.
|Level 1: Preconventional morality |
|Stage 1 |Obedience and Punishment |Obedience to those who have power (parents and teachers) is |
| | |important. The need to avoid punishment directs actions. |
|Stage 2 |Instrumental Purpose |This stage is characterised by the desire to meet ones own needs |
| | |first and foremost, while recognising the needs of others |
|Level 2: Conventional Conformity |
|Stage 3 |Conformity |Roles and responsibilities are important. Behaviours is judged in|
| | |terms of good intentions, and a concern for others. |
|Stage 4 |Law and Order |A commitment to social order and the upholding of laws, and |
| | |contributing to the group or institution is seen as important in |
| | |this stage. |
|Level 3: Autonomous Principles |
|Stage 5 |Social Contract & Individual |In this stage self is distinguished from others, whilst |
| |Rights |recognising the importance of values and rules relative to the |
| | |group. |
|Stage 6 |Universal Ethical Principles |The reason for doing right is governed by justice and human |
| | |rights, a sense of dignity, and the validity of universal moral |
| | |principles. |
Levels of moral development (modified from Heinemann, 2005)
From the summary above we can see that an individual will pass through the stages as they get older. If however, that individual stops progressing, they will have a delayed moral ability. The third stage of the theory, Autonomous Principles, is quite a sophisticated level to be at where people are thinking about others and a moral sense of ‘right and wrong’ – not just what is legislated. Euthanasia is such an example of moral reasoning at a high level. The person involved may have a loved one request that they help them end their life early as a result of a terminal illness; law would state that this is wrong and you would be punished for it; however, you could argue that on a moral level you ‘did the right thing’.
There have been studies to examine the relationship between moral functioning and criminality to investigate if morality is a variable influencing if an individual will become a criminal or not.
Palmer and Hollin 2000 – Correlates of Offending and Morality
Palmer and Hollin wanted to investigate if morality correlated with self-reported delinquency and other factors that were thought could relate to criminality. Two samples of males were used to compare results: the first sample contained 97 convicted offenders between the age of 13 and 21; the second sample, a control group, was made up of 77 non-offenders, aged 12 to 24, from the same area of the Midlands.
The two samples were given four different psychometric questionnaires and the results of these questionnaires were to be correlated to see investigate any relationships between the factors that were being investigated:
1. Sociomoral Reflection Measure (short form) – measured what level of moral development the participant was functioning at.
2. Extracts from the ‘Own perceptions of Parenting’ – measured perceptions of parenting (rejection, parenting styles, emotional warmth).
3. Attributions of Intent – measured how the participants perceived ambiguous situations
4. Self-reported Delinquency Checklist (SRD) – basically a list of crimes; you put a big old tick next to those that you have committed!
Attributions of intent – this test looked at how people perceive a situation – do they read aggressive inferences into an image? It looks at how people attribute behaviour – hostile or non-hostile. Participants had to look at 12 different images and had to decide if the people within the scenario were acting with hostile or pro-social intent. For example, in the image (left) is the kitten about to eat the chick (hostile intent) or are they playing together (pro-social behaviour). It is assumed that the more aggressive a person is the more hostile attributions of intent will be made.
The first finding of the research provided support that the control group was actually different from the first sample of offenders; the modal score on the Self-reported Delinquency checklist for the offenders was 24 whereas the score for the control sample was four. In relation to moral reasoning it was suggested that the offenders were functioning at around the first level where choices were based on rewards and punishments. From the Perceptions of Parenting psychometric it was found that the offenders perceived (important to note the word perceived – this doesn’t actually mean that their parents were more rejecting, just that it was perceived to be) their parents to be more rejecting. The offenders also made more hostile attributions of intent.
Going back to the correlation between morality and criminality, which is what this study is all about, Palmer and Hollin found that offending scores (based on the SRD) correlated with perceptions of parental rejection and more hostile attributions of intent. Consequently, the researchers say that these two variables are significant predictors of criminality.
Evaluation
|Strengths |Weaknesses |
|Psychometrics tests: P&H used a selection of psychometric |Generalisations: only male participants from the Midlands area|
|tests. Psychometric tests tend to be both valid and |and a small selection of offences had been committed by the |
|reliable. |offenders, we will have problems applying what was found to |
|Sample: A good sized sample was used and importantly, P&H had|other demographics and offences. |
|a control condition of non-offenders to compare the results |Correlation Analysis: correlational analysis only tells us |
|to. |about relationships between different variables and we are not|
| |able to infer cause-and-effect from the findings. |
| |Self-report measures: there could be problems with social |
| |desirability on the SRD checklist. |
Social Cognition and Crime
This sub-topic is going to look at how external (or situational) factors can influence how people think about behaving. We all behave in different ways; many times this behaviour is based on other people’s cues (things that they do). For example, you’re in a nightclub and you move over to dance with the very attractive lady on the dance floor. If that lady turns her back to you, talks to her friends, and does everything she can to distance herself from you (less fleeing the building) you will gracefully leave the dance floor – pride only slightly damaged. As a result of a behavioural cue you behaved in a particular way.
Can this theory of social cognition be used to understand offending behaviour? Blair (1997) believes it can and that offenders might not have the necessary cognitive abilities to assess situations properly.
Blair 1997 – Violence Inhibiting Mechanism in Pathological Offenders
Blair put forward the idea that we each have a violence inhibiting mechanism (VIM) inside us. This mechanism is activated by cues in the environment around us, and if stimulated enough it will cause a withdrawal from that situation.
If an individual is present at a violent situation like a fight, they might decide to take part. At some point during the assault a critical event might happen such as someone being knocked on conscious or maybe someone starts crying. Anyone with a working VIM would see this cue and would withdraw from the situation (stop hitting that person); someone without a VIM or with a VIM that isn’t functioning would not react to this cue and would continue assaulting the person.
You could think of the VIM as that little voice inside you telling you to stop when your little brother/sister starts crying after you went that little bit too far pulling their hair or giving a chinese burn! That little voice tells you to stop hurting that person and you do – but what happens if you can’t hear that little voice? What would you do?
Blair wanted to investigate the psycho-physiological (cognitive and behavioural) responsiveness of psychopathic (a condition characterised by lack of empathy or conscience) individuals to distress cues, threatening and neutral stimuli. Participants were all members of the special prison Broadmoor; eighteen inmates were classified as being psychpathic and eighteen as non-psychopathic; all of the men were serving life sentences for murder or manslaughter.
Each of the participants were shown a slide show containing different images classified as either distressful images, neutral images, or threatening images. Distressing images included things such as a crying face or a scared child; threatening images included a shark or a pointed gun; and neutral images included hair dryer or a book. Physiological responses (skin conductivity, heart rate) were measured when each of the image types were shown.
It was found that the psychopathic patients shown no physiological response to the pictures displaying distress cues whereas the non-psychopathic patients did show a respose. Blair concluded that the cause of this lack of responsiveness was that the pathological patients VIM was not functioning. Further support to this was found in the fact that there was no difference in the physiological responsiveness to threatening images.
Evaluation
|Strengths |Weaknesses |
|Useful: we could test people for a lack of VIM prior to |Generalisations: only psychopaths were used so might not have |
|offending and implement treatment programs. |much relevance to non-psychopathic offenders and violent |
|Cause & Effect: as a comparison sample of non-psychopathic |offences. |
|offenders were used we can imply that the lack of VIM is a |Sample: a small sample of participants were used – only 18 in |
|cause of psychopathic offending. |each condition. |
Rationality and Choice
In everyday life we all make rational decisions based on the information that is available to us at the time. When we make such a decision we way the costs and the benefit for us – what is the cost to us now and in the future; and what will I get from this course of action? If the cost is higher than the benefit we will not do anything.
Research into criminality is more recently moving towards the idea that criminals, like the rest of us, are rational beings that make rational choices based on available information.
Now, think of the box office thriller Ocean’s Eleven – here we see rationality at it’s best. Imagine the scene – Mr Clooney is rallying up his group telling them his plan. “The bad news first …” he starts; he then lists the problems they will encounter: lift shafts; armed guards; CCTV; locked doors; secret codes; a vault 200 ft below ground. Here we’re left thinking why are we doing this – as you would as a rational being. The cost seems so high that one would be mad to consider working on the job. Then we are told “…on a weeknight the vault holds $60million, at the weekend $90million, and on a fight night, the night we’re going to rob it – $150million – without a sweat”. Well, the benefit for working on the job just got a lot better. A rational decision waiting to be made.
Cornish & Clark 1987 – Choice Structuring Properties
Here we look at what process potential offenders will go through when making a decision as to committing a crime or not. We need to be crime specific when applying rational choice to offending decisions. This means that each crime, even each individual offence, will have differing costs and benefits that will need to be taken into consideration when making a rational choice. All of these variations combine to make criminal opportunities differentially attractive to particular individuals and groups. There are called choice structuring properties.
Cornish and Clark listed some of the possible choice structuring properties for crimes involving cash as:
|Availability (number of targets, availability) |Time required to commit |
|Awareness of method |Severity of punishment |
|Likely cash yield per crime |Confrontation with victim |
|Planning necessary |Social status |
|Resources required |Fencing (getting rid of goods that are stolen) |
|Solo vs. assistants required |Moral evaluation |
Whilst this approach does take into account the differing choices made by offenders when deciding if they should commit a crime it does miss the fact that different people could interpret situations differently. For example, some offenders may be willing to take more risks than others, whereas others will think of so of the choice structuring properties (above) as not relevant. Therefore, it is not taking into account individual differences between individuals.
Taking into account the above offenders will make a decision based on weighing the costs of committing the offence against the benefits. If the benefits of committing the crime are greater than the costs you will commit the crime.
Rettig 1966 – Demonstration of Rational Choice
This study hoped to demonstrate that people do employ rational choice when making a decision to commit a crime or not. In this study participants were given a hypothetical scenario describing an opportunity to commit a crime. Within the conditions different participants were given different information about the situation (likely benefits, possibility of being caught, degree of punishment). These scenarios were given to groups of students to complete and make decisions on.
This is an example of a hypothetical scenario (from Jamie’s head – not Rettig). Which one do you think is more likely to be committed and why?
|Scenario One |Scenario Two |
|Car park on a deserted industrial estate. |Prince’s Quay car park |
|Midnight |12 noon |
|No one around |Lots of people around |
|No CCTV |CCTV & Guards patrolling |
|£1,000 in view on the passenger seat |£20 in view on the passenger seat. |
The findings from his study suggested that the chance of getting punished and the degree of punishment had the most influence on a persons decision to commit a crime.
Evaluation
|Strengths |Weaknesses |
|Useful: we could make punishments harder for offences to make|Generalisations: all the participants were students. These |
|the costs outweigh the benefits of offending. |could be different to ‘criminals’ |
|Control: Rettig was able to control all aspects of the |Individual Differences: there are many individual motivations |
|hypothetical scenarios so could identify which variable had |for criminality. |
|the most influence on offending behaviour. |Deterministic: just because the benefits outweigh the costs |
| |doesn’t mean that people will commit a crime. |
One issue that we must be aware of when discussing rationality and choice in relation to offending behaviour is the concept of choice. The theories in this area tend to assume that all offenders have a choice over offending and this is not always the case. Many offences have motivations that negate choice, for example, a person who kills someone in the heat of an argument or someone stealing food for a starving family. Do these offenders really make a rational choice before committing the crime?
Consequently, when summarising rational choice theory, we need to understand that it is not really a theory of criminal thinking, but an approach that some criminals might take to offending behaviours. There are other factors that could have a much more profound effect on criminal thinking patterns, and individual differences are massive.
Past Exam Questions
Section A
a) Describe evidence that suggests a link between morality and crime. [6]
b) Evaluate methods use to investigate the link between morality and crime. [10]
Section B
a) Describe what psychologists have learnt about criminal thinking patterns. [10]
b) Evaluate what psychologists have learnt about criminal thinking patterns. [16]
c) Suggest how the moral reasoning of a young offender can be improved. [8]
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