Theories of CognitionYolchelson & Samenow (A study of

thinking patterns in criminals)

Kohlberg (Moral development in children)

Gudjohnsson & Bownes (The attribution of blame and type of crime

committed.

The theory of cognition.

• The basic assumption with cognition is that criminals think in a fundamentally different way to law-abiding citizens.

• They must be able to rationalise their own behaviours and decide that the risks involved are worth the possible gains.

• The biggest problem here is that we can never accurately know what another person is thinking.

• How else does a criminal think differently?

Determinism vs Free Will

•Can you help what you do?

•Do you have your own mind?

•Is your fate pre-determined?

•Can criminality be outside your control?

•Actus reus – the act of committing a crime (ie you are definitely guilty of the action involved in

the crime).

•Mens rea – the 'free will' element of the crime (ie did you realise what you were doing, were you

responsible for your actions?)

•So you may commit a crime (actus reus) but not know fully what your doing (mens rea)

Diminished responsibility

•What's your understanding of this legal term?

Peter Sutcliffe and mens rea

•http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8niHc4bB9Bs&feature=playerembedded

The Yorkshire Ripper – Peter Sutcliffe

Killed 13 women (1975 – 1980)

Claimed to have been sent on a mission to kill prostitutes by the voice of God (plea of diminished responsibility).

Four psychiatrists diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia.

Judge rejected the diminished responsibility plea and the expert testimonies of the four psychiatrists.

Diminished responsibility:•When an individual is suffering from an abnormality of mind* which substantially impairs the responsibility of acts.

•* can include extreme anger, emotional imbalance, intoxication as well as mental illness.

•Defence must prove a defect of reason at time of the offence.

Criminal thinking patterns.

•Focus of this topic (Cognition):

•- do criminals think differently to non-criminals?

•- can criminal thinking patterns be changed?

•- by changing thinking patterns can you prevent crime?

Yolchelson and Samenow

A study of thinking patterns in criminals

Starter• Link the statement to a crime…(or a person you know!)

– Are restless, dissatisfied and irritable (easily annoyed).– While at school, considered requests from their

teachers and parents as impositions (unfair demands). – Continually set themselves apart from others.– Want to live a life of excitement, at any cost.– Are habitually angry.– Lack empathy.– Feel under no obligation to anyone or anything except

their own interests.– Are poor at responsible decision making, having pre-

judged situations.

Starter

• What are the chances of you becoming a criminal…?

• Cambell (1981) – Gathering information on crime (self-report study)

• Complete yourself and share with a partner!

Background:

• Yolchelson and Samenow profiled and counselled male offenders using psychodynamic techniques- Freudian.

• The evidence base for criminal thinking patterns has been heavily influenced by their work with criminals in mental hospitals.

Aims:

• To understand the make up of the criminal personality.

• To establish techniques that could be used to alter the personality disorders that produce crime.

• To encourage an understanding of legal responsibility.

• To establish techniques that can be effective in preventing criminal behaviour.

Participants: • 255 male participants.• From a variety of backgrounds; black, white,

inner cities, suburbs, wealthy, poor, etc.• Composed of those confined to the hospital and

had been found guilty of their crimes because of insanity.

• Another group of convicted criminals of roughly equal numbers who were not confined to the institution and had not made that plea.

• Most dropped out of the study, with only 30 completing it.

Methodology:

• Longitudinal study over 14 years.

• So – quantitative or qualitative data collected?

• Advantages/disadvantages of this method?

Findings:• According to the results, criminals:

– Are restless, dissatisfied and irritable (easily annoyed).– While at school, considered requests from their teachers

and parents as impositions (unfair demands). – Continually set themselves apart from others.– Want to live a life of excitement, at any cost.– Are habitually angry.– Lack empathy.– Feel under no obligation to anyone or anything except

their own interests.– Are poor at responsible decision making, having pre-

judged situations.

Findings:

• Yolchelson and Samenow suggest that criminals have quite distinct and erroneous (errors) thinking patterns which differentiate from non-criminals.

• They further suggest that offenders have cognitive processes which lead to a distorted self-image and result not only in crime but in a denial of responsibility.

Findings: The criminal personality:

• They described the criminal personality as being categorised by 52 thinking errors (40 in original study)

Conclusions:

• Criminals are essentially in control of their lives and their criminality is the result of choices made from an early age.

• Criminals are not necessarily impulsive, they have planned and fantasised about their actions and it is these thinking patterns that need to be confronted and treated.

Note to consider:

• As stated earlier, of the 255 participants, most dropped out of the study, with only 30 completing the whole series of interviews.

• It was also noted that only 9 genuinely changed as a result of the study.

• Patients lied and gave answers they thought would help their situation improve… So they changed their emphasis from finding a cause of criminal behaviour to examining the thinking process.

Issues….

• Evaluate with a partner

Issues:• No control group

– It is difficult to say that the identified thinking patterns just belong to criminals

• Social desirability– Interviewing participants could lead to them lying and giving

answers that they believe make them seem less or more of a criminal

• Generalisability– A wide range of backgrounds means that it can be applied to a

wider range of criminals.

• Reliability– Only 30 out of 255 completed the study– Only used convicts that pleaded insanity.

Debates:

• Andocentric– An all male sample

• Free will vs Determinism– Your thinking patterns make you a criminal

Kohlberg

Moral development in children.

Background:

• Morals are a set of norms and values, usually learnt from our parents about what is right and wrong.

• In the UK, the age of criminal responsibility is 10 as it is this age where they are deemed to clearly know the difference between right and wrong.

• Kohlberg was heavily influenced by the work of Piaget and believed that childrens cognition developed in stages.

The Heinz Dilemma:

• Heinz’s wife was suffering from terminal cancer. In an effort to save her, he went to a chemist who had developed a cure which might help her. Unfortunately, the chemist wanted much more money for his cure than Heinz could afford and refused to sell it for any less. Even when Heinz borrowed enough money for half the cost of the drug, the chemist still refused to sell it to him. Having no other means of getting the drug, Heinz broke into the laboratory and stole it….

Think about it….

• Should Heinz have broken into the lab? Why?• Should the chemist have insisted on the inflated

price for his invention? Does he have the right?• What should happen to Heinz?• What if Heinz did not love his wife? Does that

change anything?• What if the dying person was a stranger? Should

he have stolen the drug then?

The dilemma:

• The Heinz dilemma is one of Kohlberg’s main dilemma which he showed to his participants to ask questions such as these too.

• Discuss your answers with the class, how do they differ?

Aim:

• To find evidence in support of progression through stages of moral development.

Participants:

• 58 working and middle class boys from Chicago.• Aged 7, 10, 13 and 16 years.

• Each boy was given a 2 hour interviews with 10 different dilemmas that they had to solve. Some of the boys were followed up at 3 yearly intervals until the age of 30-36.

• This made it a longitudinal study.

Findings- Morality stages:Level 1

Pre-morality

Stage 1 Punishment and obedience- Doing what is right because of fear of punishment

Stage 2 Hedonistic orientation- Doing what is right for personal gain, perhaps a reward

Level 2

Conventional morality

Stage 3 Interpersonal concordance- Doing what is right according to the majority

Stage 4 Law and order orientation- Doing what is right because it is your duty and helps society

Level 3

Post-conventional morality

Stage 5 Social contract- Doing what is morally right even if it is against the law

Stage 6 Universal ethical principles- Doing what is right because of our inner conscience

Findings:

• Younger boys tended to perform at stages 1 and 2 with older boys at 3 and 4. This suggests support for development through stages.

• These patterns were consistent in the cross-cultural studies (UK, Mexico, Turkey), although progression was slower in industrialised societies.

• No support was found for stage 6 in this sample, Kohlberg later revised his reviews and agreed that there may not be a separate stage 6.

Conclusions:

• The evidence does support the idea of a stage theory and the idea that people commit crimes because they lack moral reasoning.

• More recent research by Thornton and Reid with criminal samples suggest that criminals committing crime for financial gain show more immature reasoning than those committing violent crimes.

Issues:• Generalisability

- Chicago, working & middle class (1963), developed to other countries (1969)

• Androcentric– Gender bias

• Interviews– Social desirability as not wanting to be seen as lacking

morals– A 2 hour interviews on young boys- 7- may lead to

demand characteristics as they get bored and start to give answers for the sake of it.

Gudjohnnson and Bownes

The attribution of blame and type of crime committed.

Background:

• We all justify and explain our behaviours using either internal or external attributions.

• An internal attribution is when a person accepts full responsibility for their own behaviour and sees the cause as being within themselves.

• An external attribution is when a person sees the cause of their behaviour as being an external factor- “I was provoked, it’s his fault I hit him.”

• A criminal is considered rehabilitated when they can fully accept responsibility for their crime and accept their guilt.

Aim:

• To examine the relationship between the type of offence and the attributions offenders make about their criminal acts.

Participants:

• 80 criminals who were serving sentences in Northern Ireland.

• Divided into groups;– The first 20 had committed violent offences including

homicide and GBH- mean age 29.– The second group had 40 sex offenders including

rapists, paedophiles and sexual assault- mean age from 41-28.

– The final group of 20 committed property offences including theft and burglary. Mean age 29.

• All asked to fill out a 42 item Blame Attribution Inventory

Results- Mean scores on GBAI:

Type of offence

Guilt Mental element

External attribution

Violence 8.1 5.3 5.8

Sexual 12.7 5.7 2.4

Property 5.5 .0 3.0

Findings:

• Those who committed sexual offences showed more remorse about their behaviour, this was followed by those who had committed violent acts against a person.

• Very little difference was found in the mental element scores for all offenders.

• With external attribution, the highest scores were found for violent offenders and the lowest for sexual offenders.

• When comparing the English findings from this study with violent Irish prisoners, the Irish violent prisoners showed a lower mental element, lower guilt and higher external attribution scores.

Conclusions:

• The findings show a strong consistency with earlier findings across the offender groups, suggesting that there is a strong consistency in the way offenders attribute blame for their crimes across the two countries.

• The only real difference was in the violent prisoners which may have resulted from the violent prevalent in Northern Ireland.

Issues and debates?

• What do you think?