Psychology and crime

Psychology and crime

Areas of Psychology • Personality and crime • Abnormal Psychology and Crime • MMPI and the CPI • Antisocial Personality Disorder • Mental illness and Schizophrenia • Intelligence and crime • Learning disabilities

Psychological theories (con.) • Attention deficit Disorder • Learning theory and crime • Moral development

Personality and crime • Is there a criminal personality? • Personality: characteristics of an individual that predisposes one to act in certain ways in certain situations • Way one perceives, thinks about and relates to oneself and one’s environment

Freud and crime • Freud the first to write about personality • Believed that behavior is influenced by unresolved conflicts in childhood • Superego • Ego • Id

Freud (continued) • Crime would occur if: • Malfunctioning of the id (too much) • Weak ego • Underdeveloped superego (no conscience) • Or, overdeveloped superego (desire to be caught and punished)

Freud (continued) • Contributions of Freud • Behavior is influenced by psychological processes, some of them unconscious • Early childhood experiences are important • Behavior can be treated by psychological means

Freud (continued) • Criticisms • 1. cannot be disproven • 2. focuses on internal factors, excludes societal factors • 3. focuses on treatment rather than prevention

Personality tests & criminality • A variety of personality tests have been given to prison inmates • Generally do not provide a consistent pattern, one “personality • California Psychological Inventory: they tend to score lower on Socialization and Conformity • Lower on empathy scales

Common traits • Hyperactivity • Impulsivity • Aggression • Sensation seeking/risk taking • Extroversion • External locus of control • Inability to delay gratification

Psychological tests • Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory • 550 item T-F screening device for psychiatric problems • Given to thousands of prisoners • No single pattern emerges

Tests (continued) • Indicates more psychological problems than in the general population, i.e., Hypochondriasis, Depression, etc. • Most common pattern is that of the antisocial personality disorder (APD), with high scores on scale 4 (psychopathy) and 9 (mania)

Antisocial Personality Disorder • Formerly known as psychopaths or sociopaths • Also conduct disorder (adolescents) • APD estimated at 3% in the general population, 20-25% of incarcerated prisoners

Characteristics of APD • Failure to conform to social norms • Lie/cheat/steal • Exploit and manipulate others, use people • Lack of remorse • Absence of anxiety • Self-centered

APD (continued) • Reckless • Impulsive • Aggressive • Superficially charming • Inconsistent work history • Financial irresponsibility • Irresponsible parenting

APD (continued) • Sexually promiscuous • Poor judgment • Do not profit from past experience • Punishment is not effective • Causes unknown • Physiological basis? • Environment?

Mental Illness: Schizophrenia • Thought disturbance • “flat” affect • Ambivalence • Autism (withdraw from others) • Unusual behavior • Episodes of psychosis (not in touch with reality: delusions and hallucinations

Mental illness (continued) • Strikes 1% of the general population • More common in prisons • Most mentally ill individuals are not criminals • Most offenders are not mentally ill • However, there are some notable exceptions

Schizophrenia (cont.) • Sirhan Sirhan • Charles Manson • David Berkowitz: Son of Sam • John Hinckley • Jeffrey Dahmer

Intelligence and Criminality • Intelligence: capacity to act purposefully, think rationally and deal effectively with the environment • Culture-bound concept: skills necessary for success in a culture • Lombroso hypothesized that his criminals were “feebleminded”, but there were no measure of intelligence

Intelligence (cont.) • Binet: first intelligence test • Used the concept of mental age: if the majority of children of a given age can complete a task, the task requires that mental age • He tested children, compared mental age to chronological age

Intelligence (cont.) • Goddard used his tests on institutionalized populations such as prisoners in the early 20th century • Concluded that most prisoners were “feebleminded” • However, when the tests were tried in screening men for the draft in W.W.I, they came out feebleminded, too!

Intelligence (cont) • Problem: MA does not change after mid-adolescence but chronological age does. Thus, using Binet’s test, everyone would become feebleminded • Goddard’s work was discredited • It was until until the 1970s that the issue of intelligence and crime was reconsidered by criminologists

Distribution of Intelligence

Findings • 10-15 point gap between offenders and non-offenders: 100 v. 87 • Better than 10% of prisoners are MR, while the percentage in the general population is less than 3% • Is this because of social class differences between prisoners and the general population? (SES affects IQ scores)

Intelligence (cont.) • Studies of nondelinquent and delinquent adolescents matched for age, social class and ethnic groups also find an IQ difference, although not as large • Lower IQ scores are associated with higher recidivism among offenders • Most of the differences are for Verbal IQ rather than Performance IQ

Intelligence • Higher IQ, especially verbal, might mean that one understands consequences better and have better planning skills--protective factor • A lower verbal IQ might mean that the person is less likely to use “internal speech” and be more impulsive (and thus less likely to be deterred)

Explanations • The brighter might get arrested less often (although self-report studies still support a difference) • Higher verbal IQ is associated with better moral reasoning skills

Explanations School problems hypothesis: Low verbal IQ -- poor academic achievement -- frustration -- truancy and dropping out -- association with other dropouts, unemployment -- crime

Learning Disabilities and crime • LD: academic achievement is not commensurate with IQ • Most common: reading problems • More common among males • Causes not clear--brain dysfunction? Problems at birth? Inherited? • More common among delinquents: 12% vs. 33%

ADHD • Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder • Attention deficit • Hyperactivity • Impulsivity and aggression • More common among criminals than in the general population • More common among males (6-10 x)

ADHD • Associated, although not exclusively, with low birth weight (5 lbs. or less) and/or prenatal malnutrition • Although ADHD gets better with age, 50% show residual signs in adulthood • 25% of APD had an ADHD diagnosis in childhood

Explanations: LD & ADHD • Both tend to have more behavioral problems. Whether such problems are part of the disorders or a result of them, they are more at risk for behavior problems. • School hypothesis

Learning theory & crime • Learning a relatively permanent change, due to experience, that can affect behavior • Human behavior is learned, and learned by: • classical conditioning • operant conditioning • Observational learning

Learning • Criminal behavior can be attributed to faulty learning • Learned an inappropriate response • Never had the opportunity to learn an appropriate response

Classical conditioning • UCS---------UCR • Food---------salivation • CS-----------CR • Bell (after paired with food) --salivation • Punishment--------pain, anxiety • Illegal behavior-----anxiety

Classical conditioning • Classically conditioned anxiety results in avoidance conditioning • Hypothesis: APD lack anxiety because their ability to develop classically conditioned responses is impaired

Operant conditioning • Learning involves consequences to responses • Responses resulting in favorable consequences become more likely • Responses resulting in unfavorable consequences become less likely

Operant cond (cont) • Reinforcement: strengths response • Positive reinforcement: receive “reward” increases p of behavior • Negative reinforcement: remove a punishment when a response is made, will also increase the p of that response • Positive punishment: aversive, unpleasant, decreases p of behavior

Operant (cont.) • Negative punishment: take away reward, remove positive • Generalization and discrimination • Schedules of reinforcement and extinction • Reinforcement, not punishment, is the way most behaviors are learned • Most powerful: love and approval

Punishment • An aversive stimulus that decreases the p of the behavior that precedes it • Factors affecting punishment • Immediate • Intense enough, but not excessive (excessive results in anger) • Consistent

Punishment (cont) • Aimed at the misbehavior, not the person • Must provide positive reinforcement for alternative behaviors • Is the CJS going to be effective at punishing?

Kohlberg & moral development • Developmental stages of moral development • Preconventional: moral reasoning in terms of reward and punishment • Conventional: moral reasoning in terms of following rules

Moral reasoning (cont) • Postconventional: moral reasoning in terms of what is best for the majority, or determining which ethical principle is most important • Delinquents and criminals: Commonly at the preconventional level, some at the conventional level, few at the postconventional level

Psychology and crime