Leadership & Management in Biotechnology Models and Psychological Theories.
PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES OF CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR AN INTRODUCTION.
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Transcript of PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES OF CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR AN INTRODUCTION.
PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES OF CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR
AN INTRODUCTION
Early Research
▪ Charles Goring (1870-1919) studied 3,000 convicts in England and came to the conclusion that criminals are more likely to be “insane, unintelligent, and to exhibit poor social behavior.”
▪ Gabriel Tarde (1843-1904) believed that only 1 out of 100 people is creative, and the rest imitate one another.
Psychodynamic Approach
▪ Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) believed that extreme personality inadequacies may develop into serious mental illness. Personality consists of three parts:– 1. Id is based on the pleasure principle – source of
drives, wishes, urges and desires. Love, sex and aggression are key drives. Id is mainly unconscious.
– 2. Ego is mainly concerned with testing reality – how best to achieve objectives. Is conscious. Understands need to delay gratification to fulfill a long-term goal.
– 3. Super-ego is concerned with what is moral – what is right or wrong. In a properly developed personality, super-ego controls and guides the id and ego. Super-ego is the conscience of the personality.
Psychodynamic Approach, Continued…
▪ According to these theories, crime is caused by a poorly developed super-ego which lets the ego choose a course of action that seeks immediate gratification (e.g., money, robbery, violating the law) without thinking of long-term consequences.– Immediate gratification: the desire
to experience pleasure or fulfillment without delay or deferment.
– Basically, it's when you want it; and you want it now.
Other Psychodynamic Theories for Understanding Crime
▪ Many things that greatly influence our personality and behavior are unconscious – such as traumatic childhood experiences.
▪ Other psychoanalysts believed parental rejection, particularly a lack of mother-child bonding is the cause of crime.
▪ Other psychoanalysts would say that people commit crimes as a substitute for the love, attention and nurturing that is lacking.
Behavioral Approach
▪ Behavioral theories are centered on the belief that behavior is developed through learning experiences. – In an ideal situation, good behavior
is promoted by rewards/positive reactions and bad behavior is extinguished by punishments/negative reactions.
▪ Behaviorists view deviant behavior as a learned response to life situations.
Social Learning Theory
▪ Albert Bandura developed social learning theory, which states that people learn violence and aggression through the process of behavior modeling.
▪ Bandura theorized that aggressive/criminal behavior is modeled after three sources:– 1. Family interaction: Aggressive children are more likely to be brought up by
aggressive caretakers.– 2. Environmental experiences: Children who grow up in environments without
conventional norms and expectations are more prone to deviant behavior.– 3. Mass media: Children who are exposed to media where violence is
normalized and celebrated leads to aggression and rationalization of bad behavior.
A Social Learning Theory Comic
Cognitive Appraoch
▪ The cognitive theories of criminal behavior are concerned with understanding how criminal offenders perceive and mentally represent the world around them. – One subdiscipline focuses on how
people morally reason about the world.
– The other subdiscipline is focused on how people acquire, retain, and retrieve information.
Cognitive Theories
▪ Jean Piaget (1896-1980) hypothesized that the individual reasoning process is developed in an orderly fashion from birth onward.
▪ Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987) believed that people pass through stages of moral development , and that people who commit crimes might be in the lower stages.