1. Psychological approaches to understanding crime
Psychological theories
Moral reasoning theory
Moral reasoning refers to how individuals reason about and justify their behaviour with respect to
moral issues. The cognitive-developmental approach is the best-known approach to moral
reasoning. Kohlberg composed six stages of moral reasoning through which individuals progress, with
reasoning becoming more abstract and complex. The theory was revised by Gibbs into a theory of
“sociomoral reasoning” in which the roles of social perspective-taking and empathy are given a
greater emphasis.
Gibbs’ theory focuses only on the first four stages of Kohlberg’s theory. The first two stages represent
“immature moral reasoning”, during which time reasoning is superficial and egocentric. Stages 3 and
4 are “mature moral reasoning” and show an understanding of interpersonal relationships and other
people’s needs and at stage 4, societal needs. Gibbs emphasised the need for acquisition of social
perspective-taking skills for reasoning at these two stages, in order to allow for emotions such as
empathy to play a part in motivating decisions about reasoning and behaviour.
The different stages are:
Stage 1: Unilateral and physicalistic: reasoning refers to authority figures (e.g. parents) and
the physical consequences of behaviour. Individuals show little or no perspective-taking.
Stage 2: Exchanging and instrumental: reasoning incorporates a basic understanding of social
interaction. However, this is typically in terms of cost/benefit deals, with the benefits to the
individual being of most importance.
Stage 3: Mutual and prosocial: reasoning reflects an understanding of interpersonal
relationship and the norms/expectations associated with these. Empathy and social
perspective-taking are apparent, along with ideas appeals to one’s own conscience.
Stage 4: Systemic and standard: reasoning reflects an understanding of complex social
systems with appeals to societal requirements, basic rights and values, and
character/integrity.
Looking at Kohlberg/Gibbs’ theories, it is possible to morally justify offending behaviour at each
stage:
Stage 1 – offender is morally justified if punishment can be avoided.
Stage 2 – offender is morally justified if the benefits to the individual outweigh the costs.
Stage 3 – offending is morally justified if it maintains personal relationships.
Stage 4 – offending is morally justified if it maintains society or is sanctioned by a social
institution.
However, although offending can be justified at all stages, the circumstances in which it usually
occurs reflects moral reasoning at the less mature stages. Moreover, the moral immaturity of young
offenders is consistent across different values, rather than only for those related to offending.
Gibbs has considered what particular features characterise the moral development of offenders. He
suggests: (1) developmental delay in moral judgement; (2) self-serving cognitive distortions; and (3)
social skill deficiencies. The main offence-supporting distortion is egocentric bias. A number of
secondary cognitive distortions are proposed to support egocentricity in contributing to offending.
These comprise: (1) blaming others or external factors rather than oneself for behaviour that harms
other people; (2) having a hostile attributional bias, by which ambiguous events/social interactions
,are interpreted as hostile; and (3) minimising consequences/mislabelling one’s own antisocial
behaviour in order to reduce feelings of guilt and regret.
Withing the moral reasoning theory framework, offending behaviour is seen as a result of sociomoral
developmental delay beyond childhood, accompanied by an egocentric bias. The secondary cognitive
distortions then allow individuals to disengage from taking responsibility for their behaviour on a
moral level.
Social information-processing theory
With the help of social information-processing theories, aggression and delinquent behaviour can be
explained in order to examine individual differences in why one individual will respond to a certain
situation aggressively whereas another will not. Crick and Dodge suggested a six-step model which
describes how individuals perceive their social world and process information about it, and the
influence of previous experience on these processes.
The six steps are:
1. Encoding of social cues
2. Interpretation and mental representation of the situation
3. Clarification of goals/outcomes for the situation
4. Access or construction of responses for the situation
5. Choice of response
6. Performance of chosen response.
Although these steps occur in sequence for a given situation or stimulus, individuals can
simultaneously perform the different steps, allowing for feedback between processes. Therefore, the
model is more of a circular, rather than a linear process. Processing is influenced by social knowledge
structures based on an individual’s past experiences, such as social schema and scripts.
At the first stage social cues are perceived and encoded. These are used at the second stage along
with social knowledge structures to interpret the situation and provide a mental representation of it.
When interpreting the situation, attributions are made about the intent of other people and the
causality of events. At the third stage the individual chooses their preferred goals/outcomes for the
situation. The fourth stage requires individuals to generate a range of possible responses to the
situation. These are evaluated at the fifth stage in order to choose one to perform. The Response
Evaluation and Decision (RED) model outlines a number of criteria used when evaluating responses,
including the perceived efficacy and value of the response, and the perceived efficacy and value of
the outcome behaviour. Finally, at stage six, the chosen response is enacted.
Social information-processing and criminal behaviour
Aggressive and delinquent individuals show distinct patterns of social information-processing across
the six steps. At the first two steps, aggressive individuals experience a range of problems in
encoding and interpreting social cues, leading to an inaccurate representation of a situation. They
appear to perceive fewer social cues, take more notice of aggressive cues and pay more attention to
cues at the end of interactions. Furthermore, they rely more on internal schema when interpreting
situations, with these schema tending to be aggressive in content.
Aggressive individuals also have a hostile attributional style, and so often misinterpret situations as
hostile, which is exacerbated when individuals feel threatened or react impulsively. They also
attribute greater blame to external factors.
At the third step, aggressive individuals tend to have dominance and revenge-based goals, rather
than prosocial goals. At the fourth step, they generate fewer responses than non-aggressive people,
, which suggests they have a limited repertoire from which to draw. The content of these responses is
more aggressive.
At the fifth step aggressive individuals also evaluate responses by different criteria, rating aggressive
responses more positively than prosocial ones and having more positive outcome expectancies and
perceptions of self-efficacy for aggression. Thus, aggression is viewed as being more effective to
achieve their goals.
At the sixth step, aggressive individuals have poor social skills. If the chosen response is successful, it
will be evaluated positively and reinforced. Research shows that the more steps at which individuals
exhibit problems, the greater the level of aggressive and antisocial behaviour. There also appears to
be an interaction between the hostile attributional style at step two and the response evaluation and
decision process at step four.
Theories, evidence, and crime
Interpersonal violence
A range of crimes is included under the label of ‘violence’, including murder, manslaughter and
robbery. Domestic violence will also be considered here. Violent offenders have an early onset of
offending behaviour, and show considerable continuity of aggression and violence throughout their
life. There are a number of theories that attempt to provide explanations of violence and violent
offending.
Social factors and violence
A range of social factors have been shown to predict violent offending, many of which are similar to
those associated with general offending. Family structure and parenting style both play a big role.
There is also a clear link between violence and severe abuse in childhood and witnessing family
violence. This appears to be mediated through the impact of abuse on children’s psychological
functioning, such as problem-solving and coping abilities.
Cognitive-behavioural theory and violence
Cognitive-behavioural approaches focus on the role of cognitive appraisal and other internal
processes in violence. One way of examining these processes is through the six-step model already
mentioned. The hostile attributional bias is one of the strongest findings having a very strong
relationship with aggressive behaviour in all stages of life. There is also an association between low
levels of empathy and violent offending.
Emotional arousal can also impact on cognitive processes, with anger playing a role in understanding
violence (i.e. violent acts are “angry behaviours”). Novaco suggested that there are reciprocal
relationships between angry emotional arousal and cognitive processes. He proposes angry thoughts
can be triggered by situational events; these thoughts then increase emotional arousal; and this
arousal heightens the intensity of the angry thoughts. As this cycle continues, the level of cognition
(angry thoughts) and affect increase in turn, with an increased risk of violence.
Neuropsychological factors and violence
There is some evidence that violence is associated with brain damage or dysfunction. There is an
increased level of brain abnormality among violent offenders. Damage and malfunctioning of the
frontal and temporal lobes is most associated with violence. Frontal lobe lesions are associated with
personality changes, such as apathy; a lack of foresight or taking account of the consequences of
behaviour; a tendency to continue with behaviours that are unsuccessful; irritability; and grandiose
and unrealistic ideas. These are often referred to as disinhibition. If people with frontal lobe lesions
