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.