What makes a criminal?
- Created by: BeccaLouise1
- Created on: 04-01-17 12:37
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- What makes a criminal?
- Physiological explainations of criminal behaviour.
- Evolution.
- If we are controlled genetically, our behaviour must be a product of evolution.
- Lambroso - criminals have similar features, prominant jaw and brow ridges and large ears.
- Lambroso performed a post-mortem on a murderer and found a hollow area where the cerebrellum should be.
- Sheldon - 3 body types -Mesomorph, endomorph and ectomorph.
- Genetics
- Osborn and West found that only 13% of children with non criminal parents committed crime.
- A gene is a molecular unit of hereditary information in a living organism.
- This is compared to 40% for children who had criminal parents.
- Mednick found that having criminal biological parents increased the likelihood of crime
- Even if you are raised with non criminal adoptive parents.
- Evolution.
- Non-physiological explainations of criminal behaviour.
- Social learning theory
- Observation and imitation of parental crime.
- Bandura suggests behaviour is observed, remembered and reproduced.
- Factors that effect motivation include the model and vicarious reinforcement.
- If a child sees behaviour being rewarded, it is more likely that this is imitated.
- Operant conditioning.
- Self Fullfilling prophecy.
- If someone is expected to perform criminal acts, the observer may behave in the way that is expected of them.
- The stereotyped beliefs someone holds can affect the behaviours of another person.
- Ageton and Elliott suggests the treatement of Youth offenders can lead to further deviance.
- They also found that people who were not caught had higher self esteem.
- If one is exposed to negative responses, they may behave in the light of the label again (recidivism)
- Social learning theory
- Raine Et El - brain abnormalities in murderers.
- Conclusions
- The areas identified are associated with aggression, lack of fear, impulsiveness and issues with emotion.
- These areas are also linked to problems with learning.
- Can lead to lower IQ and higher risk of criminality.
- Findings
- Abnormally asymmetricalactivation in areas of the lambic system.
- Less activity in the lateral, medial and pre-frontal areas.
- Lower activation on the right in the temporal lobe/hippocampus.
- Procedure
- Brain was scanned during a continuous performance task.
- Allowed to practice the CPT. The task lasted for 32 mins.
- 30 seconds before, injected with fluorodeoxyglucose tracer
- PET images of 10 horizontal slices through the brain at 10mm intervals.
- Sample
- 39 men and 2 women
- Large sample considering the nature and constraints
- Predominantly male
- All charged with murder/manslaughter
- Not completely representative
- All pleaded not guilty by reasons of insanity.
- Matched design with control group.
- 39 men and 2 women
- Scanning techniques
- Box technique - medial (interior) areas of the brain.
- Cortical peel technique - lateral (surface) areas of the brain.
- Reliable method.
- No risk of demand characteristic
- Participants may have felt that they had no choice but to take part.
- Ethnocentric
- Conclusions
- Physiological explainations of criminal behaviour.
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