Psychological explinations of offending behaviour: cognitive

Cognitive Distortions- cognitive distortions is a form of irrational thinking.'distortion' are ways in which reality has become twisted so what is percieved no longer represents what is actually true. This results in the persons perception of events being wrong, but what they think is right. Such distortions would allow criminals to rationalise teir behaviour. There's two examples of this. Hostile attribution bias- 'Attribution' is what inferences we draw from a persons action from observations. For example, is a person smiles at you, ypu may infer that the person is communicating that they like you. A hostile attribution bias is when someone is always thinking the worst. An example of this is, if someone smiles and you think that the person is actually thinking bad thought about you. Negative interpriations such as these could lead to aggressive behaviour. Minimalisation- Both magnification anf minimalisation are cognitive distortions which has the concequences of either, over-exaggerating or under-exaggerating a situation. In the case of criminal behaviour minimalisation would explain how a offender would reduce the negative interpretations of their actions before or after a crime has been commited. This helps them accept the concequences of their behaviour and reduce the feelings of…