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I. Psychology and Criminality (page 85) A. Psychological Development 1. The psychoanalytic theory of criminality attributes delinquent and criminal behavior to at least three causes: a. A conscience so overbearing that it arouses feelings of guilt. a. A conscience so weak that it cannot control the individual’s impulses. b. The need for immediate gratification. 2. Sigmund Freud suggested that a person’s psychological well-being is dependent on the healthy interaction of: a. The id, which consists of powerful urges and drives for gratification and satisfaction. b. The ego, which is the executive personality, acting as the moderator between the id and the superego. c. The superego, which acts as a moral code or conscience. 3. Freud proposed that criminality may result if the superego is overactive, or if the superego is not strong enough to control the impulses of the id. 4. Despite the criticism of psychoanalytic theory, three basic principles are of interest to psychologists that study criminology: a. The actions and behavior of an adult are understood in terms of childhood development. b. Behavior and unconscious motives are intertwined, and their interaction must be unraveled if we are to understand criminality. c. Criminality is essentially a representation of psychological conflict. B. Moral Development 1. Lawrence Kohlberg generated the moral developmental theory, which posits that moral reasoning develops in three phases. a. Preconventional level: children’s moral rules and moral values consist of dos and don’ts to avoid punishment b. Conventional level: adolescents typically reason at this level at which they believe in and have adopted the values and rules of society, and they seek to uphold these rules c. Postconventional level: individuals examine customs and social rules according to their own sense of universal human rights, moral principles, and duties 2. According to Kohlberg, most delinquents and criminals function at the Preconventional level. 3. Kohlberg has argued that basic moral principles and social norms are learned through social interaction and role-playing. 21 C. Maternal Deprivation and Attachment Theory 1. Research indicates that shortly after birth, mammals form an emotional bond between infant and mother. 2. The strength of that bond, or the attachment, will affect the child’s social development and ability to form attachments in the future. 3. Studies of attachment by John Bowlby support his theory of attachment, which has seven features: a. Specificity b. Duration c. Engagement of emotion d. Ontogeny e. Learning f. Organization g. Biological function 4. Bowlby suggests that in order to be securely attached, a child must experience a warm, intimate, and continuous relationship with a mother figure. 5. If a child is separated from its mother, or rejected by its mother, anxious attachment develops, which affects the capacity to develop intimate relationships with others. D. Learning Aggression and Violence 1. Social learning theory maintains that delinquent behavior is learned through the same psychological processes as any other behavior. 2. Observational Learning a. Albert Bandura argues that people learn violence and aggression through behavioral modeling. b. Behavior is socially transmitted through examples, which come primarily from the family, the subculture, and the mass media. 3. Direct Experience a. What people learn from direct experience is determined by what they themselves do and what happens to them. b. The individual’s behavior in the first instance and their restraint are said to be “reinforced” by the rewards and punishments they receive. c. Violence and aggression may be learned, but they may not be expressed until they are elicited. d. Bandura suggests that there are instigators that will elicit behavior: i. Aversive instigators ii. Incentive instigators iii. Modeling instigators iv. Instructional instigators v. Delusional instigators 4. Differential Reinforcement 22 a. Ernest Burgess and Ronald Akers generated the theory of differential association-reinforcement, which suggests that: i. The persistence of criminal behavior depends on whether or not it is rewarded or punished ii. The most meaningful rewards and punishments are those given by groups that are important in an individual’s life. b. People learn to behave in a violent or aggressive way, but perhaps something within the personality of a criminal creates a susceptibility to aggressive or violent models in the first place. E. Personality 1. Four discrete lines have examined the relationship between personality and criminality. a. Investigators have looked at the differences between the personality structures of criminals and non-criminals. b. A vast amount of literature is devoted to the prediction of behavior. c. Many studies examine the degree to which normal personality dynamics operate in criminals. d. Some researchers have attempted to quantify individual differences between types and groups of offenders. 2. In The Criminal Personality, Samuel Yochelson and Stanton Samenow said that criminals share abnormal thinking patterns that lead to decisions to commit crimes. 3. The research of Yochelson and Samenow revealed a common personality profile: the criminals tested showed remarkable similarity in their deficient self-control, intolerance, and lack of responsibility. 4. Eysenck’s Conditioning Theory a. First, Eysenck claims that all human personality may be seen in three dimensions: i. Psychoticism: aggressive, egocentric, and impulsive ii. Extroversion: sensation-seeking, dominant, and assertive iii. Neuroticism: low self-esteem, excessive anxiety, and wide mood swings b. Second, Eysenck suggests that humans develop a conscience through conditioning II. Mental Disorders and Crime (page 98) A. Traditionally, the medical profession viewed mental illness as an absolute condition or status; either you are afflicted with psychosis or you are not. 23 B. This dichotomous scheme of diagnosis is problematic, and is apparent no where more than in the insanity defense, which calls for proof of sanity or insanity and generally does not allow for gradations in mental functioning. C. Today the mental illness known as psychopathy, sociopathy, or antisocial personality is diagnosed when a personality is characterized by the inability to learn from experience, lack of warmth, and absence of guilt, but not psychosis. D. Psychologists have found that psychopaths, like Eysenck’s extroverts, have a low internal arousal level, forcing them to constantly seek external stimulation and rendering them less susceptible to learning by direct experience, including punishment. E. Psychological Causation 1. When examining criminal behavior, it is easy to make the fundamental psycholegal error, which results when a cause for criminal behavior is identified and then it is assumed that any behavior resulting from that cause must be excused by law. 2. There is a serious likelihood of psycholegal error in cases where lawyers have evoked the insanity defense. III. Biology and Criminality (page 101) A. Modern Biocriminality 1. Biocriminology is the study of the physical aspects of psychological disorders. 2. Recent research has demonstrated that crime does indeed have psychobiological aspects similar to those found in studies of depression. 3. There is also evidence that strongly suggests a genetic predisposition to criminality. B. Genetics and Criminality 1. The XYY Syndrome a. One type of abnormality is the XYY chromosomal male; he receives two Y chromosomes from his father instead of one. b. Recent studies have discounted the relationship between the extra Y chromosome and criminality. c. One problem is separating the environmental factors from the genetic predispositions with which they begin to interact at birth. 2. Twin Studies 24 a. Researchers have compared identical and fraternal twins in an attempt to determine whether or not crime is genetically predetermined. b. The largest study of twins by Christiansen and Mednick found that the chance of their being a criminal twin when the other twin was a criminal was fifty percent for identical twins and twenty percent for same-sex fraternal twins. c. This finding lends some support to the hypothesis that some genetic influences increase the risk of criminality. d. A weakness of this research is that is may not be valid to assume a common environment for all twins who grow up in the same house at the same time. 3. Adoption Studies a. One way to separate genetic and environmental factors is to study infants separated at birth from their natural parents and placed randomly in foster homes. b. In the largest study of its kind, researchers hypothesized that criminality in the biological parents would be associated with an increased risk of criminal behavior in the child. C. The Controversy over Violence and Genes 1. No one has found any direct link between genes and violence. 2. The controversial issue is the implications of such finding. D. The IQ Debate 1. Historically, the results of IQ tests administered to incarcerated criminals revealed low IQ. 2. Over the past century, criticism against the usefulness of IQ tests, and the relationship between IQ and offending, has mounted. 3. Sutherland posited a strong argument against IQ tests, suggesting that social and environmental factors caused delinquency, not low IQ. 4. The debate died down, but resumed again in the 1970s and remains to be resolved. E. Biochemical Factors 1. Food Allergies 2. Diet 3. Hypoglycemia 4. Hormones F. Neurophysiological Factors 1. EEG Abnormalities 2. Minimal Brain Dysfunction (MBD) 25 IV. Crime and Human Nature (page 110) A. Criticisms of Biocriminology 1. Biocriminologists deny the existence of individual free will. 2. Some see a racist undertone in biocriminological research. 3. Some feel that biocriminologists unfairly deemphasize social and economic factors that may attribute to criminality. 4. Raises the seminal argument of social and behavioral science: is human nature the product of nature or nurture? B. An Integrated Theory 26