SUMMARY OF BIOLOGY
Modern biological theories of crime all incorporate sociological or psychological concepts.
Biology tends to relate to crime in an indirect fashion.
Biological factors may be corrected/modified
OLD Biological Perspective = single (immutable) factor directly causes crime
Psychological Explanations that will appear on the Exam
Behavioral Theories
Cognitive Theories
Personality and Crime
IQ and Crime
Behavioral Theories
Classical Conditioning
Pavlov’s dogs
Operant learning
positive/negative reinforcement, punishment
“Socialization process”
Token economy
Vicarious learning
Bandura’s bobo doll experiments
Criminal behavior is not “abnormal,” but the product of learning experiences
Aggression
Aggressive behavior must be acquired
Behavioral repoitoires are stored, used, discarded…
Depends on whether behavior is reinforced or punished
Humans have the ability to reward/punish ourselves
Social Learning Theories
Psychological
Big Al Bandura, Gerald Patterson
Sociological
Edward Sutherland, Ronald Akers
Cognitive Theories
How we think (patterns, processes)
Kholberg’s moral reasoning
Pre-conventional, Conventional, Post-conventional
Faulty thinking/cognitive distortions
What we think (the content)
“Criminal thinking errors” as negative reinforcement
Personality and Crime
Personality = a cluster of traits that are stable and operate over many domains
MMPI (Pd scale)
CPI (So scale)
MPQ
Negative Emotionality
Low Constraint
Personality: The Psychopath
Harvey Cleckly: The Mask of Sanity
Laundry list of factors that characterize the psychopath
Complete lack of remorse
Above average intelligence
Criminal history, leaching behavior
Superficial charm
Pathological liars
Lack of emotional depth
Psychopath II
Robert Hare
Behavioral component
pathological lying, criminal behavior, “leaching” lifestyle...
Emotional component
lack of affection, inability to love, lack of emotion
Developed the “Psychopathy Checklist”
Measures both behavioral and emotional
Findings from the PCL
Roughly 1% of general population and 15-25% of prison populations are psychopaths
Emotional and Behavioral component are strongly related (but not complete overlap)
PCL predicts recidivism among inmates very well
Psychopaths…
Played a card game with decreasing odds of winning longer than non-psychopath inmates
May have unique speech patterns, or “hiccups”
May have lower resting heart rate, cortical arousal
Controversies in Psychopath Research
Secondary vs. Primary
Do some psychopaths “feel” emotions?
Expert testimony
Not congruent with research, bias decisions
Is the psychopath just a severe criminal?
What the heck is “IQ”
Intelligence Quotient
Alfred Binet (French Scientist)
Developed “mental age”
Series of tasks (simple math, organization…)
Golden Rules for use
Eventually became:
Mental age / Physical Age
Search for the “feeble minded,” imbecile, high grade or low grade morons...
IQ and Crime
Empirical evidence: IQ weakly but consistently related to crime (8-10 pt difference)
Detection hypothesis?
Class or race bias in testing?
Two types of bias
True direct effect (Bell Curve)
True indirect effect (Hirschi and Hindelang)