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 Approach 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.