Psychological Theories of Crime

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Psychological Theories of Crime

• In-class assignment
• Freuds approach
• Banduras theory

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Gordon Allport (1897 1967)

• Allport received his Ph.D. in Psychology in 1922
  from Harvard
• Social psychologist
• His career was spent developing his theory,
  examining such social issues as prejudice, and
  developing personality traits

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Personality Trait

• To get an intuitive feel for what personality
  trait is, think of the last time you wanted to do
  something or become something because you really
  felt that doing or becoming that something would
  be expressive of the things about yourself that
  you believe to be most important 

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Personality Traits

• Doing things in keeping with what you really are,
  thats following personal traits, or personal
  dispositions
• Unique, individual characteristics within a
  person

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Personality Traits

• A personal disposition produces various
  perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and actions
• A person with the personal disposition fear of
  communism may equate Russians, liberals,
  professors, strikers, social activists,
  environmentalists, feminists, and so on
• He may lump them all together and respond to any
  of them with a set of behaviors that express his
  fear  making speeches, writing letters, voting,
  arming himself, getting angry, etc.

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TIME ORIENTATIONS

• Future Paced - Goal Oriented, Desire and Idea
  Driven
• Present Focused - Task Oriented, Critical and
  Need Driven
• Past Absorbed - Event Oriented, Lesson and Memory
  Driven

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Future Paced Goal Oriented Desire and Idea 
Driven

• Sometimes so focused on the future that misses
  things in the present or is unable to learn from
  and remember the past. 
• Can see, know or sense things that are coming and
  can see, know or sense problems before they arise
• Can adapt to changes in plans
• Can foresee future consequences of current
  actions. 

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Present Focused Task Oriented Critical and Need 
Driven

• Focus is on what is happening right now
• Being in the present could mean things that
  happen within the next several weeks to only
  those things that are happening today depending
  on the width of the persons Present Orientation 
  
• Might have difficulty adjusting to change because
  he cant see it coming.  He might have difficulty
  recalling what happened past his present
  time-frame. 
• Present oriented people could benefit from
  keeping a journal and a planning calendar 

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Past Absorbed Event Oriented Lesson and Memory
Driven

• It is very difficult for them to see into the
  future except how it is formed or controlled by
  their past
• They can either learn from the past or they can
  be stuck in the past
• Holds onto past arguments or struggles, brings
  them to mind and mentions them frequently.
• Remembers past good things and bad things  
• Can be frustrated by future and present paced
  people because they dont understand how things
  were so cant really understand how they are.

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Past Absorbed, Present Oriented, and Future
Oriented people
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Furniture
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Books/Art/Music
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Crimes

• Make a list of crimes for each of the
  dispositions
• Provide a rationale for your choice

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Psychoanalytic Theory (Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

• Freud claimed that all human beings are born with
  certain instincts, i.e. with a natural tendency
  to satisfy their biologically determined needs
  for food, shelter and warmth
• All humans have natural drives and urges
  repressed in the unconscious
• All humans have criminal tendencies
• Freud hypothesized that the most common element
  that contributed to criminal behavior was faulty
  identification by a child with her or his parents

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The Oedipus Complex

• According to Freud, a boy's close relation to his
  mother leads to a desire for complete union with
  her
• A girl, on the other hand, who is similarly
  attached to the mother and thus caught up in a
  "homosexual" desire, directs her libido (love,
  sexual energy broadly construed) toward her
  father
• This produces a triadic relationship regardless
  of one's sex, with the parent of the same sex
  cast in the role of a rival for the affections of
  the parent of the opposite sex.

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The Unconscious

• The unconscious is that part of the mind
• Is constructed by the repression of that which
  is too painful to remain in consciousness
• Sublimation -- the rechanneling of drives that
  cannot be given an acceptable outlet
• In general we can say that the unconscious serves
  the theoretical function of making the relation
  between childhood experience and adult behavior
  intelligible

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Ego, Id and Super-Ego

• Id -- the biological, inherited, unconscious
  source of sexual drives, instincts, and
  irrational impulses
• The ego is produced from the non-biological
  (social and familial) forces brought to bear on
  one's biological development and functions as an
  intermediary between the demands of the id and
  the external world
• Super-ego (internalized rules placing limits on
  the subject's satisfactions and pleasures)

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THE FREUDIAN APPROACH

• The improperly socialized child may develop a
  personality disturbance that causes her or him to
  direct antisocial impulses inward or outward
• The child who directs them outward becomes a
  criminal, and the child that directs them inward
  becomes a neurotic

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Albert Bandura Social Learning Theory (1965)

• Albert Bandura is most famous for the Bobo doll
  experiment
• He had children witness a model aggressively
  attacking a plastic clown called the Bobo doll
• Children would watch a video where a model would
  aggressively hit a doll, punch the clown,
  shouting sockeroo!
• She kicked it, sat on it, hit with a little
  hammer, shouting various aggressive phrases

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Bobo doll experiment

• Bandura showed his film to groups of children
• They then were let out to play
• In the play room were several observers with pens
  and clipboards in hand, a brand new bobo doll,
  and a few little hammers
• A lot of little kids punched it and shouted
  sockeroo, kicked it, sat on it, hit it with the
  little hammers
• Kids imitated the young lady in the film

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Bobo doll experiment

• These children changed their behavior without
  being rewarded
• It didnt fit so well with standard behavioristic
  learning theory (based on reinforcement)
• Bandura called this phenomenon observational
  learning or modeling, and his theory is usually
  called social learning theory
• Observational learning, Retention, Motor
  reproduction

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Bandura did a large number of variations in the
experiment

• The model was rewarded or punished in a variety
  of ways
• Kids were rewarded for their imitations
• The model was changed to be less attractive or
  less prestigious
• Disapproval a models action
• When the children went into the other room, what
  should they find there but -- the live clown! 
  They proceeded to punch him, kick him, hit him
  with little hammers

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Findings

• Observational learning is also known as imitation
  or modeling. In this process, learning occurs
  when individuals observes and imitate others
  behavior
• Albert Bandura reported that individuals that
  live in high crime rates areas are more likely to
  act violently than those who dwell in low-crime
  areas
• This assumption is similar to Shaw and McKays
  theory of social disorganization