Review Of Psychological Theories Of Crime
In order to recognise the relationship between theory and behaviour and whether biological or psychological theories can explain crime to a greater extent, two biological theories; Lombroso’s (1876) theory of the “criminal gene” and neurology theory which links together brain damage and serial murder, will be analysed against two case studies. Additionally, two psychological theories; Bowlby’s (1944) “affectionless characters” that developed on Freud’s psychoanalytic theory and Bandura’s (1977) Social Learning Theory (SLT) that expanded on Pavlov’s classical conditioning theory will be explored, including the evaluation of the methodologies used for all theories.
Furthermore, the definition of crime and serial murder will be required for a better understanding. According to Holmes & Holmes a serial murder: “involves three or more victims, who are killed over a time period of more than thirty days” and the Oxford Dictionary of English (2010) defines crime as: “an action or omission which constitutes an offence and is punishable by law”. The first biological study of crime is from Lombroso (1876), who theorised that criminals were genetically different from non-criminals. He believed that criminals were evolutionary “throw-backs” and this was evident in their physical appearance. Lombroso also suggested from the surveys he had carried out in prison, that he could detect physiological differences between types of criminals. He stated: “The eyes of murderers are cold… the hair curly, abundant… strong jaws… thin lips”. However, Lombroso’s theory draws criticism in that it had no control group and the criminal samples used contained mainly mentally disturbed people. His theory also fails to recognise that correlation does not imply causality, as it ignores social factors such as poverty and deprivation, which could be causing the physical defects rather than genes. Having said that, Goring studied three thousand English convicts and did find anatomical differences, though not as extreme as Lombroso suggested; a common factor in his subjects was low intelligence.
“The usual personality changes associated with brain injury are forgetfulness, impaired concentration and diminished spontaneity in thought”. One of the methodologies used with biological theories is twin studies, where researchers look at monozygotic twins (MZ) and dizygotic twins (DZ) and try to assess the relative contribution of heredity and environment to a trait or behaviour. They investigate this by looking at concordance rates, the degree to which twins display the same behaviour.
Unfortunately one of the issues with twin studies, is that it has a very small sample size. Secondly, MZ twins look alike, therefore they may generate similar social responses compared to DZ twins. Thirdly, MZ twins often have a close relationship with another and may therefore develop similar interests, including criminal behaviour (ugh, we talked about this in class but I've just read a book that has basically the same stuff)In regards to West, who murdered twelve women, his facial features appear to fit that of a murderer according to Lombroso, for example “the hair curly, abundant… strong jaws… thin lips”. However, Lombroso’s theory is subject to interpretation and due to there being no measurement applied to the theory, different researchers would get different results, therefore it lacks reliability.
The first psychological theory of crime looks at Bowlby’s (1944) attachment theory, where he argued that: “offending behaviour takes place when a child has not enjoyed a close and continuous relationship with its mother during its formative years”. Bowlby (1944) studied forty-four juvenile thieves who had been referred to a guidance clinic and compared them to a control group - matched for age and intelligence - which had been referred to the same clinic - that had not yet committed any crimes. Each child and mother were interviewed separately to record details of the child’s early life and then Bowlby conducted another interview with both the child and accompanying mother. In Bowlby’s findings, he found that almost 40% of the juvenile thieves had been separated from their mother for more than six months in the first five years of their lives, compared to the 5% from the control group. Bowlby (1944) also found that fourteen of the young thieves (32%) showed “affectionless psychopathy” (they lacked the ability to feel affection or not able to care about others). Whereas none of the control group showed up as “affectionless characters”. This led to Bowlby’s conclusion that a warm and unbroken relationship with a mother, was necessary for mental health, and that such separation was responsible for many of the more serious cases of delinquency.
Upon evaluation, while there is a correlation between maternal deprivation and attachment, it ignores external variables that may have affected the behaviour of the forty-four thieves, such as education, poverty, family conflict, etc. Also, the evidence that Bowlby (1944) provided was based on retrospective data, since memories are not accurate and there was also a small sample size, meaning the data could not be generalised. Rutter had also pointed out that Bowlby’s research into this area had not been substantially replicated, and he also argued that separation from the mother in itself was not the problem, but the failure to form a bond with a carer (not necessarily the mother).
The second psychological theory of crime is from Bandura (1977), who looks at SLT. According to SLT, all behaviour is learnt via observation and modeling, as people “are more likely to adopt modelled behaviour if it results in outcomes they value”. The view that “crime is a learned activity much like any other”, was a concept Sutherland put forward. A study conducted by Bandura, Ross & Ross (1961), looked at whether young children would imitate behaviour they see, by exposing them to aggressive and non-aggressive adult models, who would be either physically or verbally aggressive towards a bobo doll, or ignore it - the control group watched neither. Then the children were tested for amount of imitative learning, in a new situation with the absence of the model. In their findings, they found that the subjects in the non-aggressive and control conditions showed almost no aggression (70%), whereas those that watched the aggressive models, showed psychical and verbal aggression towards the bobo doll, leading to the conclusion that observational learning does take place.
Upon evaluation, while the experiment gives empirical data and had controlled variables with cause and effect, as well as being replicable, the research lacks ecological validity as it was done in a psychology laboratory. Also, SLT does not take into consideration that criminal behaviour is not necessarily due to imitation, but circumstances such as poverty, it also underplays the role of cognitive factors. Moreover, it is too deterministic, as not everyone who has witnessed crime, has gone on to become a criminal.
