PSYCHOLOGICAL

THEORIES OF CRIMES
CHAPTER 5
Psychologist have considered a variety of possibilities to account for individual differences
such as defective conscience, emotional immaturity, in adequate childhood socialization ,
and maternal deprivation
They study how aggression is learned, which situations promote violent or delinquent
reactions; how crime is related to personality factors, and the association between various
mental disorders and criminality
EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF THE THEORIES

• To account criminal motivation in people, criminologist have used various psychological

theories that attempted to explain human intellectual and emotional development.
• These are divided into three categories
• Moral development theories
• Social learning theory
• Personality trait theory
1. MORAL DEVELOPMENT THEORIES
• Described a sequence of developmental stage that people pass through when acquiring
the capacity to make moral judgement
• According to this theories , this development process may or may not be completed and
people who remain unable to recognized write from wrong will be more likely to
engaged inappropriate, deviant, or even criminal behavior
• Criminologist who apply the moral development theory build on the pioneering work of
Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget
JEAN PIAGET

his theory focuses not only on understanding how children acquire

knowledge, but also on understanding the nature of intelligence.
1. FROM BIRTH TO 2 YEARS OLD- children experienced the world only through their
senses and motor abilities and have a very immediate, experienced based knowledge of
the world.
FOUR STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

1. The Sensorimotor Stage (0-2)

• During this earliest stage of cognitive development, infants and toddlers
acquire knowledge through sensory experiences and manipulating
objects. A child's entire experience at the earliest period of this stage
occurs through basic reflexes, senses, and motor responses.
• FROM BIRTH TO 2 YEARS OLD- children experienced the world only through their
senses and motor abilities and have a very immediate, experienced based knowledge of
the world.
• Major characteristics and developmental changes during this stage:
• Know the world through movements and sensations
• Learn about the world through basic actions such as sucking, grasping,
looking, and listening
• Learn that things continue to exist even when they cannot be seen
• Realize that they are separate beings from the people and objects around
them
• Realize that their actions can cause things to happen in the world around
them
• During the sensorimotor stage, children go through a period of dramatic
growth and learning. As kids interact with their environment, they continually
make new discoveries about how the world works.
• The cognitive development that occurs during this period takes place over a
relatively short time and involves a great deal of growth. Children not only
learn how to perform physical actions such as crawling and walking; they also
learn a great deal about language from the people with whom they interact.
Piaget also broke this stage down into substages. Early representational
thought emerges during the final part of the sensorimotor stage.
THE PREOPERATIONAL STAGE-(2-7)

• The foundations of language development may have been laid during the
previous stage, but the emergence of language is one of the major
hallmarks of the preoperational stage of development.
• Children learn to think about and understand objects using thoughts that
are independent of immediate experienced
• Children are egocentric, that is, they believed that others experience the
same reality as they do
• Major characteristics and developmental changes during this stage:
• Begin to think symbolically and learn to use words and pictures to represent
objects
• Tend to be egocentric and struggle to see things from the perspective of
others
• Getting better with language and thinking, but still tend to think in very
concrete terms
• At this stage, kids learn through pretend play but still struggle with logic
and taking the point of view of other people. They also often struggle
with understanding the idea of constancy.
THE CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE – (7-11)

• Child learns to think logically and to organized and classify objects

• Beginning in the adolescence, the child develops the ability to think logically about the
future and to understand theoretical concepts
• While children are still very concrete and literal in their thinking at this
point in development, they become much more adept at using logic.2
• The egocentrism of the previous stage begins to disappear as kids
become better at thinking about how other people might view a situation.
• Major characteristics and developmental changes during this stage:
• Begin to think logically about concrete events
• Begin to understand the concept of conservation; that the amount of liquid in
a short, wide cup is equal to that in a tall, skinny glass, for example
• Thinking becomes more logical and organized, but still very concrete
• Begin using inductive logic, or reasoning from specific information to a
general principle
• While thinking becomes much more logical during the concrete
operational state, it can also be very rigid. Kids at this point in
development tend to struggle with abstract and hypothetical concepts.
• During this stage, children also become less egocentric and begin to think
about how other people might think and feel. Kids in the concrete
operational stage also begin to understand that their thoughts are unique
to them and that not everyone else necessarily shares their thoughts,
feelings, and opinions.
THE FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGE (12-UP)

• The final stage of Piaget's theory involves an increase in logic, the ability
to use deductive reasoning, and an understanding of abstract ideas.3 At
this point, adolescents and young adults become capable of seeing
multiple potential solutions to problems and think more scientifically
about the world around them.
• Major characteristics and developmental changes during this time:
• Begins to think abstractly and reason about hypothetical problems
• Begins to think more about moral, philosophical, ethical, social, and political issues
that require theoretical and abstract reasoning
• Begins to use deductive logic, or reasoning from a general principle to specific
information
• The ability to thinking about abstract ideas and situations is the key hallmark of the
formal operational stage of cognitive development. The ability to systematically
plan for the future and reason about hypothetical situations are also critical abilities
that emerge during this stage. 
LAWRENCE KOHLBERG

Influenced by Piaget’s theory that development occurs in stages, in the mid-1960s American
psychologist Kolberg purposed a multi stage theory of moral evolution
In the early level of development, children stive to maximize pleasure and avoid punishment
Children this level consider the needs of others only to the extent that meeting those needs will
help the child fulfill his or her own needs

During the next period, which is characterized by conformity to social rules, the child
demonstrate respects for and duty to authority
The child also seeks to avoid dis approval from that authority
 • As the child matures, his or her moral judgement is motivated by respect for legally determined rules
and an understanding that these rules exist to benefit all
• Eventually universal principles are internalized
• These principles such as, liberty and justice, may even transcend aspects of the existing legal system

• Other studies confirmed that moral development is sequential, moving from external to
internal control
• In other words , while young children behave in order to avoid punishment or receive approval
from others, adults develop internal codes and regulate their own behavior even in the absence
of external enforcement
• However, criminologist have not found truly strong indications of the effect of moral
development on criminal activity
• Sociologist who compare the patterns of moral development between delinquents and
non-delinquents found some differences between the group, but these differences were
not conclusive
2. SOCIAL LEARNING THEORIES

• This theory proposes that people internalize moralcodes more through the process of
socialization or learning the behavior through interaction with others rather than
through a stage-by-stage development process
• Specifically, social learning theories maintain that a young persons learns how to behave
based on how elders or primarily parent figures respond to the person’s violation of and
compliance with rules
• Rewards for acceptable behavior and sanctions and penalties for transgressons indicate
what is appropriate for a certain behavior
• Repeated instances of rewards and sanction also led to the internalization of these
standards
• Over time the transgression becomes associated with the sanction and produces anxiety
even when no one is present to administer sanctions
• Through this process, children begin to control themselves in a manner consistent with
moral and legal codes
• The social learning theory of criminal motivation and behavior had substantial empirical
support
• A number of studies indicated that deliquents were treated differently by their parents
than youth with no record of delinquency
• The socialization of delinquents was marked by lax and erratic discipline or by unduly
harsh discipline , such as physical punishment
• These studies do not describe I detail what effective socialization should be, but they do
suggest that social learning is related to criminal involvement
3. PERSONALITY THEORY

• The personality theory attempts to expain how people acquire predispositions toward
certain behavior
• This predisposition are sometimes discussed in terms of personality traits such as
impulsiveness and stubbornness, or personality types such as introvert and extrovert
• All other things being equal, people will consistently display behaviors that they are
predisposed toward
• Accordingly, some social scientist believe that certain predispositions or personality types
may be associated with criminal tendencies or activities
SIGMUND FREUD ( 1856- 1939)

Founder of psychoanalysis
In his work in the late 1800s and early 1900s Austrian physician, described emotional
development as the process of achieving a balance between conflicting desires
According to freud, humans must resolve the tension between their purely self-interested
tendencies which he called the id, and the control of these forces by the combination of
conscience and moral attitudes, which freud called the superego
This process begins in infancy, at which time the id reigns without conflict
• As the child develops, conflicts occur between the id and the super ego, which are
ultimately resolved by the ego or the sense of self
• this process results in a person who strikes a balance between individualism and society,
between hedonism or pleasure seeking and repression of his or her desires
• According to freud, when this development process goes wrong any number of
personality disorders can result, including a tendency toward criminal behavior
• Personality theory had attempted to gauge the effects of personality development on
criminal behavior by administering personality tests to groups of criminal and
non-criminals
• The evidence from these studies is mixed
• In some instance, researchers found differences between the two groups on certain
dimensions of personality, such as impulsiveness
• However, in other instances no differences were found
• Studies of mental disorders comparing prisoners and other populations suggest that only
a few relatively rare crimes, such as sexual crimes or violence involving extremely deviant
acts, can be attributed to mental illness