FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGYTURNING TO CRIME

THE ROLE OF COGNITION

ATTRIBUTION THEORY

• Attribution theory explores how individuals "attribute" causes to events and how this cognitive perception affects their motivation.

• This theory was first proposed in a book called, The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations by Fritz Heider in 1958. According to Heider, people behave as amateur scientists in social situations – we develop theories or ideas about why we and other people act the way we/they do and why things happen.

INTERNAL & EXTERNALattributions

An internal attribution is :-• Internal or dispositional attributions assign causality to factors

within the person, such as their own level of intelligence, or other variables that make the individual responsible for the event.

• When we make an internal attribution we believe that whatever happened happened because of something WE did.

An external attribution is :-• External or situational attributions assign causality to an outside

factor, such as the weather. When we make an external attribution we believe that whatever happened happened because of something SOMEONE ELSE did. Or, if no other people are involved, it happened because of factors external to us.

THE FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR

The Fundamental Attribution error is the term used for when we

make an incorrect external attribution – we make an external attribution when we should have

made an internal one

THE FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR

& FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY

• How is the fundamental attribution error relevant to forensic psychology?

• It is suggested that criminals blame other people or other things for their crimes - they make faulty external attributions - they are more prone to make the fundamental attribution error than non-criminals

KEY RESEARCHER - GUDJOHNSSON

• Gudjohnsson believes that criminals make more attributional errors than non-criminals and he developed an inventory to measure attributions of blame for crimes.

• Gudjohnsson developed the Gudjohnsson Blame Attribution Inventory (GABI) to measure attribution of blame for crime

THE GBAIThe three basic dimensions of the GBAI ARE :-• external attribution – a measurement of how much

criminals think their crimes were due to external factors e.g provocation, social factors etc

• mental-element attribution – a measurement of how much criminals think their crimes were due to mental or psychological factors e.g low mood or a temporary loss of control. Criminals scoring high on this dimension will see their crime as being “out of character”

• guilt-feeling attribution – a measurement of the amount of guilt or remorse the criminal feels after committing the crime

FEELINGS OF GUILT AFTER COMMITTING A CRIME

Gudjohnsson has also studied criminals feelingsof guilt after committing their crimes and

shows how this relates to :-• the criminals perception of their crime• the type of crime committed• the personality of the criminal• the eagerness with which the criminal

confesses to the police.

• Gudjohnsson isn’t the only psychologist to develop a scale to assess criminal attributions.

• Another commonly used scale is the Attribution of Blame Scale (ABS) developed by Loza & Clements (1991).

• They are not the same but both aim to measure an offenders :-

• Perceptions and • Understanding of his or her crimes rather than

the actual causes

Why is it important to understand WHY criminals do what they do?

• It is important for establishing responsibility .Assessing how responsible a criminal is for their

actions has huge implications for prosecution and sentencing

• It also has implications for the rehabilitation of offenders

REVISION OF THE GBAI

• Gujohnsson revised his GBAI in 1989 to overcome 2 problems.

1 - The original GBAI measured attitudes towards crime in general as well as attitudes towards specific crimes

2 - The way the questions about external attributions were worded so that the “right” answer was obvious

The revised GBAI consists of 42 questions

FEELINGS OF GUILT

Which group of offenders do you think would report more feelings of guilt about their

crimes – people who committed sex offences or people who committed other kinds of

offences?

FEELINGS OF GUILTRESEARCH FINDINGS

Irving (1980) Did an observational study at Brighton Police Station and found that sex offenders appeared to express more guilt than for their offences than other offenders

Gudjohnsson & Singh (1988)

analysed the attributions and guilt scores of 171 offenders and found that sex offenders had higher guilt scores than other offenders. The 2nd most guilty class of offender was those who committed violent offences.

Gudjohnsson & Petursson (1991)

analysed the attributions and guilt scores of 171 offenders and found that sex offenders had higher guilt scores than other offenders. The 2nd most guilty class of offender was those who committed violent offences.

Gudjohnsson & Bownes (1991)

Found the same thing in a study of 80 offenders in Northern Ireland.Table shows mean scores from the GBAI for different categories of offender