Transcript Psychological Theories - Washington State University

Individual Traits and Crime
1. Psychology and Crime
2. Personality
3. Freud on crime
Criminal Mind
Brain
Prefrontal cortex-Provides ability to plan, reason, concentrate, and adjust behavior
Left cerebral hemisphere-Together with right cerebral hemisphere, controls most
conscious and mental activities
A stalker with Huntington’s disease
• Huntington’s disease is a hereditary disorder
that causes neurons in certain brain areas to
degenerate
• Besides uncontrolled movements and
cognitive problems, Huntington’s disorder can
lead to marked personality changes,
depression, apathy, mania, aggression,
anxiety, hostility, and obsessive behavior
A stalker with Huntington’s disease
• A 48-year-old woman with
Huntington’s disorder who
stalked and threatened her
female therapist
• After the second incident,
doctors treated the woman with
an antidepressant and an
antipsychotic, and the
frequency and intensity of her
obsession with her therapist
decreased
Brain tumor leads to pedophilia
• An egg-sized brain tumor caused a man with no
history of pedophilia to begin molesting children
• The 40-year-old man, a married teacher, had never
exhibited abnormal sexual impulses
• When he began visiting child pornography websites,
visiting prostitutes, and making sexual advances to
young children, his wife left him
Brain tumor leads to pedophilia
• Eventually he was convicted
of child molestation, and
entered a treatment program
for pedophiles
• He continued to display
inappropriate sexual
behavior, and was expelled
from a rehabilitation program
after propositioning the
women attending the
program
Brain tumor leads to pedophilia
• At this point, doctors ordered
an MRI scan that showed a
large tumor in the right
orbitofrontal cortex
• The tumor was removed, and
the man successfully
completed his therapy and
returned home
Experts say….
• We're dealing with the neurology of morality here,"
says Swerdlow
• The tumor caused few physical symptoms, he says,
"It's one of those areas where you could have a lot of
damage and a doctor would never suspect
something's wrong."
Structural brain abnormalities
detected in pedophiles
• MRI scans of 18 male pedophiles and
24 healthy age-matched heterosexual
and homosexual controls
Structural brain abnormalities
detected in pedophiles
• Boris Schiffer found that compared to
the controls, pedophiles showed
reduced gray matter volume in
the orbitofrontal cortex
the cerebellum
Brain injury rate high for young
delinquents
• Rates of traumatic brain injury (TBI) are extremely
high among delinquent teens
• Brian Perron and Matthew Howard assessed the
psychiatric symptoms and antisocial behaviors of 720
juvenile offenders in Missouri Division of Youth
Services facilities between March 1 and May 31,
2003.
• The researchers asked each participant about any
history of a head injury severe enough to cause
unconsciousness for more than 20 minutes.
Brain injury rate high for young
delinquents
• Perron and Howard report that nearly one in
five of the offenders reported suffering a TBI
at some point, with males more likely to report
a TBI than females.
• The researchers note that their findings are
consistent with those of an earlier study
(Craswell et al.) which used similar TBI
criteria and found that 27.7 percent of
delinquents had a history of TBI
SPECT scans reveal brain deficits in
impulsive murderers
• Impulsive murderers have reduced blood flow to a
region of the brain involved with planning and selfcontrol, according to a new study by Daniel Amen
and colleagues.
The researchers performed SPECT (single photon
emission computed tomography) scans on 11 young
adult males convicted of impulsive murders,
comparing their brain function to that of non-criminal
control subjects under two conditions: in a resting
state, and engaged in a task requiring concentration.
SPECT
• SPECT creates a colored
picture representing blood flow
in different areas of the brain
• It requires the injection of a
radioactive material
• Areas of low blood flow show
up as apparent “holes” on
colored pictures of the brain,
living a moth-eaten
appearance.
SPECT scans reveal brain deficits in
impulsive murderers
• The researchers report that scans of the impulsive
murderers differed significantly from those of
control subjects during the concentration task
• They had lower perfusion in brain regions
implicated in impulse control, self-censorship,
planning, and future consequences
Adolescent Killers Exhibit Marked Neurological
Deficits
• A study of juveniles condemned to death reports
compelling evidence that they exhibited serious
neurological impairment at the time they committed
their crimes.
• Dorothy Otnow Lewis and colleagues evaluated 18
males who had received the death penalty in Texas
• All had been 17 years old at the time they committed
murder
• Each subject underwent neurological,
neuropsychological, psychiatric, and educational
evaluations.
The researchers report that…
• Three subjects had been born
prematurely (one weighing only 3
pounds), a fourth was delivered by
Cesarean section because the umbilical
cord was wrapped around his neck, and
the mother of a fifth had attempted to
abort him
• Overall, the researchers report, "six
(33%) of the group began life with
potentially compromised central nervous
system functioning, and a seventh
reportedly was the product of a difficult
delivery."
The researchers report that…
• All but one of the subjects had a history of multiple
head injuries, often resulting in loss of consciousness.
• Neurological evaluation revealed that five of 17
subjects exhibited one abnormal finding on testing of
prefrontal lobe functioning
• Three had two abnormal findings
• Two had three abnormal findings
• Three had four or more abnormal findings
• "It should be noted," the researchers say, "that most
normal individuals have no signs of frontal lobe
impairment on neurological examination."
Personality and Crime
• Many criminological theories use
personality traits to explain between
individual differences in criminal
behavior
Criminology
• Sheldon Glueck and Eleanor Glueck
identified a number of personality traits
that they believe characterize antisocial
youth: self-assertiveness, defiance,
impulsiveness, suspicion, hostility,
sadism, resentment, mental instability,
extroversion, ambivalence, and
destructiveness
Psychopath/sociopath
• The difference is somewhat blurred
• Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders (DSM) lists both
together under Antisocial Personalities
• Professionals not only dispute whether
there is a difference between a sociopath
and a psychopath, but among those that
believe there is a difference, there is
dispute over what those differences are.
Psychopath
• Images from movies like "Silence of The
Lambs" and characters with names like
"Hannibal Lector"
• Serial killers and people involved in
ritual torture are rare, but psychopathic
behavior is more common than you
might think
Psychopath
• Antisocial personality
• A teen who had no sense of guilt
• Psychopath could learn the rules, but he has
no sense of conscience
• "People know when something is wrong
because it feels wrong. I have to remember
or be reminded that stealing from someone is
wrong. I don’t feel bad if I take something."
Psychopath
• Children with this condition are "emotionally
blind“
• A psychopath is not necessarily a bad person
• But they are prone to have problems with
society, rules, expectations and relationships
• They may end up living a "predatory" lifestyle,
feeling little or no regret, and having little or
no remorse - except when they are caught or
about to be locked up
Warning signs (Robert Hare, the leading
expert on the Psychopathic Personality)
• superficial charm
• self-centered & selfimportant
• need for stimulation &
prone to boredom
• deceptive behavior &
lying
• little remorse or guilt
• shallow emotional
response
• poor self-control
• promiscuous sexual
behavior
• early behavioral
problems
• lack of realistic long
term goals
• impulsive lifestyle
• irresponsible behavior
• blaming others for their
actions
• short term relationships
• juvenile delinquency
• breaking parole or
probation
• varied criminal activity
Ted Bundy
The most frightening of serial killers: a
handsome, educated psychopathic law student
who stalked and murdered dozens of young
college women who looked very much like a
young woman who broke off her relationship
with him.
Bundy was a very adept and glib con artist
who faked a broken arm in a sling to convince
young women to help him carry his textbooks
to his car. Once there, he battered them with a
baseball bat and carried them off for ghoulish
rituals
What to do with psychopath
• So what happens to kids if they don’t learn
right from wrong?
• Parents usually end up angry and frustrated
• Many parents resort to punishment
• But what these children need is intensive
guidance, instruction, training, choices,
consequences and supervision
• Severe and repeated punishment alone is the
worst thing parents can do
• And child abuse is a sure way to create a
social misfit or a monster.
Psychoanalytic Theory
• All humans have criminal tendencies
• Criminal tendencies are normal
• The idea of personality conflict as a
cause of crime
• Through the process of socialization
these tendencies are curbed by the
development of inner controls that are
learned through childhood experience
The Discovery of the Unconscious
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The father of psychoanalysis
Structural Model
Id, ego, superego
We are born with our Id
Id is based on our pleasure principle( if it
feels good, do it)
• The id doesn't care about reality, about the
needs of anyone else, only its own
satisfaction
EGO
• Within the next three years, the Ego
develops
• The ego is based on the reality principle
• The ego understands that other people have
needs and that sometimes being impulsive or
selfish can hurt us in the long run
• The ego's job to meet the needs of the id,
while taking into consideration the reality of
the situation.
Superego
• By five, the Superego develops
• This is the moral part of us and develops due
to the moral and ethical restraints placed on
us by our caregivers
• Many equate the superego with the
conscience as it dictates our belief of right
and wrong
Unconscious
• Majority of what we experience in our lives, the
underlying emotions, beliefs, feelings, and impulses
are not available to us at a conscious level
• He believed that most of what drives us is buried in
our unconscious
• Oedipus and Electra Complex are pushed down into
the unconscious, out of our awareness due to the
extreme anxiety they caused
• While buried there, however, they continue to impact
us dramatically
Electra Complex
• According to Freud, during the phallic stage
(3-5 years) the daughter becomes attached to
her father and more hostile towards her
mother
• This is due mostly to the idea that the girl is
"envious" of her father's penis and wants to
possess it so strongly that she dreams of
bearing his children, thus the term "penisenvy“
• This leads to resentment towards her mother,
who the girl believes caused her castration.
Conscious
• Freud also believed that everything we
are aware of is stored in our conscious
• Our conscious makes up a very small
part of who we are
• In other words, at any given time, we
are only aware of a very small part of
what makes up our personality; most of
what we are is buried and inaccessible.
Subconscious
• This is the part of us that we can access if
prompted, but is not in our active conscious
• Its right below the surface, but still buried
somewhat unless we search for it
• Information such as our telephone number,
some childhood memories, or the name of
your best childhood friend is stored in the
preconscious
Healthy balance
• We can think of the id as the 'devil on
our shoulder' and the superego as the
'angel on your shoulder.‘
• We don't want either one to get too
strong so we talk to both of them, hear
their perspective and then make a
decision
Delinquent behavior
• Is a result of defective superego
• Inability to feel guilt, to learn from
experience, or to feel affection to others
Delinquent Behavior
• Is a result of overdeveloped superego
• Represses the id so harshly that
pressure builds up in the id and there is
an explosion of acting-out behavior