Psychological explanations of offending: Cognitive explanation
Generally, the cognitive approach suggests offending results from low levels of moral reasoning and
cognitive distortions/faulty thinking.
Moral level of reasoning
Kohlberg proposed that criminals operate at a pre-conventional level, where one would commit a
crime when it’s unlikely, they will be punished and if there is high chance of reward. Most people
operate at a ‘conventional’ level of morality, whilst a minority have a ‘post conventional’ level of
morality, these people are most likely to sympathise with others and put others before themselves.
Kohlberg studied these levels by giving participants a hypothetical dilemma whereby the wife of
‘Heinz’ is very ill and requires a newly discovered which he cannot afford, the response to what
Heinz should do in this situation would categorise you into one of these moral levels.
Cognitive distortions
These are errors in ones thought processes that makes thinking inaccurate, these may explain how
offenders interpret other people’s actions and how offenders justify their own.
Minimalization: is a cognitive distortion whereby the offender attempts to deny the
seriousness of their offence, perhaps to cope with guilt e.g., “stealing from that family isn’t
that bad because they are rich so they can easily afford to replace this”
Hostile attribution bias: is a cognitive distortion whereby the offender misinterprets
someone’s behaviour as threatening and respond in an irrational way e.g. may find
that someone staring at them to be a provoking act of threat, where in reality the
person has no intention to anger the offender.
Evaluation +/-
One strength of the cognitive explanation of offending is that it’s means of treatment, CBT, is
successful when used on offenders. For example, anger management helps offenders recognise the
irrationality of their destructive behaviour, it helps people to avoid hostile attribution, and has
positive application to Recidivism (re offending). This suggests that if therapy used to reduce
cognitive distortions helps treat offenders, this is strong evidence for the theory.
Counterpoint: However, describing the criminal mind does not help to predict future offending
behaviour, the link between thinking about offending and doing it is weakly correlated, perhaps
other explanation e.g., Neural (explained through reduction in grey matter in frontal lobe) helps us
understand the cause of behaviour.
There is contradictory evidence that challenges whether a level of moral reasoning can be applied to
an offender is general or whether this level changes depending on the crime in question. Ashkar and
Kenny compared moral reasoning of juvenile sex offenders to a control of non sex related offenders
and found that both had pre conventional levels in relation to their crime, however they showed
conventional levels of morality towards other crimes. This proposes the argument that an offender
Generally, the cognitive approach suggests offending results from low levels of moral reasoning and
cognitive distortions/faulty thinking.
Moral level of reasoning
Kohlberg proposed that criminals operate at a pre-conventional level, where one would commit a
crime when it’s unlikely, they will be punished and if there is high chance of reward. Most people
operate at a ‘conventional’ level of morality, whilst a minority have a ‘post conventional’ level of
morality, these people are most likely to sympathise with others and put others before themselves.
Kohlberg studied these levels by giving participants a hypothetical dilemma whereby the wife of
‘Heinz’ is very ill and requires a newly discovered which he cannot afford, the response to what
Heinz should do in this situation would categorise you into one of these moral levels.
Cognitive distortions
These are errors in ones thought processes that makes thinking inaccurate, these may explain how
offenders interpret other people’s actions and how offenders justify their own.
Minimalization: is a cognitive distortion whereby the offender attempts to deny the
seriousness of their offence, perhaps to cope with guilt e.g., “stealing from that family isn’t
that bad because they are rich so they can easily afford to replace this”
Hostile attribution bias: is a cognitive distortion whereby the offender misinterprets
someone’s behaviour as threatening and respond in an irrational way e.g. may find
that someone staring at them to be a provoking act of threat, where in reality the
person has no intention to anger the offender.
Evaluation +/-
One strength of the cognitive explanation of offending is that it’s means of treatment, CBT, is
successful when used on offenders. For example, anger management helps offenders recognise the
irrationality of their destructive behaviour, it helps people to avoid hostile attribution, and has
positive application to Recidivism (re offending). This suggests that if therapy used to reduce
cognitive distortions helps treat offenders, this is strong evidence for the theory.
Counterpoint: However, describing the criminal mind does not help to predict future offending
behaviour, the link between thinking about offending and doing it is weakly correlated, perhaps
other explanation e.g., Neural (explained through reduction in grey matter in frontal lobe) helps us
understand the cause of behaviour.
There is contradictory evidence that challenges whether a level of moral reasoning can be applied to
an offender is general or whether this level changes depending on the crime in question. Ashkar and
Kenny compared moral reasoning of juvenile sex offenders to a control of non sex related offenders
and found that both had pre conventional levels in relation to their crime, however they showed
conventional levels of morality towards other crimes. This proposes the argument that an offender
