Topic F: Criminological psychology A2

Crime breaks the law; anti-social behaviour causes harassment, alarm or distress but is not always criminal. Three syllabus explanations locate the cause in social expectations, observed models or a diagnosed personality pattern.

A violent media character who gains status without punishment may provide a model and vicarious reinforcement. By contrast, repeatedly treating a young person as a troublemaker could shape identity and opportunities until behaviour confirms the label. These are different mechanisms, even when they predict the same act.

The cognitive interview uses retrieval cues and varied routes into memory to increase what a witness can recall without supplying the missing details.

Its four core techniques are: (1) mentally reinstate the physical and emotional context; (2) report every detail, even if it seems trivial; (3) recall events in a different order; and (4) recall from another perspective. The interviewer first builds rapport, invites uninterrupted free recall and then uses open, non-leading prompts.

Context reinstatement recreates cues that were present during encoding. Reporting everything can let one minor detail cue another memory. Changing order reduces reliance on a familiar schema, while a different perspective may open another retrieval route. None of these techniques licenses guessing: the witness should distinguish remembered information from inference.

A psychological case formulation is a collaborative, individual explanation of how an offender's history, current circumstances, thoughts, emotions and triggers may combine to produce and maintain offending.

The psychologist gathers detailed information about past and current relationships, significant life events, the person's interpretation of those events, present difficulties and patterns around offences. Relevant professionals, such as medical or probation staff, may contribute. The material is reduced to a concise set of hypotheses that the offender can check and help refine.

A formulation asks what function the behaviour serves for this person—for example, whether aggression follows a perceived threat or whether substance use increases risk. Those hypotheses guide an individual treatment and risk-management plan, identify likely future triggers and give the team propositions that can be revised when new evidence appears.

Eyewitness memory is reconstructed, so reliability depends on what was attended to during the event and what happens before retrieval.

Reliability is therefore detail-specific. A witness may remember the weapon or central action accurately yet misidentify the person, or may confidently report a detail acquired from later news. Confidence alone does not reveal the source or accuracy of a memory.

Jury decisions can be affected by defendant characteristics, information encountered before trial and the way eyewitness expertise is presented, even though verdicts should be based on admissible evidence.

Penrod and Cutler (1989) compared mock jurors who did or did not see eyewitness-expert testimony in a videotaped trial, using psychology students and experienced jurors. Manipulating the testimony supports a controlled comparison, but a recorded trial, student participation and the absence of real consequences restrict ecological and population validity.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy helps an offender identify the thoughts and interpretations that precede harmful action, test them and practise safer responses.

With a trained therapist, the offender maps triggers, thoughts, emotions, behaviour and consequences. Cognitive restructuring challenges biased or distorted interpretations; role play rehearses alternative responses; diaries and between-session tasks reveal recurring patterns. The aim is to build self-management skills that remain usable after formal sessions end.

If an ambiguous comment is interpreted as deliberate disrespect, anger and assault may follow. CBT slows that chain: examine the evidence for the interpretation, consider a less hostile explanation, and rehearse leaving, asking for clarification or using another non-aggressive response.

Loftus and Palmer (1974) tested whether wording after an event changes a speed judgment and can become part of the remembered event.

In Experiment 1, 45 students watched seven traffic-accident films and estimated speed after a question using smashed, collided, bumped, hit or contacted. Mean estimates followed verb intensity: 40.5 mph for smashed and 31.8 mph for contacted, with hit at 34.0 mph. The wording changed the report even though the films did not.

In Experiment 2, 150 participants saw one crash film. Fifty received smashed, 50 hit and 50 no speed question. One week later, 16, 7 and 6 respectively said they had seen broken glass, although none appeared. This supports integration of original event information with later verbal information.

Bradbury and Williams (2013) used real court records to examine whether the racial composition of juries was associated with decisions in trials involving Black defendants.

They re-analysed secondary data from 2000-2001 felony trials in Maricopa County, Los Angeles, the Bronx and Washington, D.C. Cases had Black defendants and juries that either convicted or failed to reach a verdict. Conviction on any charge counted as conviction; acquittal and a hung jury were coded no. Jury percentages by racial group were analysed alongside case type and prosecution strength.

A higher percentage of White jurors and a higher percentage of Hispanic jurors were each associated with a greater likelihood of convicting Black defendants. Conviction was less likely for violent than drug charges and marginally less likely for property than drug charges. These are conditional patterns in the analysed records, not evidence that race alone caused a verdict.

Ruva, McEvoy and Bryant (2007) tested how negative pre-trial publicity (PTP) and jury deliberation affect verdicts, impressions and memory for where information came from.

The 558 university students first read either negative PTP about a defendant or matched unrelated crime articles. About four days later they watched an edited 30-minute recording of a real murder trial and made initial judgments. Some then deliberated in mock juries of four to six; nominal participants continued individually. Everyone later completed source monitoring, distinguishing trial material from publicity.

PTP-exposed jurors gave higher guilt and confidence measures, recommended longer sentences and more often treated publicity-only information as if it had also appeared at trial. Deliberation reduced some guilty-judgment bias and collaborating jurors made more accurate source-monitoring responses, yet collaboration also changed credibility judgments and did not remove every PTP effect.

Valentine and Mesout (2009) examined whether state anxiety during a naturally stressful encounter was associated with poorer recall and identification.

Fifty-six London Dungeon visitors encountered the same costumed actor in the Horror Labyrinth. Afterwards they completed a state-anxiety measure, freely and then cued-recalled the actor, and attempted identification from a nine-person target-present photograph lineup. A separate validation sample showed that heart rate rose in the labyrinth and covaried with state-anxiety scores.

Visitors reporting higher state anxiety recalled fewer correct details. In the high-anxiety half, 5 identified the actor accurately, 15 chose inaccurately and 8 made no identification; the low-anxiety half produced 21, 6 and 1 respectively. Expressed as the study did, correct identification was 17% above the median anxiety score versus 75% below it.

A criminological method is useful only when its design supports the intended inference about memory, offenders or juries.

A strong design operationalises the IV and DV, selects a relevant sample, standardises what should be constant, records reliability and anticipates demand characteristics, researcher effects and social desirability. Ruva's matched publicity packets aid control; Bradbury and Williams gain realism from court records but cannot manipulate jury composition.

The BPS Code of Ethics and Conduct (2009) organises ethical judgment around respect, competence, responsibility and integrity; criminological research must translate these values into concrete controls.

Risk management identifies hazards to participants, researchers and others; estimates likelihood and severity; reduces risk through setting, staffing, stopping rules, data security and emergency procedures; and records residual risk against the study's value. Prison interviews may require safe rooms and staff protocols without destroying confidentiality.

Interpretation starts with the research question and measurement level, then separates description of this sample from an inferential decision.

For CBT sessions attended and aggressive incidents, Spearman's rank is suitable because the hypothesis concerns association and paired scores can be ranked. A significant result rejects the null at the chosen level; it does not establish causation or practical importance. Type I error rejects a true null, while Type II error retains a false null.

Evaluation should show how a specific design feature changes the conclusion that can reasonably be drawn, rather than listing generic strengths and weaknesses.

For Ruva, matched articles and a common trial support internal comparison, whereas student mock juries limit court generalisation. For Valentine and Mesout, a real stressful setting improves ecological validity, while the correlational design prevents anxiety being isolated as the cause. The same feature can strengthen one inference and weaken another.