Essay Topics

- Tabula Rasa: the mind is blank at birth and all knowledge comes from experience

- Criminals are created through nurture not nature

- Taking aim at theories of innate ideas in which people were thought to be born with eternal truths and a notion of good

- All difference we see among races, ethnic groups, sexes and individuals come not from differences in their innate constitution but from differences in their experiences

- Change experiences through parenting, education, media and social reward and you change the person

- Rousseau = Humans in their natural state are selfless, peaceable and untroubled, blights such as greed, anxiety and violence are products of civilisation

- Monozygotic twins = Identical, develop from one egg into two embryos, 100% similar

- Dizygotic twins = Non-identical, develop from two separate eggs into two embryos, 50% similar

- Found a significant relationship between the criminal activities of MZ and a lower association between DZ

- Genetics has quite a big impact on whether you'll be criminal or not

- Thinks brain scans can identify children who may become killers

- Certain brain features seem to reduce fear, impair decision making and blunt emotional reactions to others distress

- Traced physical patterns in children to conduct problems in adulthood

- Individual brain does change

- Found that children who show slower heart rates and reduced skin responses when annoyed by loud tones or challenging questions tend to have criminal records as they grow older

- He is in the middle of an experiment with young children who show some markers of aggressive behaviour to see if psychotherapy or a diet rich in brain-protective supplements can reduce chances of antisocial acts

- Focuses on whether a criminal defendant knew the nature of the crime or understood right from wrong at the time it was committed

- To establish a defence on the grounds of insanity, it must be clearly proved that at the time of committing the act, the party accused was suffering from a disease of the mind and did not know what he was doing

- Relationships between IQ and crime is at least as strong as the relation of either class or race to self reported delinquency

- IQ impacts the likelihood of delinquent behaviour through its effect on school performance

- Delinquents have a lower IQ than non-delinquents

- IQ is an important correlate of delinquency

- Leaded gasoline emissions explain 90% of the variation of violent crime in America

- Toddlers who ingested high levels of lead in the 40s and 50s were more likely to become violent criminals in the 60s, 70s and 80s

- In states where consumption of leaded gasoline declined slowly, crime declined slowly too

- Groups of children followed from the womb to adulthood have shown that higher childhood blood lead levels are consistently associated with higher adult arrest rates for violent crimes

- Childhood lead exposure at any level can seriously and permanently reduce IQ

- Moderately high levels of lead exposure are associated with aggresitivity, impulsivity, ADHD and lower IQ which is the profile of a young offender

- Killed 15 people

- Claimed he's never been arrested or convicted

- Prior to Olsen's study no data had been gathered on adult offenders with IQ scores in the genius range

- X was stigmatised for his differences and began to realise his intellectual gifts could be alienating and isolating

- X insisted he only killed for business and claimed that the majority of his victims were competitors in the drug trade

- X suggested that the social stigma associated with high IQ and academic motivation alienated him and estranged him from his peers

- He came from a good home and family, good school and exhibited none of the signs of being a psychopath

- Five core traits that interact to form human personality

- Openness, extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness and neuroticism

- Sixteen Personalty Factor Questionnaire

- Self-report personality test which provides a measure of normal personality

- Provides clinicians with a normal-range measurement of anxiety, adjustment, emotional stability and behavioural problems

- Explains some of the main differences between people and is used to choose a career, improve relationships and develop leadership skills

- Psychological causes of crime

- There exists a general behaviour pattern of antisocial behaviour and criminality

- Criminality is related to certain dimensions of personality in particular psychoticism

- Most criminals are categorised by a high degree of neuroticism

- There is a strong tendency for extraversion to be related to criminality

- Personality traits characteristic of criminal behaviour are also related to antisocial behaviour such as smoking

- The predisposition to criminal conduct is inborn but depending on environmental circumstances this predisposition can lead to other types of non-criminal conduct

- Certain features of the brain and nervous system interact with certain environmental factors and increase the likelihood that a given person will act in a particular antisocial manner in a given situation

- Much criminal behaviour is constructed as the end product of a chain of processes = 1. desires for goods. 2. illegal methods are chosen as acceptable means for gratifying these desires.

- Internal and external factors contribute to behaviour

- Dynamic risk = changeable factors such as the company he/she keeps, attitudes or core values, substance use and employment status

- Static risk = Criminal/family history, number of prior incarcerations, age at first admission to correctional facility

- Directly related to crime production

Cleckley = Looks like everyone else

- Key features = manipulative, superficial charm, above-average intelligence, absence of psychotic symptoms, absence of anxiety, lack of remorse

- Other characteristics = trivial sex life, failure to follow a life plan, untruthful, unreliable, impulsive

High need for stimulation, parasitic lifestyle, poor behavioural control, promiscuity, high drug/alcohol use, compulsive lying

- An informal term without a direct definition

- Emphasis placed on behaviour

- DSM criticised

- Psychopathy is biological in origin and they may or may not engage in criminal behaviour

- Sociopathy is the product of adverse environmental conditions interacting with genetic traits and they will inevitability engage in criminal behaviour

- Psychopaths constitute a small group of individuals whose numbers remain fairly stable across cultures and time periods. They can come from any social class, family type or racial/ethnic group

- The number of sociopaths fluctuates with environmental conditions and they tend to come primarily from the lower social classes, dysfunctional families and disadvantaged minority groups

- Antisocial personality disorder is a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood. It is an umbrella term applied to psychopaths and sociopaths

- Children require nurturing parents for food and protection but also for normal functioning of the brain

- Without sufficient social interaction, the human brain may become as impaired as one that has incurred a traumatic injury

- The prison system in America subjects more of their citizens to prolonged isolation than any other country in history

- In Solitary confinement people become starved for companionship but the experience leaves them unfit for social interaction

- America now holds at least twenty five thousand inmates in isolation in supermax prisons

- Evidence shows that supermax conditions where prisoners have no social interaction and are given no support make it highly likely they will commit more crime when released

- Purpose of her experiments was to investigate how the wording of questions asked immediately after an event may influence responses to questions considerably

- Simply by asking leading questions you can radically shape the memory people have

- Wording of such questions can have a substantial effect on the answers given and new studies show that the wording of initial questions also influence the answers to different questions asked at a later time

- False memorys

- Police personality is someone believed to be authoritarian in other words someone who believes in the rightness of authority and power at the expense of individual freedom and the rights of minority's

- Involves - conservatism, cynicism, dogmatism (assertiveness), Dichotomous thinking, suspiciousness, solidatory, machismo and racism

Predisposition- Sir Stephen Sedley = The uniformed mind tends frequently to be a mind for which authority has a special attraction- Austin, Hale and Ramsey = Found that older/black officers showed the highest level of authoritarianism and there was no change after leaving the police

Socialisation - Adlam = Officers have a socialisation process- Broadening of experience leads to development of independence and emotional hardening- Later, more confident, suspicious, cynical, compassionate and understanding of the plight of others, calculating and manipulative

- False confessions can be made because of situational pressures and mentally vulnerable suspects

Kassin's typology =

Voluntary = sacrificial, celeb

Compliant = escape situation, plea bargaining

Internalised = Suspect genuinely believes they committed the crime

- Mr. Big rule of interrogation = technique involves setting a trap which promises financial and social support or threats of harm or punishment all to get a suspect to confess

False Positives = lie detector tests are fairly effective in identifying liars (87%) but could only identify truth tellers 56% of the time

- Test can be beaten by biting tongue on control questions (control question test)

Polygraph = Does not detect lies but measures changes in levels of physical arousal such as electrical conductivity of the skin, respiration, blood pressure, pulse

- It is possible for some people to lie without registering physical change (e.g. psychopath)

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)

- Reveals oxygen use in the brain

- Lies associated with increased pre frontal and parietal lobe activity

- 78% detection

- Can still be tricked