Psychological Criminology and Psychoanalytic Theory

The study of how cognition, emotion, personality, learning, development, and other psychological processes may influence criminal behavior.

Sigmund Freud.

The id, ego, and superego.

The component of personality associated with instinctual drives and immediate gratification.

The component that mediates among instinctual demands, moral expectations, and external reality.

The component associated with internalized moral standards, ideals, and prohibitions.

The Freudian principle that the id seeks immediate satisfaction of instinctual desires.

The Freudian principle that the ego delays or modifies gratification according to real-world conditions.

It represents internalized moral restraints, which Freud's theory proposes may influence guilt and behavioral inhibition.

Mental processes, wishes, or conflicts outside conscious awareness that are proposed to influence behavior.

The proposed unconscious exclusion of distressing thoughts, memories, or impulses from conscious awareness.

Attributing one's own unacceptable feelings, impulses, or characteristics to another person.

Creating seemingly reasonable explanations to justify behavior or protect one's self-image.

Redirecting an emotional response from its original target toward a different, often less threatening target.

Redirecting unacceptable impulses into socially acceptable or constructive activities.

Expressing attitudes or behaviors opposite to an impulse that a person finds unacceptable.

A proposed return to earlier patterns of behavior when experiencing stress or conflict.

Refusing to acknowledge or accept a distressing aspect of reality.

Many proposed unconscious mechanisms are difficult to operationalize and test, limiting their empirical support as explanations of offending.

A psychological approach emphasizing observable behavior and the effects of environmental stimuli, learning, and consequences.

Ivan Pavlov.

Learning through association when a previously neutral stimulus comes to elicit a response after repeated pairing with another stimulus.

A stimulus that naturally produces a response without prior learning.

An automatic response elicited by an unconditioned stimulus without prior conditioning.

A previously neutral stimulus that elicits a learned response after association with an unconditioned stimulus.

A learned response elicited by a conditioned stimulus.

Edward L. Thorndike.

Responses followed by satisfying consequences tend to become more likely, while responses followed by unpleasant consequences may become less likely.

B. F. Skinner.

Learning in which the future frequency of behavior is influenced by its consequences.

Increasing a behavior by presenting a desirable stimulus after that behavior.

Increasing a behavior by removing or avoiding an unpleasant stimulus after that behavior.

Decreasing a behavior by presenting an unpleasant consequence after it.

Decreasing a behavior by removing a desirable stimulus after it.

Negative reinforcement increases behavior by removing an aversive condition, while punishment is intended to decrease behavior.

A reduction in a previously reinforced behavior when the reinforcement maintaining it is discontinued.

Reinforcement delivered on some, rather than every, occurrences of a behavior.

Learning by watching the behavior of others and the consequences they experience.

Albert Bandura.

Attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation.

An increase in the likelihood of imitating behavior after observing another person receive a favorable consequence.

A person's belief in their ability to organize and perform actions needed to achieve particular outcomes.

Jean Piaget.

Sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational.

The developing capacity for abstract, hypothetical, and systematic reasoning.

Lawrence Kohlberg.

Preconventional, conventional, and postconventional.

Reasoning focused primarily on personal consequences, punishment avoidance, or individual benefit.

Reasoning emphasizing social approval, rules, duties, and maintenance of social order.

Reasoning based on broader ethical principles and evaluation of rules against concepts such as rights and justice.

Observational learning accompanied by vicarious reinforcement.