CRIM 101 – Week 8
Psychological Trait
Theories
Farzana Kara-MacAlister, MA
October 29, 2024
Psychological Trait Theories
• Second branch of trait theory focuses on mental aspects of crime
• Association b/w intelligence, personality, learning and criminal behaviour
• Gabriel Tarde (1843-1904) forerunner modern-day learning theorists
• Believed people learn from one another through imitation:
(1) Individuals in close & intimate contact tend to imitate others behaviour
(2) Imitation spreads from the two down; youngsters imitate older people
(3) New acts superimposed on old ones; either reinforce/discourage past acts
Social Learning Theory
• Tarde’s ideas similar to modern followers of Social Learning Theory
• SLT: Believe that criminality can be influenced by both interpersonal &
observed behaviour (e.g. watching a movie)
• View that behaviour is modelled on observation of social interactions
Psychological Trait Theories
• 1) Psychodynamic perspective
• Aggressive behaviour is linked to personality conflicts developed in childhood
• 2) Behavioural perspective
• Criminality is learned behaviour
• 3) Cognitive perspective
• Criminality viewed as result of improper information & moral development
Psychodynamic Perspective
• Originated by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
• Human mind performs three functions:
• The conscious mind; aspect most people are aware of – everyday thoughts
• The preconscious mind; contains elements of experiences out of awareness
but can be brought back to consciousness – memories
• The unconscious mind; contains biological desires and urges that cannot be
experienced as thoughts
• Part of unconscious contains feelings about sex and hostility
• Most people keep these feelings below surface of consciousness
through process of repression
Psychodynamic Theory
• According to Freud, human personality contains three-part structure
• The id – represents unconsciousness biological drives for sex and food
• The ego – develops early in life when a child learns that wants cannot
be instantly gratified; the ego compensates for the id by helping
individual guide actions
• The superego – develops as a result of incorporating moral standards
& values of parents, community; moral aspect of personality
• The psychodynamic model of the criminal offender depicts an
aggressive, frustrated person dominated by events that occurred in
childhood
Psychodynamics and Abnormal
Behaviour
• According to this perspective, people who experience feelings of mental
anguish and afraid of losing control of their personalities have neurosis
• People who have lost total control suffer from psychosis where
behaviour is marked by bizarre episodes & hallucinations
• Most serious type of antisocial behavior like murder could be motivated
by psychosis
• Neurotic feelings would be responsible for less serious delinquent acts
status offences, petty theft
• Most common form of psychosis is schizophrenia where person exhibits
illogical, incoherent thought processes and lack of insight into behaviour
Behavioural Perspective
• Maintains human actions are developed through learning experiences
• Behavioural theorists concerned with how people alter behaviour
according to others’ reactions – rewards and punishments
• Bandura argued people are not born with ability to act violently;
rather learn through experiences to be aggressive
• Children learn to act aggressively when they model their behaviour
after the violent acts of adults
• e.g. a boy who sees his father repeatedly strike his mother more likely
to grow up to become a violent husband/father
Behavioural Perspective cont’d
• Mental/physical traits may predispose a person to violence, activation
of a person’s violent tendencies achieved by environmental factors
• Specific forms of aggressive behaviour, its frequency, situations in
which it is displayed, specific targets selected by attacker largely
determined by social learning
• Process of learning called behaviour modelling
• Influences on social learning of violence:
• Parents
• Environmental experiences
• Mass media
Cognitive Theory
• Cognitive school’s focus is on how people perceive the world and
solve problems
• Cognitive school today has several subareas:
• Mental illness and crime: Early research found many offenders who engage in
serious, and violent crimes suffer from some sort of mental illness
• Personality and crime: studies have attempted to identify criminal traits
• Intelligence and crime: Early works maintained that delinquents/criminals
have below-average intelligence, leading to the nature-nurture debate
