...The Psychology of Criminal Behaviour: Theories from Past to Present by editor i Arista B. Dechant, Fort Hays State University, Kansas download this essay: theories-of-criminal-behavior Arista writes: I have been involved in extensive research since undergraduate school surrounding criminals and how they operate. There are many ideas surrounding the cause of antisocial behavior and criminality. Through this independent study class for Fort Hays State University’s Justice Studies (Graduate) Program, I felt I would have the perfect opportunity to explore many of theories which have developed, over time, to explain criminal behavior. It is my hope that this research paper will provide an extensive and educational look at how the psychology of a criminal impacts the activity which is produced. It seems that every year brings new ideas, but I feel that the following is a conclusive look of research compiled from the beginning of criminality to the present. I have also provided a history of criminality and how it has developed into what we now understand as forensic psychology. This field will always remain fluid with discovery, and my greatest pleasure would come from being part of it in the future. [pic] “Wherever he steps, whatever he touches, whatever he leaves behind, even unconsciously, will serve as a silent witness against him.” Edmund Locard The application of psychology in the criminal and civil justice system is known as forensic...
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...Trait Theory and Aggression Abstract This paper reviews how trait theories account for anger and aggression and it provides an opinion on whether or not the anger management programs provided at San Quentin prison can be effective in changing offender's behaviors. Keywords: Trait Theory. Trait theory states that our personality traits, and our genetics can predispose us to crime. The theory states that some individuals are born criminal and can be identified by primitive physical traits. There are several theories that were developed early on. In this paper we will briefly discuss early studies in the field of criminal anthropology led by Cesare Lambroso. The content of this paper will then focus on psychological trait theories, and biosocial trait theories of crime. Lastly, this paper will provide my opinion on the video that was presented to us in this week's assignment, "Inside San Quentin – Anger Management Behind Bars", and the effectiveness of anger management programs provided to inmates in an attempt to control their anger and aggression. There are several studies that were conducted by many renowned scientists in the field of personality traits and how they account for anger, aggression, and criminality. The earliest research into criminality and psychological, as well as physical traits was conducted by Cesare Lambroso. Born in 18th century, Lambroso was an Italian university professor and a criminologist. His early...
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...Juvenile Delinquency Christina M. Bracey 201240 Fall 2012 CJUS 230-B02 LUO Professor DeBoer Liberty University Online October 12, 2012 Abstract The changes in family values and structure in the United States has helped contribute to juvenile delinquency today. Society needs to recognize problems within the home before trying to find solutions to problems for todays at risk youth in America. Major structural changes inside of the home could adversely affect the raising of juveniles leading to delinquency. Some of the issues I will discuss in my paper are divorce, child abuse, mothers working outside of the home, and single-parent homes. Ineffectively raising a child can cause low self-control and low self-esteem while increasing the risks of delinquency as well. I will argue that with proper supervision, counseling, and monitoring of the behavior of the juvenile, it is possible that society can help eliminate some of the crimes committed by juvenile delinquents. Thesis The changes in family values and structure in the United States has helped contribute to juvenile delinquency today Introduction Family Structure has changed noticeably in the United States over the past several decades. It refers to various family characteristics that affect relationships and how families function. These characteristics include family size, family disruption, and birth order. High rates of divorce, single-parent housing, the spreading of non-parent families and step-families, and...
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...Criminal Behavior Lorenzo Reid Virginia College Online Abstract The following paper will address the different areas of the Psychological and Psychiatric Foundations of Criminal Behavior. Within this paper, every aspect from theories to what the law states when it comes to this state will be addressed. Criminal Behavior Doctor Leon Eisenberg once stated, "...persons who are seriously mentally ill are far more likely to be the victims of violence than its initiators." (Campbell) Yet how true is that? When it comes to mental illness, there have been several violent crimes that have been committed, and been blamed on mental illness. There are several shows for entertainment such as the show “Criminal Minds”, that attempts to bring a reality and understanding to mental illness and criminal behavior. This show gives a reality to the fact that people can be simply mentally ill and not simply criminals. In early society times, people simply did not take mental illness into account. It was thought that people, regardless of their mental state, should be accountable for their actions. Yet, in today’s society, this is not the case. Due to research and a better developed country, citizens are given an opportunity to show that their mental state was not steady when they committed a crime. So, what is it then, which motivated a person to kill or maim another? How can a person kill someone else, or a numerous amount of people, with no remorse? These questions and several...
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...Violence in Egypt Violence is the result of a combination of biological, social, and psychological factors (Firestone, 2012). Following the ouster of president Mohamed Morsi in Egypt, violence has been increasing dramatically all over the country; thousands of people have died. Pro-Morsi supporters and other Islamist are threatening Egypt’s national security by performing terrorist acts within the country. The military and police forces are doing their best to decrease these terrorist acts yet innocent civilians are being killed everyday. Meanwhile violence is affecting Egypt’s financial stability, the economy, safety and tourism. This issue became a main societal problem that Egypt is facing during its modern times. Even the Bedouins of Sinai have been suffering from severe state repression and have been posed as a security threat to the rest of the country (Mandour, 2014). Almost every year you hear a story of a church being bombed. There are many physiological solutions that can decrease violence acts within the country, there is nothing known in this world to be hopeless especially to psychologists. The media has to start finding efficient and effective solutions with social psychologist rather than projecting the responsibilities on officials. There are many innocent people that are between those violent people, thus the military or police are unable to use full power against them. It is very important to recognize the main issue behind the violence in Egypt. Male aggression...
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...have many common themes and interests but they differ in their approaches. The primary focus of medicine is the diagnosis, treatment and cure of illness. The focus of health psychology goes beyond that of medicine to stress the prevention and enhancement of health. It expands the biological framework of medicine to also include psychological and social factors. The scope of health psychology is very broad because many theories and methods of psychology can be applied to health-related issues. Maes & van Elderen (1998) (cited in Gross, 2009) defines health psychology as “…a sub-discipline of psychology which addresses the relationship between psychological processes and behaviour on the one hand and health and illness on the other...”. Health psychology aims to understand, explain, develop and test theories by evaluating the role of psychology and its perspectives as factors affecting illness, predicting unhealthy behaviours and understanding and evaluating the role of psychology in the experience and treatment of illness. It also aims to put theory into practice by promoting healthy behaviour, preventing illness and thereby improving the health care system and health policy. For example, from programmes developed to help people reduce risk factors to their health, such as obesity and smoking, to understanding how people respond to the onset of illness, how they deal with their illness, how they cope with pain and how they respond to treatments. Therefore, health psychology...
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...from the Greek words “psyche,” meaning life, and “logos,” meaning explanation. Psychology is a popular major for students, a popular topic in the public media, and a part of our everyday lives. Television shows such as Dr. Phil feature psychologists who provide personal advice to those with personal or family difficulties. Crime dramas such as CSI, Lie to Me, and others feature the work of forensic psychologists who use psychological principles to help solve crimes. And many people have direct knowledge about psychology because they have visited psychologists, for instance, school counselors, family therapists, and religious, marriage, or bereavement counselors. Because we are frequently exposed to the work of psychologists in our everyday lives, we all have an idea about what psychology is and what psychologists do. In many ways I am sure that your conceptions are correct. Psychologists do work in forensic fields, and they do provide counseling and therapy for people in distress. But there are hundreds of thousands of psychologists in the world, and most of them work in other places, doing work that you are probably not aware of. Most psychologists work in research laboratories, hospitals, and other field settings where they study the behavior of humans and animals. For instance, my colleagues in the Psychology Department at the University of Maryland study such diverse topics as anxiety in children, the interpretation of dreams, the effects of caffeine on thinking, how birds recognize...
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...INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY of the CARIBBEAN SAVANNA-LA-MAR CAMPUS COURSE: Guidance and Counseling / Psychology (year 3) Borderline Personality Disorder TERM PAPER IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT of the COURSE: Abnormal Psychology PRESENTED TO: MS. Loi Perry PRESENTED BY: Kerese Mckenzie ID#: 1220654 Date: March 24, 2016 The current diagnostic criteria set for Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is taken from the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-5 (APA, 2013). Patients must meet five of nine criteria in order to be diagnosed with BPD. Patients who partially, but incompletely, meet this criteria set may be considered to have borderline personality traits or features. Although not fulfilling criteria for the full disorder, such a formulation may nonetheless be useful in guiding treatment decisions. Borderline personality disorder is said to be one of the most misunderstood diseases. According to John Grohol, it is a condition marked by a pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following: 1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. Note: Do not include suicidal or self-mutilating behaviour, as it is covered in Criterion 5. 2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation...
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...Date: 21 February 2012 Write an essay about the Oedipus complex. Your essay should explore the history of the concept, its development in psychoanalytic thinking and its wider implications. You should illustrate your understanding with detailed examples from your work setting and/or placement. Essay submitted for the award of MSc in Psychodynamic Counselling and Psychotherapy at Birkbeck College, University of London Introduction This paper attempts to trace the evolution of Freud’s concept of the Oedipus complex within psychoanalysis. One case will be considered in detail to illustrate relevant theoretical formulations focussing mainly on the work of Freud, Klein, Britton and Bion. The wider implications of the Oedipus complex will also be considered before I conclude. History of the Oedipus complex and Freud’s theoretic evolution Freud used the term Oedipus complex to describe a boy's feelings of desire for his mother and hostility towards his father which he regarded as a universal event of early childhood. The term is derived from the Greek myth of Oedipus who unwittingly killed his father and married his mother. In a letter to Fliess dating back to 1897, Freud (1954) attributes these ideas to his self analysis and indirectly to the Greek myth as presented in the popular Sophocles’ play ‘Oedipus Rex’. During the late 1890s Freud, theorised that fantasies built around the Oedipus complex were the primary cause of hysteria and other neurotic symptoms...
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...M.A. Social Work (Previous) FIRST SEMESTER Paper S1: 01 History and Philosophy of Social Work - 50 Paper S1: 02 Psychosocial Dynamics of Human Behavior - 50 Paper S1: 03 Methods of Working with People: Micro-Approaches - 50 Paper S1: 04 Social Welfare Administration - 50 Paper S1: 05 Research Methodology - 50 Paper S1: 06 Man & Society - 50 Paper S1: 07 Concurrent Field work three days in a week - 50 Total - 350 SECOND SEMESTER Paper S2: 01 Approaches and fields of Social Work - 50 Paper S2: 02 Human Growth and Development - 50 Paper S2: 03 Methods of working with People: Macro Approaches - 50 Paper S2: 04 Management of NGO’s and Disaster Relief Services - 50 Paper S2: 05 Statistics and Computer Application - 50 Paper S2: 06 Dynamics of Socio-Political Institutions and Organizations - 50 Paper S2: 07 Concurrent Field work (three days in a week) -50 Total - 350 M.A. in Social Work (Part-I) Preamble: 1. There shall be six theory papers of 50 marks each and field work of 50 marks as paper seventh out of 50 marks, 38 marks shall be devoted to semester paper and 12 marks shall be fixed for class/home assignments. 2. The format of the theory paper shall be the same as it is being following by the university. 3. Evaluation procedure shall be as per university norms. FIRST SEMESTER Paper S1: 01 History and Philosophy of Social Work (50) Unit – I Meaning, objectives and scope of social work; Role...
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...time that strongly influences one's expectations, self-perceptions, values, and attitudes. It also predicts human reactions to other people, problems, and stress.[1][2] There is still no universal consensus on the definition of "personality" in psychology. Gordon Allport (1937) described two major ways to study personality: the nomothetic and the idiographic. Nomothetic psychology seeks general laws that can be applied to many different people, such as the principle of self-actualization or the trait of extraversion. Idiographic psychology is an attempt to understand the unique aspects of a particular individual. The study of personality has a broad and varied history in psychology with an abundance of theoretical traditions. The major theories include...
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...9 CHAPTER PERSONALITY AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 348 CHAPTER OUTLINE module 29 Psychodynamic Approaches to Personality Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind The Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysts: Building on Freud Try It! The Life Orientation Test Projective Methods Behavioral Assessment Becoming an Informed Consumer of Psychology: Assessing Personality Assessments module 30 Trait, Learning, Biological and Evolutionary, and Humanistic Approaches to Personality Trait Approaches: Placing Labels on Personality Learning Approaches: We Are What We’ve Learned Biological and Evolutionary Approaches: Are We Born with Personality? Humanistic Approaches: The Uniqueness of You Try It! Assessing Your Real and Ideal Self-Concept Comparing Approaches to Personality module 32 Intelligence Theories of Intelligence: Are There Different Kinds of Intelligence? Practical Intelligence and Emotional Intelligence: Toward a More Intelligent View of Intelligence Assessing Intelligence Variations in Intellectual Ability Exploring Diversity: The Relative Influence of Genetics and Environment: Nature, Nurture, and IQ Psychology on the Web The Case of . . . Mike and Marty Scanlon, the Unlikely Twins Profiles of Success: Raymond J. Matlock Full Circle: Personality and Individual Differences module 31 Assessing Personality: Determining What Makes Us Distinctive Self-Report Measures of Personality Who was the Real Bernie Madoff? To some, Bernard L. Madoff was an affable, charismatic...
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...Criminology & Criminal Justice © 2006 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks & New Delhi) and the British Society of Criminology. www.sagepublications.com ISSN 1748–8958; Vol: 6(1): 39–62 DOI: 10.1177/1748895806060666 A desistance paradigm for offender management FERGUS McNEILL Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde, UK Abstract In an influential article published in the British Journal of Social Work in 1979, Anthony Bottoms and Bill McWilliams proposed the adoption of a ‘non-treatment paradigm’ for probation practice. Their argument rested on a careful and considered analysis not only of empirical evidence about the ineffectiveness of rehabilitative treatment but also of theoretical, moral and philosophical questions about such interventions. By 1994, emerging evidence about the potential effectiveness of some intervention programmes was sufficient to lead Peter Raynor and Maurice Vanstone to suggest significant revisions to the ‘non-treatment paradigm’. In this article, it is argued that a different but equally relevant form of empirical evidence—that derived from desistance studies—suggests a need to re-evaluate these earlier paradigms for probation practice. This reevaluation is also required by the way that such studies enable us to understand and theorize both desistance itself and the role that penal professionals might play in supporting it. Ultimately, these empirical and theoretical insights drive us back to the complex interfaces between technical and moral...
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...INTRODUCTION Addiction is specifically concern with the process by which drug-taking behavior, in certain individuals, evolves into compulsive patterns of drug-seeking and drug-taking behavior that take place at the expense of most other activities and the inability to cease drug-taking. THERE ARE FIVE THEORIES OF ADDICTION NAMELY; * MEDICAL MODEL * PSYCHODYNAMIC MODEL * SOCIAL MODEL * MORAL MODEL * BIO-PSYCHO-SOCIAL MODEL MEDICAL MODEL This involves * Addiction as a “brain disease” * Neurotransmitter imbalance * Disease model: * Agent: drug * Vector: dealers * Host: addict PSYCHODYNAMIC MODEL This involves the following * Drug abusers who are self-medicating * Drug abuse which is a symptom of underlying psychological problems * Drug use is also a maladaptive psychological coping strategy * Drug abusers also need to resolve internal conflict, and when they do, drug use will be unnecessary. SOCIAL MODEL This involves * Drug use as a learned behavior * People using drugs because drug use is modeled by others * Peer pressure * Environmental effects leading to drug use MORAL MODEL * Addicts are usually weak and can overcome a compulsion to use with willpower * Drug abusers are anti-social and should be punished for that * Drug are generally evil BIO-PSYCHO-SOCIAL MODEL * All the above are true, to greater or lesser degrees * Each person’s drug use is a result of some aspects of some or all...
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...Wednesday, April 9, 2014 PSY/460 - WEEK ONE SHORT ANSWER Environmental psychology is likely to be a new field for you, although many of the concepts are probably familiar. Provide your own definition of the discipline. Discuss an important milestone or influence in the development of environmental psychology and provide reasoning as to why you chose this one. Environmental psychology is a branch of psychology that studies how the environment affects individuals, and vice-verse. There is a reciprocal relationship between people and the environment they live in, as they both affect each other. The relationship between nature and the human species has been an object of study for many decades, and understanding this relationship can help individuals learn about the importance of conserving and maintaining the world that supports them (Steg, 2013). The environment provides humans with food, water, air, and all the other necessities individuals need to survive, even if, in a world dominated by technology and progress, it is easy to forget that one way or another, everything we need to survive comes from the earth. Environmental psychology focuses not only on the physical influences humans and environment have on each other, but also in which ways nature affects individuals’ behaviors. One important aspect of this discipline is the belief that people’s behaviors are not determined solely by the environment (Steg, 2013). Most psychologists in this area believe in free will...
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