PSYCHOLOGICAL CAUSES OF

CRIME

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Psychological theories
❖ are those derived from the
behavioral sciences and focus
on the individual as the unit of
analysis.
❖ They place the locus of crime
causation within the
personality of the individual
offender

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Similarly, Siegel (2019) mentioned
that the psychological aspect of
crime is the second branch of trait
theory that includes the associations
among following:
a. intelligence
b. personality
c. learning
d. criminal behavior

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According to Schmalleger (2011), the
psychological determinants of deviant or criminal
behavior may be expressed in terms the
following:
a. manipulative personality characteristics
b. b. poor impulse control
c. c. emotional provocation
d. d. immature personality
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Three categories of psychological theories that
attempt to explain human intellectual and emotional
development.

1. Moral Development Theories

2. Social Learning Theories
3. Personality Theories
Moral Development Theories
a sequence of developmental stages
that people pass through when
acquiring the capacity to make moral
judgments.
Social Learning Theories
emphasize the process of
learning and internalizing
moral codes. Learning
theories note different
patterns of rewards and
sanctions that affect this
process
Personality Theories
assume a set of enduring
perceptions and
predisposition
(tendencies) that everyone
develops through
early socialization.
Personality refers to all the biological influences,
psychological traits and cognitive features of the human
being that psychologists have identified as important in the
mediation and control of behavior (Bartol & Bartol, 2017).
They emphasized that though interest in personality
differences among offenders continues, psychological
criminology has shifted its focus in the following ways:

❖ It has taken a more cognitive approach to studying

criminal behavior.
❖ It has paid more attention to biological and
neuropsychological factors.
❖ It has adopted a developmental approach to studying
criminal behavior among individuals and groups
Cognitive Approach
This approach refers to
the attitudes, beliefs,
values and thoughts that
people hold about the
social environment,
interrelations, human
nature, and themselves.
❖ good examples of cognitions
Biological or Neurological Approach
They mentioned that biological approach often
focuses on aggression and violent behavior. For
example, neurologist interested in criminology study
to what extent damage, deficits, or abnormality of the
brain may be related to antisocial behavior,
particularly in violent behavior.

EX: A traumatic brain injury (TBI),

Developmental Approach

This approach examines the changes and influences across a

person’s lifetime that may contribute to the formation of
antisocial and criminal behavior. These are usually called risk
factors.

Examples:
poor nutrition, the loss of a
parent, early school failure, or
substandard housing
Psychologists have long
linked criminality to abnormal
mental states produced by
early childhood trauma.

Ex:
inferiority complex to
describe persons who have
feelings of inferiority and
compensate for reduce
personal inadequacy
- -Alfred Adler
❖ Identity crisis a period
of serious personal
questioning people
undertake in an effort
to determine their own
values and sense of
direction
- Erik Erickson
August Aichhorn
❖ Latent Trait View that contributes
to delinquency (Latent
Delinquency)
❖ He concluded that societal stress,
though damaging, could not alone
result in life of crime unless a
predisposition existed that
psychologically prepared youths
for antisocial acts.
This was found in youngsters whose personality
requires them to act in the following ways:

❖Seek immediate gratification (to act impulsively)

❖Consider satisfying their personal needs more
important than relating to others
❖Satisfy instinctive urges considering right and wrong
(that is, they lack guilt)
PSYCHOLOGICAL
AND PSYCHIATRIC
FOUNDATIONS OF
CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR
A. PSYCHOANALYTIC/ PSYCHODYNAMIC THEORY

From the point of view of psychoanalysis, criminal

behavior is “maladaptive or the product of
inadequacies in the offender’s personality”
(Schmalleger, 2011).

SIGMUND FREUD - coined the term psychoanalysis

in 1896 and based the entire theory of human
behavior upon it.
Psychoanalysis
It is the theory of human
psychology on the concepts of the
unconscious, resistance,
repression, sexuality, and the
Oedipus complex.
Oedipus Complex. The attachment of the child
to the parent of the opposite sex, accompanied
by envious and aggressive feelings toward the
parent of the same sex.
According to the
psychodynamic
perspective, people who
experience feelings of
mental anguish and are
afraid are losing control of
their personalities and are
said to be suffering from a
form of neurosis and
therefore referred to as
neurotics.
Those people who have lost
total control and who are
dominated by their primitive
“id” are said to suffer from
psychosis and are referred
to as psychotics.
❖ According to the psychodynamic view, the
most serious types of antisocial behavior
such as murder might be motivated by
psychosis, while neurotic feelings would be
responsible for less serious delinquent acts
and status offenses such as petty theft (Siegel,
2018).
❖Apparently, criminality is a result of a strong id
coupled to a weak superego; hence the demand for
immediate gratification of urges is not inhibited.
❖August Aichorn (cited in Gavin, 2019) suggested
that the contemporary treatment for delinquent
youth, which involved harsh discipline, was
ineffective because it simply encouraged physical
violence as a response to the world.
If there is id, ego or superego imbalance due to
conflict with social norms, then this could be painful
and would be pushed into the unconscious. This
results to a defense mechanism as a coping strategy;
and problematic personality traits and problematic
behavior such as deviant or criminal behavior
ID, EGO, AND
SUPEREGO
ID
❖ At the core of personality and
completely unconscious to the
individual is the psychical region
called the ‘Id’.
❖ Its sole function is to seek
pleasure, the id operates based
on the pleasure principles.
❖ The id is the primitive part of
the person’s mental makeup.
EGO
❖The ego is the region of
the mind in contact with
reality.
❖It is governed by the
reality principles, which
tries to substitute for the
pleasure principle of the
‘id’.
SUPEREGO
❖ The superego represents the moral and ideal
aspects of personality and is guided by the
moralistic and idealistic principles.
Two subsystems
of Superego
The conscience results from the
experience with punishment for
improper behavior and tells us what
we should not do; (Our Sense of
Morality)
whereas the ego-ideal develops
from experiences with rewards for
proper behavior and tells us what
we should do. (The standard of what
one would like to be).
Types of Offenders in
Psychoanalytic Theory
This implies immaturity, poorly developed
social skills, poor reality testing, gullibility and
excessive dependence?
Types of Offenders in Psychoanalytic Theory
1. WEAK SUPEREGO is described by Hervey Cleckley to have
the following characteristics:
superficial charm, good intelligence, absence of delusions and
other signs of irrational thinking, absence of nervousness,
unreliability, untruthfulness and insincerity, lack of remorse or
shame, inadequately motivated antisocial behavior, poor
judgment and failure to learn from experience, pathological
egocentricity and incapability for love, and general poverty in
major affective relations.
2. The Weak Ego Type
❖ implies immaturity, poorly developed social skills,
poor reality testing, gullibility and excessive
dependence.
❖ In psychoanalytic terms, the weak ego types are
less under the control of superego than of the id
and the immediate environment.
❖ For weak ego types, criminal behavior may
represent stumbling into trouble misreading the
external environment, having a temper tantrum.
3. The Normal Antisocial Offenders
❖ The Normal Antisocial Offenders have progressed through
the psychosexual stages of development without any
particular problems.
❖ Psychologically, they match the ideal of the full-functioning
mature adult. However, a mismatch with the ego-ideal is
evident. The superego is pro-criminal as a result of
identification with a criminal parent, and the ego has
incorporated a mastery of criminal skills.
4. The Neurotic Offenders
❖ the type of offender having the most fixed behavior
characteristics
❖ Freudian theory suggests a number of ways in which neurotic
conflicts may translate into criminal behavior. The “criminal from a
sense of guilt” is the most interesting.
❖ Frequently represented in samples of neurotic offenders are people
who use criminal acts as a means of managing specific frustrations or
emotional disturbances, or as a way of impacting family-disturbed
relations.
❖ For example, some neurotics may use criminal activity to gain the
attention of or to punish their parents
PERSONALITY
THEORY
❖ Personality can be defined as the
reasonably stable pattern of behavior,
including thoughts and emotions that
distinguish one person from another.
❖ The personality of persons reflects their
characteristic way of adapting to life’s
demands and problems.
Levels of Mental Life/Human Awareness
❖ To Freud, mental life is divided into two levels,
the unconscious and the conscious.
❖ The unconscious, in turn, has two different
levels, the unconscious proper and the
preconscious.
According to Freud, this level of the mind is the
explanation for the meaning behind dreams,
slips of the tongue, neurotic symptoms, and
certain kinds of forgetting, called repression.
a. Unconscious
❖ The unconscious according to Ciccarelli (2010),
contains all the drives, urges, or instinct that are
beyond our awareness but that nevertheless
motivate most of our words, feelings, and actions.
❖ According to Freud, the unconscious is the
explanation for the meaning behind dreams, slips of
the tongue (Freudian Slips), neurotic symptoms, and
certain kinds of forgetting, called repression.
The witness was interviewed by the investigator.
The investigator asked about what truly
happened and the witness pulled out
information based on the things that he
perceived. What level of the mind the supplied
information came from?
b. Preconscious
❖ The preconscious level of the mind contains all those
elements that are not conscious but can become so quite
readily. The contents of the preconscious come from two
sources, the first of which is conscious perception. What a
person perceives is conscious for only a transitory period. It
quickly passes into the preconscious when the focus of the
attention shifts to another idea.

❖ The second source of preconscious images is stated by

Ciccarelli (2010), is the unconscious. Freud believed that
ideas can slip past the vigilant censor and enter into the
preconscious in a disguised form.
It serves as a repository for all the desires,
impulses, fears, immoral urges, irrational
wishes and the like.
c. Conscious
❖ Those mental elements in awareness at any given point in
time.
❖ It is the only level of mental life directly available to us. The
first is from the perceptual conscious system, which is
turned toward the outer world and acts as a medium for
the perception of external stimuli.
❖ The second source of conscious elements is from within
the mental structure and includes non-threatening ideas
from the preconscious as well as menacing but well-
disguised images from the unconscious.
DYNAMIC PERSONALITY
AN INTERNAL DRIVE OR IMPULSE THAT
OPERATES AS A CONSTANT
MOTIVATIONAL FORCE?
INSTINCT
❖ According to Freud, people are motivated to seek
pleasure and to reduce tension and anxiety. This
motivation is derived from physical and psychical
energy that spring from the instincts.
❖ An instinct is an internal drive or impulse that
operates as a constant motivational force.
❖ Instinct originated from the Id, but they come
under the control of the ego.
It is called eros or sexual instinct?
TWO TYPES OF INSTINCT
ACCORDING TO FREUD

❖ Life Instinct - sometimes called

“Eros” or sexual instinct
❖ the drive to live
❖ basic impulses: thirst and hunger
It is called destruction or
aggression instinct?
TWO TYPES OF INSTINCT
ACCORDING TO FREUD

❖ Death Instinct - sometimes

called destruction or aggression
instinct. Called also “Thanatos”
❖ toward self destruction
❖ drive them to overeat, perhaps as
a result of anxiety, depression or
trauma
a. The Sexual Instinct
❖ The aim of the sexual instinct is to bring about pleasure
within a person by removing the state of sexual
excitation. This pleasure, however, is not limited to genital
pleasure.
❖ Freud believed that the entire body is invested with libido.
❖ All pleasurable activity is traceable to the sexual instinct.
The sexual instinct can take many forms, including
narcissism, love, sadism and masochism.
It refers to the love of oneself or
self-centeredness, with the libido
invested almost exclusively in the
ego?
THE SEXUAL MEANING
INSTINCT
NARCISSISM - refers to love of oneself or self-centeredness. – (focused on ego)
Primary Narcissism
- develop a greater interest in other people (ego develop) –
Secondary Narcissism

LOVE A second manifestation of “Eros” is love, which develops when

people invest their libido on an object or person other than
themselves.
2nd type of Love – Aim-inhibited (repressed; parents, siblings)
SADISM the need for sexual pleasure by inflicting pain and
humiliation on another person. It is perverted when the sexual aim
of erotic pleasure becomes secondary to the destructive aim.
MASOCHISM a condition characterized by the reception of sexual pleasure from
suffering pain and humiliation inflicted either by self or others.
b. The Destructive Instinct
❖According to Freud, the aim of the destructive instinct is to return
the organism to an inorganic state. Because the ultimate
inorganic condition is death, the final aim of the death instinct is
self-destruction.

❖The death instinct also explains the need for the barriers that
people have erected to check aggression. For example, the
commandments like “love thy neighbor as thyself” are necessary,
Freud believed; to inhibit the strong, though usually unconscious,
drive to inflict injury to others. These precepts are actually
“reaction formations.”
It is felt, affective, unpleasant state
accompanied by a physical sensation that
warns the person against impending
danger.
Anxiety
❖ instincts share the center of Freudian dynamic
theory, with
❖ the concept of anxiety. Anxiety is a felt, affective,
unpleasant state accompanied by a physical
sensation that warns the person against impending
danger. The unpleasantness is often vague and
hard to pinpoint, but the anxiety itself is always felt
Only the ego can produce or feel anxiety, but the id,
superego and
1. external world each are involved in one of three

kinds of anxiety.
ego’s dependence on dependence dependence on the
the id results in on the superego outer world leads to
produces

neurotic anxiety moral anxiety realistic anxiety

It stems from the conflict between the ego
and the superego.
NEUROTIC ANXIETY apprehension about an unknown danger,
feeling itself exists in the ego, but it originates from
the id impulses

- Past unconscious feelings

MORAL ANXIETY stems from the conflict between the ego and the
superego
- Failing to behave consistently with what we regard as
morally right

Ex: failing to care for our aging parents or adequately

supporting our children
REALISTIC ANXIETY
also known as objective anxiety, bears a close
resemblance to fear. Realistic anxiety is an unpleasant,
nonspecific feeling involving a possible danger
Dimensions of Personality
❖ Hans Eysenck a noted British psychologist has
developed theory of how personality characteristics are
related to criminal behavior.
❖ Eysenck claimed that children will naturally engage in
such acts and only refrain from doing so if they are
punished.
❖ His theory is based on classical conditioning.
Accordingly, each time a child is punished, he or she may
experience pain and fear. This pain and fear may be
associated with the act itself (Linden, 2020).
PAIN
1. PUNISH

FEAR
His theory explains the criminal personality as
resulting from the interaction between three
psychological traits or the personality dimensions
such as neuroticism (N), extroversion (E), and
psychoticism (P).

1. Neurotic can be loosely defined as a person

suffering from anxiety and appears nervous and
moody. However, the manner in which neurotics are
defined by Eysenck’s theory is not the strict clinical
disorder.
INTROVERT described as quiet, withdrawn

described as quiet, passive, unsociable,

careful, reserved, thoughtful,
pessimistic, peaceful, sober, and
controlled

EXTROVERT
extroverts are outgoing and impulsive

sociability and impulsiveness

2. Extroversion is a personality characteristic of highly
sociable, impulsive, and aggressive people

According to Eysenck, the principal differences between

extraversion and introversion are not behavioral but rather
biological and genetic in nature.

cortical or brain stimulation - inherited rather than learned.

CORTICAL OR BRAIN STIMULATION

Extroverts - low cortical arousal and seek

excitement to maintain levels of stimulation

Introverts - overstimulated and avoid stirring

situations to avoid becoming over-aroused
3. Psychoticism - which is similar to the
modern-day term of psychopath or sociopath
describes persons whose personality is
characterized by poor emotions, sensation
seeking behavior and a general lack of
empathy for others
Neuroticism [N]
❖ Neuroticism is linked to the psychiatric concept of
neurosis.
❖ People who are high on this dimension are
characterized by symptoms such as anxiety,
restlessness and other emotional responses. The
opposite extreme of neuroticism is referred to as
stability and is characterized by a relatively
unreactive nervous system (Linden, 2020).
According to this model, individuals vary
considerably with respect to their biological
strengths and weakness.
Diathesis-stress model

❖ This was created to describe factors that may

contribute to many forms of antisocial behavior.
❖ According to this model, individuals vary considerably
with respect to their biological strengths and weakness.

❖ Biological and genetic weaknesses are referred to as a

“vulnerability” or disadvantage and can include traits
that people are born with or that develop in response
to their environment.
Diathesis-stress model
❖ For Example: Hyperactive children may function well
given appropriate intervention. In the presence of
family instability, alcoholism, absence of educational
programs, and a delinquent peer group, however,
the child may be more prone to antisocial behavior,
possibly resulting in criminal acts.
Diathesis-stress model
For Example: May be seen in fetal alcohol
syndrome, when the biological odds of having
poorly regulated behavior due to prenatal
alcohol exposure frequently outweigh prosocial
influences
Psychoticism [P]
1. Like extraversion and neuroticism, P is a bipolar
factor, with psychoticism on one pole and superego
on the other.
High P scorers egocentric, cold, nonconforming, impulsive,
hostile, aggressive, suspicious, psychopathic,
lacking in sympathy, unfriendly and
antisocial
Low P scorers altruistic, highly socialized, empathic, caring,
cooperative, conforming
RECIPROCAL DETERMINISM
According to Ciccarelli (2010), Albert Bandurra
believes that three factors Influence one another in
determining behavior:
(a) environment,
(b) behavior itself;
(c) and personal or cognitive factors that the person
brings into the situation from earlier experiences.
These three factors each affect the other two in a
reciprocal, or give-and-take, relationship.
RECIPROCAL DETERMINISM
❖ It was emphasized by Ciccarelli (2010) that in this
theory, the environment includes the actual
physical surroundings, the other who may or may
not be present, and the potential for reinforcement
in those surroundings.
❖ The intensity and frequency of the behavior will
not only be influenced by the environment but
will also have an impact on that environment.
C. FRUSTRATION – AGGRESSION
HYPOTHESIS (F-A)
❖ One perspective of aggression assumes that
humans are programmed aggressive to
defend themselves, family, and territory
from intruders
❖ Another perspective believed human become
violent by acquiring aggressive models of
actions from society
❖ According to Bartol and Bartol (2017), around the
time of Freud’s death in 1939, a group of
psychologists at Yale University proposed that
aggression is a direct result of frustration (Dollard,
Doob, Milller, Mowrer and Sears, 1939).
❖ According to their study, people who are frustrated,
thwarted annoyed, or threatened will behave
aggressively, since aggression is a natural and almost
automatic response to frustrating circumstances.
Aggression is always a consequence of frustration.
❖ As Burke (2019) exemplify, frustration-aggression
hypothesis proposed that every frustration leads
to some form of aggression and every
aggressive act relieves frustration to some
extent.

❖ FRUSTRATION – AGGRESION
❖ AGGRESSIVE ACT – RELEIVES FRUSTRATION
SCAPEGOATING THEORY
❖ once frustration and the impetus for aggressive
behavior have occurred, it makes relatively little
difference who receives the brunt of the violence.
❖Some cases -- aggression naturally takes the form of
retaliation against the initial source of frustration
❖In some other cases - such as natural disasters,
there may be no one to blame, but the frustration
can still produce aggressive inclinations
D. PSYCHIATRIC
CRIMINOLOGY (FORENSIC
PSYCHIATRY)
D. PSYCHIATRIC CRIMINOLOGY (FORENSIC
PSYCHIATRY)
❖ FORENSIC Psychiatry - branch of psychiatry
having to do with the study of crime and
criminality
❖ David Abrahamsen - “antisocial behavior is a
direct expression of an aggression or may be
a direct or indirect manifestation of a
distorted erotic drive.”
PSYCHOPATH - a person with a personality disorder, especially one who
manifests aggressive antisocial behavior.
- result of a poorly developed superego
- also called a sociopath, is viewed as perversely cruel (often
without thought or feeling for his or her victims)

- MORAL IDIOT -- or as one who does not feel empathy with

others
Characteristic:
poverty of affect or the inability to accurately imagine how
others think and feel
Antisocial or Asocial Personality
❖ individuals who are basically unsocialized and
whose behavior brings them repeatedly into
conflict with society.
❖ They are grossly selfish, callous, irresponsible,
impulsive,
❖ and unable to feel guilt or to learn from
experience and punishment.
E. MORAL DEVELOPMENT THEORY

❖ This refers generally to theories of individual

psychology that investigate how moral reasoning
emerges in the individual and develops as the
individual matures.
❖ Through their interactions with others, by the ages
11 or 12, children normally have progressed to the
stage of cooperation with others.
PRE- PUNISHMENT Egocentric (What
CONVENTIONAL happens to me?)
INSTRUMENTAL
HEDONISM

CONVENTIONAL Approval of others Social

expectations
Authority (What do others
maintaining expect me?)
morality
POST- Democratically Universality of all
CONVENTIONAL accepted law (What’s best for
Principles of all?)
conscience
F. BEHAVIOR THEORY

❖ Psychological behavior theory maintains that

human actions are developed through learning.
❖ Major premise: people alter their behavior
according to the reactions it receives from others
❖ It is a psychological perspective asserting that
individual behavior, which is rewarded, will
increase; while one that is punished will
decrease.
With respect to criminal activity, the behaviorist
views crimes, especially violent acts, as learned
response to life situations that do not
necessarily represent psychologically abnormal
response (Siegel, 2018)
STIMULUS RESPONSE

BEHAVIOR + REWARDS OR FEEDBACK = FREQUENT BEHAVIOR

OPERANT BEHAVIOR

BEHAVIOR + PUNISHMENT = BEHAVIOR WILL DECREASE

(This theory is often used by parents seeking to control

children through reward and punishment, which are believe to help in
shaping behavior )
G. COGNITIVE THEORY

❖ the study of the perception of reality and of the mental processes

required to understand the world.
❖ focus on mental processes
❖ Cognitive theorists explain antisocial behavior in terms of
❖ mental perception and how people use information to understand
their environment.

❖ Pioneers: Wilhelm Wundt, Edward Titchener and William James.

CRIME-PRONE PEOPLE - have cognitive deficits
and use information incorrectly when they make
decisions
- faulty calculation of costs and
benefits
H. SELF CONTROL THEORY
❖ According to Hagan (2017), self-control refers to a
person’s ability to alter his/her own states of
responses.
❖ SELF-CONTROL as the degree to which a person is
vulnerable to temptations of the moment.
❖ LOW SELF-CONTROL - premier individual-level cause of
crime
❖ - associate with deviant peers “meaning those with
low levels of self-control are essentially self-selected into
groups of people who share their characteristics”
I. ATTACHMENT THEORY
❖According to psychologists John Bowlby’s attachment
theory, the ability to form an emotional bond to
another person has important psychological
implications that follow people across the life span.
❖formed soon after birth, when infants bond with their
mothers without attachment an infant would be helpless
and could not survive.
❖Research: lack of attachment predicts involvement in a
broad spectrum of criminal activity