FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY TURNING TO CRIME THE ROLE OF COGNITION

1. FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGYTURNING TO CRIMETHE ROLE OF COGNITION MORAL DEVELOPMENT

2. What do we mean byMORAL DEVELOPMENT? Moral development refers to the set of values that we learn and internalise during our development. These values become internalised or inbuilt and we develop our own sense of right and wrong.

3. Morality: Kohlberg • Asked about moral issues and thought that our reasoning develops as we get older. • In his original study he used a sample of 58 working and middle class boys from Chicago. They were aged 7, 10, 13 & 15 • He presented the boys with 10 moral dilemmas and asked them to discuss what they would do and why in response to each dilemma. • Kohlberg concluded that it was possible to assess the maturity of a person’s moral development by analysing their responses to the dilemma and their answers to a series of open-ended questions.

4. Your Task: Read the Heinz dilemma and decide what he should do. • Think about: • Should Heinz have stolen the drug? • Why? • Was the druggist in the wrong at all? • Could his behaviour excuse what Heinz did? • Were there disagreements in your group? • If yes, what did you disagree about?

5. A woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form ofradiumthat a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to produce. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $ 1,000, which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said, "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it." So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife. The Heinz Dilemma

7. Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development • Level one: Preconventional morality: aspects judged by consequence. the judged severity of a transgression is at first related to the amount of visible damage and then later to intentions of the offender. • Stage 1: Don’t do things to avoid punishment- external. Stage 2: Do things for reward/ personal gain-internal

8. Level 2 • Conventional morality: Internalises norms of the group. justice is viewed as a universal occurrence and that punishment should reflect the amount of harm done. Later, justice is seen as related to the consequences that transgression creates for others and that punishment should take account of intention. Stage 3: approval of others/ norms (good boy, nice girl) Stage 4: Following the law and order; the golden rule. Social norms.

9. Level 3 • Postconventional morality: Individuals beliefs protecting human rights and justice. There is a transition from the rules being seen as fixed and unchangeable to being relative to persons and situations, and being mutually changeable. • Stage 5: contractual agreement: respect for law but laws may need to be changed. • Stage 6: personal responsibility: universal ethical principles these may override laws.

10. Key differences between the 3 levels • In level 1 the individual doesn’t really consider moral issues – they base their judgements on whether a behaviour is likely to be rewarded or punished. If it is likely to be punished then it must be wrong. If it is likely to be rewarded then it must be right. • The big difference between level 1 & 2 is that the views and needs of other people are much more important at level 2. People at this level are concerned about getting approval from others and to avoid being blamed for behaving wrongly. • Those at the highest level (level 3) have developed an abstract sense of morality and justice. They realise that what is morally the right thing to do sometimes isn’t the legally right thing to do.

11. Evaluation of Kohlberg • The theory explains moral reasoning and NOT moral behaviours- do they both match? • Gender bias? • Androcentric- in favour of males • Suggests immaturity in moral reasoning in women as have different thinking patterns to men and are less likely to achieve highest level. • Can we really apply the theory to criminal behaviours?

12. Gender Bias • How does Kohlberg's theory fit with women's moral development? • Gilligan conducted research to asses differences in moral development

13. Gillingan: Gender differences in moral development? • Carol Gilligan: Ethic of caring: • Generalised male findings to both genders which lead to the suggestion that women are inferior in moral reasoning. • Morality testing is done using male dominated tests and are scored in accordance to male morality e.g. justice • Females tend to favours care over justice