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Eye-Witness Testimony

Yerkes-Dodson Law:

Become stressed, performance eventually decline

Optimum amount of arousal needed for successful recall

If witness too relaxed and experiencing low arousal, recall less accurate

+) Valentine and Mesout - lower anxiety recalled more correct information about confederate

+) Stanny and Johnson - high arousal police training, fewer details recalled as went beyond optimum level

-) Yuille and Cutshall - greater reported level of arousal, more accurate testimony but may be due to being closest to crime

-) Studies limited due to methods and problematic operational definitions. Arousal could be from anxiety or from increased state of attention

Post Event Information:

Information may augment or degrade witness' report

Information influence person's schema about event

Exposure to misleading post-event information, accuracy fell below chance levels of performance

Misinformation effect - incorrect information changes memory of event

+) Poole and Lindsay - after 3-month delay, 5-7 year olds influenced by leading questions so misinformation was recalled

-) Yuille and Cutshall - real shootout in Canada, witnesses interviewed and compared to police records. Found had detailed memories and not misled by leading questions but is small participant group

-) Lab studies minimise emotional stress as aware crime isn't real

-) Studies of leading questions don't look at more open-ended questions that would be used in cognitive interview

Weapon Focus Effect:

When weapon present, create optimum arousal level assists recall information about weapon

Arousal results in focusing on weapon to detriment of other details

Weapons are unusual in many cultures so focused on more closely

Focus of attention diminishes capacity to encode other information

+) Loftus - weapon draws attention from less dramatic visual images. Participants saw gun version focused on weapon and less likely identify customer

+) Wagstaff - coded police interviews from victims of violent crime and concluded weapon presence had negative effect on feature and identification accuracy

-) Pickel - high unusualness resulted in poorest recall of man, so threat alone cannot result in poor memory

-) Weapon focus effect not occur for weapons consistent with visual scene in which appear

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Social Learning Theory

Cannot learn offending behaviour without observing someone committing a crime

Must be motivated to reproduce observed behaviour, which occurs as a result of vicarious reinforcement

Someone may choose not to commit a crime immediately after observing it; the behaviour can happen much later on

+) Comstock and Paik - positive correlation between TV violence viewed and aggressive measures of behaviour recorded

+) Bandura's Bobo doll vicarious reinforcement study

-) Influence of 3rd variable like class - WC children watch more TV and more likely delinquent

-) High recidivism rate better explained by frustration-aggression theory where frustration at not being able achieve goal is likely result in aggression

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Labelling and Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Labelling occurs when general and broad terms used describe members of group

Often happens when one group sees another group as inferior, creating majority group and minority group

When label given, people treat them differently, giving them little chance to disprove label

Begin to internalise label and act accordingly - SFP

+) Rosenthal and Jacobson - random label on school kids and IQ scores. Those labelled as smart had higher IQ score

+) Jahoda - Ahanti people label boys based on day they're born. Local juvenile court nearly 22% violent offences by Wednesday boys and 6.9% Monday

-) Most research been in education so application of SFP to criminality limited

-) Correlations only and fails to account for other factors

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Neurotransmitters

Low serotonin - increased aggression

Serotonin inhibit impulsive response to stimuli, so low levels result in over-reaction in emotional situations

Lavine - increased dopamine levels through use of amphetamines associated with increase in aggressive behaviour

Dopamine = positive reinforcement for aggression

+) Cleare and Bond - males no history of psychiatric problems, low serotonin correlate levels aggression and hostility

+) Ferrari - rat fight. 11th day = no fight. Rat's dopamine high and serotonin low. Prepared to fight by altering levels ways consistent with aggression

-) Couppis and Kennedy - dopamine in mice high and act as reward during aggressive act. High dopamine is consequence of aggression

-) Reductionist - aggression most likely result of number of factors

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Hormones

Testosterone:

Thought influence amygdala and hypothalamus

Influences levels of other hormones involved in aggression like vasopressin

+) Dabbs - high testosterone = history violent crime. Low testosterone = non-violent crimes

+) Book - meta-analysis of 45 studies, weak positive correlation testosterone and aggression

-) Olweus - testosterone of juvenile offenders and no significant difference them and non-offenders. Slight increase testosterone in violent juvenile offenders

Cortisol:

Role is less clear than testosterone

Low levels are product of low autonomic nervous system arousal and so seek behaviour arouses ANS

Mediates acts people carry out

Less cortisol - feel less stressed when committing acts of violence

+) 4 year study of boys with behavioural problems - boys with consistently low cortisol began antisocial acts younger and 3x number of aggressive symptoms

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Personality Disorders

When individual's way thinking, feeling or relating to others differs significantly from those without

Narcisstic - need be admired, thinks most important and exploit others

Antisocial - aggressive, ignore rules and doesn't care about others

Paranoid - distrust others, suspicious and bear grudges

+) Stone - antisocial, paranoid and psychopathy most common in violent offenders. Mass murderers show strong paranoid traits

-) Suggests personality doesn't change and therefore behaviour can't. You can learn techniques to manage parts of behaviour though

-) Studies show personality is contributory factor for aggression. Tend give consideration to social or biological factors. Help place importance on personality but within context of wider influence

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Eysenck's Personality Theory

Extraversion - cortical arousal via ascending reticular activating system. ARAS activity stimulates cerebral cortex, leads higher cortical arousal. Extraverts = underactive ARAS, require greater amounts of external stimuli

Neuroticism - greater activation levels and lower activation thresholds in limbic. Easily upset

Psychoticism - people show psychotic episode have increased testosterone and low MAO

+) Rushton and Chrisjohn - support relation high delinquency and high extraversion and psychoticism

+) Boduszek - recidivistic inmates from high security prison Ireland. High extraversion levels predicted greater probability violent crime

-) Ignores biological issues (brain injury) make more extravert

-) Contribution of PEN varied. Difficult to determine which greatest influence

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XYY Syndrome

Occurs in 1 in 1000 male births, not inherited and occurs randomly at time of conception

May be taller and face learning difficulties or speech problems

May grow up with minor physical differences like weaker muscle tone

Don't usually have any distinguishing physical features and have normal sexual development

Thought to make men overly aggressive and lack empathy

Theilgaard - small presence XYY men among criminal population and they more likely have lower level of intelligence. Higher than expected number of XYY men in offender population, may be consequence of learning difficulties associated

Women can be violent criminals but don't have Y chromosomes

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Sham Rage

Severed neural connections to cortex of cats

When provoked, decorticate cats exhibited emotional behaviour associated with rage and aggression

Occurred without cognitive influence or inhibitory control of cerebral cortex

Now understood rage came from temporal region - amygdala

-) Lack generalisability - animals don't have capacity to inhibit their aggression with higher order thinking

-) Narabayashi - psychosurgery on humans with aggressive behaviour by severing amygdala from remaining limbic system and found mood-stabilising effect

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Amygdala

Responsible for controlling human emotions, damage to it result in unemotional or react excessively to their emotions

+) Pardini - smaller amygdalae among diagnosed as psychopathic and with higher levels of aggression. Those with smaller amygdalae are 3x more likely exhibit aggression, violence and psychopathic features

-) Fallon - identified brains of psychopaths and identified his brain as one but had no tendencies

-) Hare - psychopaths not just in criminal population. Some traits are suited for high-level management positions

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Brain Injuries

Consequences dependent on area injured

Personality may change or act in untypical manner

Sometimes behaviour is reckless or involve aggression to others

+) Williams - 60% 196 prisoners brain injury. Adults with traumatic brain injury were younger at entry to prison and higher recidivism rates. Affect developmental temperament, and control impulses

-) Kreutzer - 20% arrested pre-injury and 10% post. Without substance use history, brain injury not risk factor

-) Substance misuse, personality disorders and childhood violence linked to criminality. Complex process determine which factor contributes offending behaviour

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Rosenhan's Study

To challenge diagnostic system which emphasises individual as source of symptoms

Range of psychiatric hospitals across 5 states = ethnocentric

Used DSM-II but DSM 5 needs 2 symptoms and for 6 months

8 pseudo-patients phoned 1 of 12 hospitals for hearing voices

All admitted with schizophrenia but 1 with manic depression with psychosis. Ketty argues they faking so doesn't tell about genuine mental conditions diagnosed

Average stay = 19 days. 7 - 52 days

Staff treated way consistent diagnosis and pathologized normal behaviour

71% ignored and 10% verbal responses. Of 185 reasonable questions, 0 answered

Review admissions procedures and how trained staff. Compulsory part of training

Only gained permission for self and administrator and chief psychologist of 1 hospital aware

Actions affected attention to other patients but limited contact of 6.8 minutes per day per pseudo

Psychology student got homework and another romantic relationship with nurse. Rosenhan called this deviation = resisting effects of depersonalisation and powerlessness

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Diagnosing Mental Health Disorders

Deviance = extent to which behaviour is rare within society

Dysfunction = if behaviour significantly interfering with life

Distress = extent to which behaviour causing upset to individual

Danger = to themselves or others. Scale of severity

Duration = if behaviours persist then may be seen as symptom

Subjectivity in interpretation of experience e.g. dysfunctional behaviour different to each person

Reliability - clinician explore 4Ds with every patient and level of deviance based on standardised measure

Standard tests to assess symptoms rather than personal judgement

Some problematic behaviours not that rare so look all 4Ds

Clinical interviews - patients may lie, withhold or embellish answers

If clinician focus on particular symptoms, diagnosis different from clinician who focuses on different symptom

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Reliability and Validity of Classification Systems

Reliability:

Reliable diagnosis requires clinicians agree same diagnosis

Many disorders' symptoms overlap

Ward - 62.5% of disagreement due to inadequacy of classification system

Inter-rater reliability = multiple clinicians shown case history and assessing level of agreement

Early diagnostic systems = low inter-rate reliability. Beck found same set symptoms diagnosed as same disorder in 1/2 cases

Reliability improved with evolution of systems. Browne found reliability DSM IV for anxiety and mood disorders good to excellent

Some disorders difficult obtain reliability due high degree of symptom overlap

Validity:

Diagnosis reached must reflect disorder

Misdiagnosis leads incorrect treatment and delay in recovery

Concurrent validity = looking at another diagnostic tool. DSM 5'S coding referred to ICD consistently

Aetiological validity = examining what's known about causes of disorders and matching to person's history

Predictive validity = future course of disorder is known and applied to person so diagnosis checked against outcome

Aboraya - clinician variables include training and perception of symptoms, with more focus on acute symptoms. Exacerbated by patient variables like current state during diagnosis

Many disorders co-morbid and clinicians focus on acute symptoms valid diagnosis hard

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Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

Grouping disorders into families, with linked disorders grouped together

Describes symptoms, features and associated risk factors of over 300 disorders arranged into 22 categories

Section 1 offers guidance about using DSM-5

Section 2 details disorders and categorised according to current understanding of underlying causes and similarities between symptoms

Section 3 includes suggestions for new disorders that need further investigation and includes information about the impact of culture

Info gathered through observation and unstructured interviews

Structured interview schedules available like Beck Depression Inventory

Involve ruling out disorders before deciding which fits best

Uncomplicated diagnosis achieved in 10 minutes by GP, difficult cases may take weeks or months

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International Classification of Diseases

Both physical and mental disorders

Chapter 5 = Mental and behavioural Disorders

Each disorder has code starting with F and are 11 sections

Each section has leftover codes allowing new disorders to be added

Codes used for indexing medical records, making research easier

System used to guide diagnosis through clinical interviews

Give details of symptoms, severity and duration

Presentation, communication and interpretation of symptoms shaped by language and culture

ICD-10 available in multiple languages and in appropriate cultural forms

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Becker's Study

63 Fijian girls in 1995 and 65 in 1998 after introduction of TV

EAT-26 survey investigates bingeing and purging, score of 20 = high

Separate questions on household ownership and TV viewing

Varied subset of 30 girls from 1998 with disordered eating behaviour = interviews probing and open questions about weight and diet

12.7% 1995 EAT-26 scored above 20, 29.2% from 1998

0% 1995 self-induced vomiting for weight control, 11.3% from 1998 sample

83% interviewed felt TV influenced way they looked at bodies, 40% felt losing weight would improve career prospects

Evaluation

G - Cohort effect means that comparisons are problematic as the groups were matched to a certain extent but individual characteristics still have an impact. Used 63 and 65 participants whilst the population of Fiji at the time was 85,000 so may not be representative

R - Similar conclusions about media influence to previous studies. Questionnaire and score over 20 meant the same so has test-retest reliability

A - Study suggests that eating disorders, depression and suicide are more common, so Fiji needs to dedicate more funding on mental health. Can also be used to educate young girls to understand that the media portrayal of bodies are unrealistic and fake, so should not aspire to have these bodies

V - Self-induced vomiting and its association to eating disorders is a western phenomenon, so Fijian people may not associate behaviours with body dissatisfaction

E - Researchers are not competent to diagnose anorexia and it would be unethical to make participants think they have an eating disorder, so none were diagnosed. Interviews may have provoked conflict between generations, as it draws attention to differences between them