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Biological Theories Of Criminal Behavior

1526 Words7 Pages

The study of psychology would incomplete without criminal behaviour. Psychologists and Sociologist have still not been able to justify whether criminal behaviour is as a result of nature or nurture. This essay will explain the features of biological, genetics, social and personality theories of criminal behaviour, and evaluate these theories with the work Sheldon, Lombroso, Eysenck and Bandura’s research on social learning theory. There shall be an evaluation of the usefulness of the theories with a comparison and a contrast among them in relation to criminal behaviour. The biological theory suggests that personality is inherited, therefore, criminal behaviour is as a result of the genetic and biological composition of an individual. A person …show more content…

This theory explains that individuals observes and imitate what goes on in their environment. The learning process is based on classical and operant conditioning principles. These explains that rewards reinforce any good behaviour to be repeated in the future. Behaviour that accord punishment has less chance of being repeated (Skinner 1974). According to Bandura (1963), all aspects of personality are learned through direct or indirect reinforcements. Bandura’s social learning theory in 1986 explained that social learning occurs when there is modelling, imitation and identification. According to him, people observe their live models (such as parents, peers and teachers) and symbolic models (such as public figures). Individuals observe these models and imitate their attitudes and behaviours. Research on imitation have shown that the whole pattern of behaviour can be rapidly acquired when a model is provided (Cardwell et al., 2015). Identification refers to the extent to which an individual relates to a model and feels that he or she is similar to that person. Research have suggested that children are more likely to identify and learn from models who are similar to them, particularly same-sex models (Shutts et al., 2010). This may include criminal attitude and behaviours. Bandura’s theory demonstrates a valid concept about social learning and it clearly explains the criminal behaviour, however, the …show more content…

It has also given clear explanation to how behaviour is learned. However, social learning theory fails to clearly explain the conditions under which violence and criminal behaviours are learned. It also fails to adequately consider the role of cognition in criminal behaviour. For instance, as many criminals are imprisoned as punishment, many more people work and earn better status in the society. In this case, it is not clear why there are still criminals whereas there are role models are reinforcement that could portray non-criminal behaviour (Howitt,

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