NCJ Number
203561
Journal
Journal of Criminal Justice Volume: 31 Issue: 6 Dated: November/December 2003 Pages: 497-509
Editor(s)
Kent B. Joscelyn
Date Published
November 2003
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This study explored potential cognitive biases that might be associated with offending behavior, specifically how offenders, male and female, reasoned with crime specific information and whether their reasoning with this information was normatively rational.
Abstract
The capacity to reason is fundamental to human behavior. Where reasoning abilities deviate from acceptable norms, such as in the case of offenders, cognitive psychology may offer a unique insight into how and where such deviations occur. This study explored whether offenders, in relation to gender, made decisions in manners that were comparable with a non-offender population or if their decision to offend might be a consequence of inappropriate reasoning strategies. The study sample was drawn from participants living in the community, either those volunteering as non-offenders or those known to probation. Research results show that both offenders and non-offenders exhibited base-rate neglect, although offenders were less likely to classify someone as an offender which might suggest a difference in the stereotypical representations of offenders were different for these two groups. The data suggests that reasoning biases found with non-offender populations extended to an offender population and some interactions by gender and by offender group were noted. A reasonably weak association was found between factors that might contribute towards offending behavior and offending behavior. The research reported was exploratory with relatively small numbers of participants indicating that attention to methodological considerations and the use of more powerful statistical techniques revealed significant effects. References