Question One
Drawing upon psychological positivism discuss the ways in which crime might be considered normal in society.
Psychological Positivism is the scientific understanding of crime and the criminality of the offender. This will show and allow you the comprehension about the distinction between “normal” and the “deviant” and apprehend the specifics of what triggered the rise within a deviant and the embarking start of someone whom may be an everyday normal citizen to a citizen starting an anarchy criminal rampage. Additionally, it states that something within a ‘criminal psychological makes up lends itself to their behaviour, and is usually due to parental negligence, mental illness, horrible upbringing or other mental …show more content…
Skinner introduced Reinforcement Behaviour which is reinforced trends that are repeated .An example of how psychology reinforced behaviour can occur, ‘…if you were younger and you tried smoking at school, and the chief consequence was that you got in with the crowd you always wanted to hang out with, you would have been positively reinforced and would be most likely to repeat that behaviour, however if you were caught smoking by someone else such as like a teacher the main consequence was that you were caught, suspended from school and your parents then became involved and you would be punished at home, and you would consequently be much less likely to smoke again…’, because it was a negative reinforced behaviour that led to smoking. Burrhus Frederic Skinner believed that there are many problems with punishment such as punished behaviour is not forgotten and the can lead to increased aggression, fear of attending school (humiliation). Reinforcement tells you what you should do i.e. Social norms, whereas punishment only tells you what not to do (Hopkins Burke, R (2009). To some extent, the conditioning process is specific to the specific stimulus that is presented but it can also be generalized to the other similar stimuli, thus the teenager would smoke the cigarette to reward himself with popularity or friendship. For behaviourist, it is this notion of differential conditioning that is the key to understanding how learning works (Hopkins Burke, R (2009). Learned behaviours are much more resistant to extinction if the reinforcement has only occasionally been used during the learning, this can be shown through this example “if you put money in a ticket machine and no ticket comes out, you stop using the machine”. However, many people put ‘money in gaming machines even though they pay out prizes infrequently’. Operant conditioning can be differentially conditioned