AQA Psychology A-level: Forensic Psychology (A* notes)

AQA Psychology A-level: Forensic Psychology
From specification 7181, 7182 - Issues and options in Psychology - paper 3 (I achieved an A* in Psychology A-level in 2018, across all three papers. I prioritised revision on evaluation, necessary for accessing higher grade!)

Includes

• Defining crime - cultural/historical issues, measuring crime using official statistics, victim/offender surveys

• Evaluation of measuring crime

• Top-down approach - organised vs disorganised offenders, stages of top down approach and evaluation

• Bottom-up approach - investigate psychology, forensic awareness, geographical profiling, circle theory, criminal geographical targeting (CGT) and evaluation

• Biological explanations for offending - atavistic form, Lombroso, environmental influence and evaluation

• Genetic explanations for offending - twin studies, candidate genes and evaluation

• Neural explanations for offending - pre-frontal cortex, limbic system, brain injury, mirror neurons and evaluation

• Psychological explanations - Eysenck’s criminal personality, role of socialisation and evaluation

• Cognitive explanations - distortions; hostile attribution bias, minimalisation, moral reasoning and evaluation

• Differential association theory - crime as learned behaviour, pro-criminal attitudes, reoffending and evaluation

• Psychodynamic explanation - inadequate superego, maternal deprivation and evaluation

Dealing with offending behaviour

• Custodial sentencing, psychological effects and evaluation
• Behaviour modification; reinforcement and conditioning, Hobbs and Holt’s token economy and evaluation
• Anger management - stress inoculation model, Keen et al and evaluation
• Restorative justice - RJC, features of process and evaluation