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What is criminological psychology?
Criminological psychology is an application of psychology which looks at the behaviour of criminals and those who show
antisocial behaviour, and attempts to identify the causes of such activity as well as the ideal methods of treating
offenders to reduce crime.
The focus of the approach is on different explanations of criminal behaviour, and this unit of A2 Psychology will look at
different explanations from different AS approaches to psychology (this guide covers one explanation from the Learning
Approach and one explanation from the Social Approach).

Criminological psychology
An introduction to criminological psychology
2.1
Course outline: criminological psychology
This unit is separated out into the following sections. Tick the boxes as you go through them
Methodology
Laboratory experiments (used to investigate eyewitness testimony)
Field experiments (used to investigate eyewitness testimony)
Evaluation of research methods, including the above as well as field studies and observations
Content
What is criminological psychology?
Define the terms: crime, recidivism, antisocial behaviour, modelling, stereotyping, token economy programme and
eyewitness testimony
Describe and evaluate the social learning theory as an explanation of criminal and antisocial behaviour
Describe and evaluate one other explanation of criminal and antisocial behaviour from a different approach to
psychology (either the biological explanation or the self-fulfilling prophecy)
Explain how a token economy programme is set up and evaluate its effectiveness using studies
Describe and evaluate the success of one other method of treating offenders, choosing from: anger management
programmes, social skills training and punishments
Describe and evaluate three studies into the reliability of eyewitness testimony, including:
one laboratory experiment (e.g. Loftus and Palmer, 1974)
one field study (e.g. Yuille and Cutshall, 1986)
one other study of your choice (e.g. Yarmey, 2004)
Studies in detail
You must be able to describe and evaluate:
Loftus and Palmer (1974), a laboratory experiment into the effect of leading questions on eyewitnesses
as well as one of the following:
Yuille and Cutshall (1986), a real-life study into leading questions and interviews on eyewitnesses
Charlton et al. (2000), a study into the effect of violence on television in St Helena
Gesch et al. (2003), a study into the use of supplementary drugs on antisocial behaviour of young offenders
Key Issue
Describe one key issue from the following and conduct a practical which covers the key issue:
the issue of the reliability of eyewitness testimonies
the issue of offender profiling in the modern world
the issue of whether or not a criminal is born or made (biological approach versus learning approach)
the issue of violence in the media and its effect on its audience