CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR
CHAPTER 1
UNDERSTANDING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
Basic Concept
Human behavior is the study of human conduct, the way of a person behaves or acts; includes the
study of human activities in an attempt to discover recurrent patterns and to formulate rules about
man’s social behavior.
Thus, one’s knowledge of human behaviors will give him better understanding as to the causes of
normal and abnormal behaviors which eventually lead to criminal behaviors.
Definition of Terms:
1. Behavior - any act of person which is observable; any observable responses of a person to his
environment; manner of ones conduct.
2. Attitude - position of the body, as suggesting some thought, feeling, or action; state of mind,
behavior, or conduct regarding some matter, indicating opinion or purpose; internal processes.
3. Human Behavior - the acts, attitudes and performances of flesh and blood individuals according
to their environment; properly the subject matter of psychology.
4. Psychology - the science that studies behavior and mental processes.
5. Personality - that which distinguishes and characterizes a person.
6. Character - the combination of qualities distinguishing any person or class of persons; any
distinctive trait or mark, or such marks or traits collectively belonging to any person, class or race.
Psychology and Criminal Behavior
Psychology - is the totality or sum of all actions, attitudes, thoughts , mental states of a person or
groups of persons, it is the science dealing with the mind of human being including animal behavior.
Individual Differences:
1.No two people are alike.
2.Men differs from women - qualitative differences; and physical differences
3.People differ from day-to-day activities.
Nature of Differences:
1.Physical
2.Ability/Skill
3.Personality
4.Intelligence
Application of Psychology in Law Enforcement
1.Psychology in public relation
2.Psychology in investigation
3.Psychology and group control
4.Psychology and alcoholics
5.Psychology and the courts
6.Etc.
Psychology and Common Sense
Most successful police investigators attribute their achievements on their practical knowledge of
psychology.
Evolution of the study of human behavior:
1. Homer - author or Iliad and Odyssey who described HD as the modern sense of breath or sign of
life.
2. Socrates and Plato - described HD as having two parts:
a. The rational part - capable of unraveling the meaning of life and understand ideal from; to
make clear the meaning of life and/or draw conclusions.
b. The irrational part - participate in imperfect form; the inability and/or lack or reasoning,
sometimes termed as unreasonable; mostly deals with the emotion.
3. Aristotle - described HD as the principle of life; quality or essence of that distinguishing the living
from non-living.
Attributes or Characteristics of Behavior
1. Overt behavior-observable
2. Covert behavior - hidden
3. Simple behavior - less number of neurons are consumed
4. Complex behavior - combination of simple behaviors
5. Rational behavior - with sanity or reasons
6. Irrational behavior - without reason/unaware
7. Voluntary behavior - with full volition of will
8. Involuntary behavior - goes on even when we are awake or asleep
Aspects of Behaviors
1. Intellectual Aspect - way of thinking, reasoning, solving problem, processing info and coping with
the environment.
2. Emotional Aspect - feelings, moods, temper, strong motivational force with in the person.
3. Social Aspect - people interaction or relationship with other people.
4. Moral Aspect - conscience, concept on what is good or bad.
5. Psychosexual Aspect - being a man or woman and the expression of love.
6. Political Aspect - ideology towards society/government.
7. Value/Attitude - interest towards something , likes and dislikes.
Distinction of Molecular Behavior from Molar Behavior:
Molecular behavior refers to such things as isolated muscular movements or glandular secretion
or to the movements of the nerve cells or muscles. Molar behavior on the other hand refers to the
behavior organized into meaningful sequences or patterns into activities that satisfy the organism’s
needs, bring it closer to its goals or help to avoid danger.
Three Levels of Behavior
1. The Vegetative - responsible for nurturing and reproduction, mostly found in plants; in human
beings, for food and reproduction.
2. The Animal - movement and sensation, mostly the use of the senses and sex drives.
3. The Rational/Psyche/Human - values and morals, reasons and the will (purpose and freedom).
Five Elements of Human Behavior
1. Vegetative Power
2. Sensitive Power
3. Estimate Power - memory and imaginative power (optionated)
4. Common sense - qualities and/or sound practical judgment
5. Will and interest
Three Faculties of Man
1. Will - power of conscious deliberate actions; the faculty by which the rational mind makes choice of
its ends of action, and directs energies in carrying out its determinations.
2. Intellectual - power of perception or thought; or power of understanding.
3. Soul - the rational, emotional, and volitional faculties in man, conceived of as forming an entity
distinct from, often existing independently of his body; the emotional faculty of man distinguished
from intellect.
Instinct -innate (biological - unconscious); life (sexual wishes)
- pleasure principle (libido) or love instinct (Eros); death (aggressive and embarrassment)
- thanatos (death wish or love of death0
Libido - instinctual craving of drive behind all human activities, especially sexual, the repression of which
leads to neurosis.
Application: Solution to existing problems in the society.
1. Reduce crime rates (crime prevention and suppression)
2. Improve educational techniques (research studies)
3. Treat persons with mental disorders and emotional imbalance or with emotional problems.
Approaches in the study of Human Behavior
1. Neurological - human actions in relation to events taking place inside the body, especially the
brain and the nervous system.
2. Behavioral -external activities of the organism that can be observed and measured
3. Cognitive - the way the brain processes and transforms information in various ways.
4. Psychoanalytic - unconscious motives stemming from repressed sexual and aggressive impulses in
childhood.
5. Humanistic - subject’s experience, freedom of choice and motivation toward self-actualization.
Assessing Human Behavior (Measures)
1. Descriptive Method (describing the behavior)
a. Naturalistic observation - observes the behavior in the natural setting of the person’s
background, e.g. home, school, church, etc.
b. Systematic observation - making use of the adjective check lists, e.g. skills rating
(inventories and questionnaires) test given by the guidance counsel.
2. Clinical Method - diagnose and treatment of serious emotional or mental disorders or
disturbances.
3. Experimental Method - relationship between variables by way of experimental (laboratory).
Specimens are required for comparison and for contrast.
4. Statistical Method - making use of researches that were conducted; measures of central
tendencies, mean, median, mode tests; (the use of the Uniform Crime Report (UCR)).
Determinants of Behavior
1. HEREDITY- genetic inheritance
2. ENVIRONMENT - socio-cultural inheritance
3. SELF -fundamental functioning of the self structure that we make about ourselves and our world.
These assumptions are based on learning and of three kinds:
a. Reality assumptions - assumptions about how things really are and what kind of person
we are.
b. Possibility assumptions - assumptions about how things could be, about possibilities for
change, opportunities and social progress.
c. Value assumptions - assumptions about the way things ought to be, about right and
wrong.
The Two Basic Factors Affecting Behavior
A. Heredity/Biological Factors (nature) -are those that explained by heredity, the characteristics of a
person acquired from birth transferred from one generation to another. It explains that certain
emotional aggression, our intelligence, ability and potentials and our physical appearance are inherited.
It is the primary basis of the idea concerning criminal behavior, the concept that “ criminals are
born” - Theory of Atavism - born criminal.
B. Environmental Factors (nurture) -
1. The family background - whereby an individual first experiences how to relate and interact with
another. The family is said to be the cradle of personality development.
2. The influences of childhood trauma, which affect the feeling of security of a child undergoing
development, processes. The development processes are being blocked sometimes be parental
deprivation as a consequence of parents or luck of adequate maturing at home because of parental
rejection, overprotection, restrictiveness, over permissiveness, and faulty discipline.
3. Pathogenic family structure -
a. Inadequate family - inability to cope with the ordinary problems of family living. It lacks the
resources to meet the demands of family satisfaction.
b. Anti-social family -espouses unacceptable values as a result of the influence of parents to
their children.
c. Discordant/disturbed family - dissatisfaction of one or both parent from the relationship that
may express feeling of frustration due to value differences.
d. Disrupted family - incompleteness whether as a result of death, divorce, separation or some
other circumstances.
4. Institutional influences - peer groups, mass media, church and school, government institutions,
NGO’s etc.
5. Socio-cultural factors - war and violence, group prejudice and discrimination, economic and
employment problems and other social changes.
6. Nutrition or the quality of food - also a factor that influence man to commit crime because
poverty is one of the many reasons to criminal behavior.
Kinds of Environment
1. Physical environment (external forces) - all things in this world that affect man directly and stimulates
the sense organs.
a.Primary Social Group
1) Home
2) Neighborhood, etc.
b. Broader Social Group
1) School
2) Church
3) CJS
2. Internal environment - immediate environment within which the genes exist and function.
a)biological condition of the body
b)exist in the intercellular and extracellular
WILLIAM JONES (Psychologist) stated that minds inhabit environment which act on them and which
they react.
Factors influencing evaluations of Behavior
1. Social Values - a person’s vocational achievement may be valued highly but he may be inadequate
when judged in relation to his family relationships and outside interests.
2. Different standards set by individual social groups - varies with time, place, culture, and expectations
of the social groups.
3. Incomparable frames of reference used by individuals, as by members of one’s primary group to
evaluate behavior. The individual may compare his feelings and behavior with how he thinks others feel
and behave, or with how he felt and behaved in the past.
Mental Health and Mental Illness
Behavior that might be considered as abnormal or mentally-sick in one culture may be accepted and
encouraged in another culture. Generally, however, when a person’s behavior is adaptive to his
environment, we say that he is healthy, and when his behavior is maladaptive, we say he is ill.
Evaluation to one’s individual mental status
1. Attitude toward the individual self - person’s self awareness, acceptance, confidence, level of
self-esteem, sense of personal identification in relation to role, groups, other people, sex,
vocation, strengths, and weakness, etc.
2. Growth, Development, Self-actualization - involvement in outside interests and relationships,
concerns with an occupation or ideas, and her goals in life are considered.
3. Integrative Capacity - Psychoanalyst view this concept as meaning a balance of psychic forces -
the ID, EGO, SUPEREGO.
4. Autonomous Behavior - ability to make his own decisions and react according to his own
convictions regardless of outside environmental pressures, and acceptance of responsibility for
his own actions.
5. Perception of Reality
6. Mastery of One’s Environment - ability to adapt, adjust, and behave appropriately in situations
and in accordance with culturally approved standards so that satisfactions are achieved.
PERSONALITY - Totality of a person.
Sigmund Freud (Father of Psychoanalysis), postulated that the mind consists roughly of three
overlapping divisions.
1. Conscious - part which is immediately focused in awareness.
2. Pre-conscious - part of the mind which can be recalled and brought to awareness at will.
3. Unconscious - reservoir of memories, experience and emotions that can be recalled.
Three Components of Personality
1. ID - unconscious part of the personality which serves as the reservoir of the primitive and
biological drives and urges; part of the personality with which we are born; and the animalistic self.
Libido - pleasure principle; instinctual craving especially sexually.
2. Ego - the mediator between the ID and the superego; developing awareness of self or the “I”;
interacts with the outside world, partly conscious and partly unconscious.
3. Superego - the socialized component of the personality.
A very strict superego usually leads to the development of a rigid, compulsive, unhappy person. A
weak defective superego permits a person to express hostile and anti-social striving without anxiety or
guilt.
OEDIPUS COMPLEX - young boys experience rivalry with their father for their mother’s attention and
affection. The father is viewed as a sex rival. This conflict is resolved by the boy’s repression of his
feelings for his mother.
ELECTRA COMPLEX - young girl sees her mother as a rival for her father’s attention but for fear for her
mother is less.
GILLILAND (Psychologists) - proposed five determinant of one’s personality:
1.Intelligence
2.Aggressive or forceful
3.Sociability
4.Personal appearance
5.Morality
KRESTSCHEMER (German Psychiatrist) - identified two individual personality types:
1. Pyknic - they have broad head, long trunk, short legs, narrow shoulders, broad hips and much flesh;
with violent emotions….when carried to extreme manifest depressive psychosis.
MANIC DEPRESSIVE REACTION - also called an affective reaction, is characterized by two phases: mania
and depression.
Manic phase - may be mild and bring elation and a general stepping up of all kinds of activity to the
patient; tends to talk endlessly; if disorder is more severe; he may act bizarrely; he may be a whirlwind
of activity and become so excited and agitated that he foregoes food and sleep and ends in a state of
total collapse
Mild depressive phase - individual feels dull and melancholy, his confidence begins to drain away,
and he becomes easily fatigued by daily routines; when more severe, the patient starts to retreat from
reality, gradually entering into a state of withdrawal that is very much like a stupor. At this point, he
hardly moves or speaks. He may be unable to sleep. Eventually, he begins to question his value as a
human being and is crushed by feelings of guilt. He may refuse to eat. Symptoms may progress to point
where an attempt at suicide is a real possibility.
Stupor - the condition of the body in which the senses and faculties are suspended or greatly dulled,
as by drugs or intoxicants.
2. Asthenic - they have long head, short trunk, long legs, narrow hips and shoulders and very little fat;
they have the tendency to develop seclusive personality patterns that may result to dementia praecox
or schizophrenia.
Alfred Adler (Founder of individual psychology) - coined the term “inferiority complex” to describe the
conflict, partly conscious and partly unconscious , which the individual make attempts to overcome the
distress accompanying inferiority complex of feelings.
Carl Jung (identified four functions of personality)
1.Sensation - concern with here and now.
2.Intuition - concern with that things have been or will be.
3.Feeling - concerned with a sense of values
4.Thinking - concerned with the things in the abstract.
Jung, a Swiss psychologist identified the Theory of Personality types:
1.Extrovert - friendly, flexible and adaptable, happy working with others, free from worries, and
outgoing.
2.Introvert - inclined to worry, reserved, lacking in flexibility, self-centered or self-interested person.
3.Ambivert - in between extrovert and introvert.
Karen Horney - process of adaptation of life situations as an explanation for personality development.
She believed that the prime motivating factor is the need for security, which is not universal factor but
one that operates when security is threatened.
Harry Stack Sulivan - individual’s self-image, self-concept or “self-dynamism” organizes behavior; social
factors as extremely significant especially interpersonal relationships and the self-concept in relation to
them. He coined the term “acculturation”.
Erick Fromm - major need of man is to find meaning of life through the use of his own powers; human
conflict lies between the security given by the rigid social mores and the use of reasoned solutions to the
problems of existence.
Adolf Meyer - Founder ofPsychobiology (a study not only the person as a whole, or as a unit but also as
a whole man) and greatly influenced American psychiatry; importance of considering the total individual
from all points of view biologically, psychologically and socially also called holism or the holistic
approach.
Sheldon - somatotypes:
1.Ectomorph - fragile and thin.
2.Endomorph - soft-rounded and fat.
3.Mesomorph - medium-built.
Erik Erickson - psychoanalytical theorist identified eight (8)n developmental stages throughout the
whole life cycle.
If a person is provided with a social and psychological environment that is conducive to development,
he will be able to deal adequately with the crisis and problems at each stage
