The aims of this book
This book is intended for A Level Psychology students studying the AQA syllabus and has been developed in order to provide further elaboration for the main Paper 3 topics. This particular book will deal with the optional topic of Forensic Psychology from section D of Paper 3.
The book has been deliberately laid out with the assessment objectives in mind, so you will find AO1 – Knowledge and understanding material first, followed by AO2 – Application material and then AO3 – Evaluation and analysis material.
Each of the assessment objectives will have an injunction/command word or some other indication that will give you an idea of the particular objective being assessed and how you are supposed to answer the question.
AO1 will include some of the following injunctions/commands words that will indicate you are required to show knowledge and understanding:
Compare – Identify similarities and differences.
Identify – Name or state what it is.
Name – Identify using a technical term.
Describe – Provide an account of.
Distinguish – Explain how two things differ.
Explain – Show what the purpose or reason for something is.
Give – Provide an answer from memory or from the information shown.
Outline – Provide the main characteristics.
State – Clearly set out.
What is meant by – Provide a definition.
AO2 will open with some kind of stem, which might be in the form of some information that you will need to refer to in your answer. For example:
Question 1
In the past, the assumption has been made that offender profiling is only applicable to crimes, such as serial murder or sex crimes. However, in recent years it has started to be used for a range of other crimes, such as arson, burglary and even terror offences.
With reference to the top-down and bottom-up approach to profiling, explain why profiling may have only been seen to be useful for certain crimes in the past but is now seen to be relevant to a wider range of crimes?
Alternatively, AO2 questions may provide a description of a scenario with the names of some fictional character(s) who are involved in a situation that is relevant to an area of psychology. You could then be asked to explain this situation using knowledge derived from the relevant topic.
Question 2
Kris is a very active person who is always on the lookout for new activities he can get involved in because he gets really bored by just sitting at home watching TV. Jay, on the other hand, is quite happy to stay at home and read a good book; he doesn’t need a lot of action in his life, as he gets quite enough stimulation at home.
Using Eysenck’s theory, explain which one out of Kris and Jay is more likely to become involved in crime and why?
Questions with a stem like this, which then ask you to refer to the stem in some way, are looking to assess AO2, so you need to ensure that you make clear reference to the stem by using some of the information as part of your answer. You will see examples of these in the coming chapters with some sample answers to show you how to deal with them.
AO3 will include some of the following injunctions/commands words that will indicate you are required to demonstrate skills of analysis and evaluation.
Discuss – Present strengths and weaknesses of a topic (in 16-mark questions, this can also require some element of description and can be taken as similar to describe and evaluate).
Evaluate – Make a judgement about a topic with reference to evidence.
One of the important features of this book and other books in the series is that there is a clear emphasis on the kind of skills required for the A Level Psychology exam, so the plenary sections use questions that are focused on exam skills and, at the end of every chapter, there are some exam style questions with advice on how to answer them and examples of the kinds of answers that could be given to gain very high marks. Key words will be presented in bold and placed in a glossary at the end of each chapter, to make it easier to follow what these words mean and be able to use them more readily yourself.
Further features include an emphasis on new research that is both up to date and challenging, so there will be topics that don’t just follow the usual pattern but will make you think again about the kinds of topics that you are studying.
The book also uses the technique of interleaving by bringing back topics from earlier studies to reinforce and consolidate earlier learning. All too often, topics that have been studied earlier can be forgotten and it has been show that by regularly revisiting these topics, it is possible to remember much more easily than by simply trying to cram them all in at the end.
What is a crime?
In the past, the forensic psychology topic had a section concerned with the definition of crime, but this was removed to make the topic less content heavy and to make it more in line with other topics in this section. However, it is still worth considering what we are talking about when assessing if some behaviour can be defined as criminal or not. Although forensic psychology covers more than just the psychology of crime, it still makes up a major part of what needs to be studied in this section.
Activity 1
Look at the list of behaviours identified below and for each one decide whether it is a crime or not, then try to explain why it may, or may not, be considered a crime.
| Example of behaviour | Crime Y/N | Reasons why it may be a crime | Reasons why it may not be a crime |
| Taking drugs | | | |
| Public nudity | | | |
| Damaging property | | | |
| Theft | | | |
| Adultery | | | |
| Hitting a child | | | |
| Killing someone | | | |
A simple definition of crime could be, anything that goes against the law of the land, which makes it easy in some respects, as you could then simply say that if there is a law that says you shouldn’t do something and you do it, then that’s a crime. However, as with most things in life (and definitely in psychology), simple ideas are not always as useful as they first appear and there are a number of factors to be considered in whether or not we can say that something is a crime. Other definitions of crime might include a moral question of whether an act is not just illegal but is immoral too, so we could say that a crime is anything that goes against the moral values of society, whatever they are!
- The law changes over time – what was considered illegal in the past might not be any more and what was once legal might not be now, e.g. in the past in the UK it was illegal to be gay but legal to beat your children; some strange morals in play there.
- Moral values vary between people – from the two examples above, we can see that people can have different views on what is right and wrong and it’s difficult to have an absolute view of what is and is not immoral. Even if we take the most extreme example of killing someone (which everyone would agree is bad) then there can still be different views about in what circumstances it might...
