Level of moral reasoning and cognitive distortions, including hostile attribution bias and minimalisation
Some offenders think about situations in distorted ways that make offending feel justified. Two key distortions are misreading others as hostile and downplaying the harm they cause.
Real World
A study by Schonenberg and Jusyte (2014) showed offenders photographs of ambiguous facial expressions and found that violent offenders were significantly more likely to interpret neutral faces as angry — a clear demonstration of hostile attribution bias in action.
Exam Focus
Define each distortion separately with a brief example — mark schemes award AO1 marks for distinct, accurate definitions of both HAB and minimalisation.
Evaluation Scaffold
A four-step framework for high-quality evaluation. Use this for 'assess', 'evaluate', and 'to what extent' questions.
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