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criminology essay
‘Describe and Evaluate two psychological explanation of crime. ‘

In this essay I’m going to describe and evaluate two psychological explanation of crime.
The crime is an act that constitutes an offense that may be prosecuted by state and is punishable by law. (FreeDictionary, 2013)

Bandura’s Social Learning Theory says that people learn from one another by observation, imitation and modelling.
Social Learning Theory, is when people observe it first so if goes by Attention. Then they remember where you have paid attention to, for example mental images and its Retention. Third one is when you reproducing the act that you have observed and remembered and its Reproduction. Finally, you have a good reason to imitate the crime so it’s Motivation.

Three main motivation factors which determine whether we decide to copy are vicarious learning, External motivation and Self reinforcement.
Vicarious Learning; is how people learn by watching others being rewarded or punished. For example children are watching a cartoons or films where heroes are rewarded for getting rid of the bad people but still, there is a lot of violence.
External motivation; is when a criminal act has been acquired through social learning, the individuals commits a crime and the behaviour is rewarded.
Self- reinforcement; this is a self motivation factors associated with a crime. This behaviour is more motivation if some internal need is satisfied with excitement, for example car-jacking.

Criminal behaviour can be learnt from role models like famous people, family, gangsters or even people that have an influence on you. When people see a criminal behaviour that is rewarded they imitate it. For example children, will imitate what they see in media (heroes being rewarded for getting rid of bad people) and usually there is a lot of action and violence.
Bandura conduced a study to investigate if social behaviours (i.e. aggression) can be acquired by imitation. Method that

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