Lesson 4.3.9.2

4.3.9.2 Biological explanations of offending Quiz: AQA Psychology, Unit 3

20 questions

Written by Revision Ninja · Last reviewed 11 October 2026

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Lesson 4.3.9.2, Biological explanations of offending: 20 multiple choice questions for the AQA Psychology (7182), Unit 3: Issues and options in Psychology, written with Revision Ninja.

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The 20 questions

  1. Which gene variant linked to offending breaks down neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin?

    • MAOA gene
    • CDH13 gene
    • COMT gene
    • SERI gene

  2. What did Mednick et al.'s adoption study reveal about children with criminal biological parents?

    • Zero criminal risk
    • Lower conviction rates
    • Higher conviction rates
    • Identical IQ scores

  3. What term describes the percentage of twin pairs where both individuals display criminal behaviour?

    • Concordance rate
    • Correlation coefficient
    • Heritability index
    • Adoption ratio

  4. Which neural area is often linked to impulse control and moral decision-making, and found to be altered in some offenders?

    • The medulla oblongata
    • The prefrontal cortex
    • The occipital cortex
    • The cerebellum

  5. Which brain structure's abnormal activity is linked to violent offending due to emotional processing?

    • Amygdala
    • Hypothalamus
    • Corpus callosum
    • Cerebellum

  6. What major criticism applies to purely biological explanations of offending behaviour?

    • Temporal invalidity
    • Ethnocentric bias
    • Subjective bias
    • Biological determinism

  7. Reduced activity in which brain region is associated with poor impulse control in violent offenders?

    • Occipital lobe
    • Prefrontal cortex
    • Somatosensory cortex
    • Motor cortex

  8. What does an MZ twin concordance rate below 100% for criminal behaviour demonstrate?

    • Methodological invalidity
    • Environmental influence
    • Zero heritability
    • Pure genetic control

  9. Why is it difficult to separate nature from nurture in twin studies of offending?

    • Small sample sizes
    • Shared environments
    • Identical DNA
    • Ethical restrictions

  10. A neuroscientist suggests that an offender's violence is linked to damage in a region involved in self-control. Which region is most relevant?

    • The frontal lobes
    • The spinal cord
    • The hippocampus only
    • The occipital lobes

  11. Rather than directly causing crime, genetic factors are best described as creating what?

    • Guaranteed outcomes
    • Automatic behaviours
    • Psychological disorders
    • Biological predispositions

  12. What are the two main categories of biological explanations for criminal behaviour?

    • Genetic and neural
    • Cognitive and behavioural
    • Humanistic and evolutionary
    • Psychodynamic and social

  13. Which term describes a genetic risk for offending that is triggered by environmental factors?

    • Neural explanation
    • Gene-environment interaction
    • Differential association
    • Biological determinism

  14. Which brain structure, linked to emotion and threat processing, is implicated in aggressive offending?

    • Prefrontal cortex
    • Corpus callosum
    • Thalamus
    • Amygdala

  15. Which ethical issue arises because biological explanations imply offenders lack control over their actions?

    • Soft determinism
    • Hard determinism
    • Cultural relativism
    • Psychological reductionism

  16. What key limitation applies to brain scan studies showing structural differences in offenders?

    • High observer bias
    • Low construct validity
    • Ethical issues
    • Lack of causality

  17. What are the two biological explanations of offending behaviour in the AQA specification?

    • Genetics and neural
    • Genetics and evolutionary
    • Hormonal and evolutionary
    • Cognitive and neural

  18. What percentage of genes do monozygotic twins share in twin studies of offending?

    • 100%
    • 75%
    • 25%
    • 50%

  19. Adoptees showing criminal behaviour more similar to biological than adoptive parents supports which explanation?

    • Environmental factors
    • Differential association
    • Cognitive distortions
    • Genetic factors

  20. Which scanning technique measures active brain function in offenders during experimental tasks?

    • Gene mapping
    • fMRI
    • Post-mortem
    • EEG trace

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