Chapter 9 - Travis Hirschi Flashcards
Summary of Control theory by Travis Hirschi
SOCIAL BOND/SOCIAL CONTROL THEORY
According to Hirschi (1969), virtually all existing criminological theories began with a faulty fundamental premise: that criminal behavior requires, in some form, the creation of criminal motivation. For example, strain the- ories that emerged out of Merton’s (1938) work assumed that it was the pressure placed on social norms, due to a disconnect between youths’ goals and aspirations and their ability to reach such goals through legitimate means, that created the motivation to offend—an assumption echoed by later versions of strain theory articulated by Cloward and Ohlin (1960). In addition, perspectives drawing on the differential association tradition (see Sutherland, 1939) assumed that the values and techniques associated with criminal behavior had to be learned—a process that occurred largely through exposure to deviant peers and to deviant value systems that cre- ated the motivation to offend (Akers & Sellers, 2008).
Hirschi, on the other hand, began with the opposite premise: that all of us, beginning at birth, possess the hedonistic drive to act in the kinds of selfish and aggressive ways that lead to criminal behavior. Indeed, it takes
no disjunction between a child’s long-term goals and his perception of blocked opportunities to meet those goals to steal another child’s truck in a sandbox, nor does it take extended exposure to deviant peers or to deviant value systems for a child to impulsively and aggressively shove that child to the ground after swiping said sandbox truck without thinking about the long-term consequences of his actions. These behaviors, Hirschi contended, are part of our innate human nature—the important part, he argued, is that most of us control these “natural” urges. In short, Hirschi (1969) began his theory with the view that asking why offenders “do it” when it comes to crime and delinquency is, on its face, an irrelevant ques- tion. Instead, we should be asking, “why don’t we do it?”
For Hirschi, the answer could be found in the bonds that people form to prosocial values, prosocial people, and prosocial institutions. It is these bonds, Hirschi held, that end up controlling our behavior when we are tempted to engage in criminal or deviant acts. Accordingly, these bonds come in four interrelated forms, the first of which is attachment. Attachment, according to Hirschi (1969), refers to the level of psycholog- ical affection one has for prosocial others and institutions. For Hirschi, par- ents and schools were of critical importance in this regard, where youths who form close attachments to their parents1 and schools will, by exten- sion, experience greater levels of social control. For example, in the movie Scream (Craven, 1996), when the two killers are unmasked, one of them laments that, once everyone finds out about them, “my mom is gonna be so mad at me.” Although this particular fictional offender’s maternal attachments obviously did not keep him from killing, it does point to the broader issue of how these attachments can control our behavior—of not wanting to disappoint those we love with our misbehavior.
The second type of bond is referred to as commitment, where Hirschi cited the importance of the social relationships that people value, which they would not want to risk jeopardizing by committing criminal or deviant acts. In essence, Hirschi noted that people are less likely to misbehave when they know that they have something to lose. For juveniles, this could mean not wanting to look bad in front of friends, parents, or teachers for having committed a crime—something for which shame from those whose opinion of them matters would be a likely consequence. The same would hold true for adults, Hirschi would argue, where people might refrain from engaging in deviant activities that may threaten their employment or marriage— bonds that, again, may serve as sources of social control.
The third type of social bond is known as involvement, which relates to the opportunity costs associated with how people spend their time. Specifically, Hirschi tapped into the old philosophy that “idle hands are the devil’s workshop” in that if people are spending their time engaged in some form of prosocial activity, then they are not, by definition, spending their time engaged in antisocial activity. For example, youths who areheavily involved in legitimate school-related activities—either academi- cally, socially, or athletically—will not be spending that same time destroying property, stealing things that don’t belong to them, shooting heroin, and so on. This is not to say, of course, that such youths cannot engage in those behaviors before or after their legitimate activities. Nevertheless, Hirschi argued that, at least during that time, such youths will not be committing delinquent acts.
The final type of social bond identified by Hirschi is belief, which refers to the degree to which one adheres to the values associated with behaviors that conform to the law; the assumption being that the more important such values are to a person, the less likely he or she is to engage in criminal/deviant behavior. For example, youths who do not value the notion that it is a bad idea to skip school, and instead value spending the day playing the latest version of Guitar Hero (music video game) and smoking marijuana, are more likely to do just that. Conversely, youths who, for example, share the belief that using illegal narcotics is wrong are less likely to participate in such behavior. Although this relationship is quite simple, the underlying concept Hirschi was tapping into was that there is an important link between attitudes and behavior—not in the sense that attitudes motivate people to commit crime, but rather that prosocial attitudes constrain people from committing the crimes they otherwise would have in the absence of such social bonds (i.e., beliefs).
Perhaps the most significant element of Hirschi’s theory is that, taken together, these social bonds coalesce in a way that controls our behavior indirectly—that is, we do not need to have these bonds directly present in our lives to keep our behavior in check. Instead, the prosocial bonds we have formed can control our behavior even when they are no longer there. To illustrate this point, ask yourself this question: Have you ever found yourself driving in the middle of nowhere and you encounter a four-way stop? You can see all around you and you know that nobody is coming, you don’t need to yield to anyone, and there is no police officer camping out near the intersection to catch you if you were to just roll right through it. Yet what would many of us do? We would stop anyway (or come very close to it). Why do we do this? Our visual scan of the area says that it can’t be because of the direct threat of getting a ticket or of getting into an accident. Hirschi would contend that it is instead the “indirect” psycho- logical control exerted by our social bonds that causes us to stop at that intersection.
Relatedly, it is also important to note that Hirschi’s social bonds repre- sented, at least primarily, mechanisms of informal social control—that is, the bonds that control our behavior are typically social conventions rather than formally adopted laws. If you doubt the power of informal rules to guide what we decide to do or not do at any given moment, consider the example of elevator behavior. None of us has been given a pamphlet concerning how
we should or should not behave when getting on an elevator, yet there are consistencies of action that all of us seem to follow: A little small talk is per- missible, but keep it superficial; give everyone else adequate personal space; looking up at the light moving from floor to floor is the most common place to direct your visual attention. If you doubt the power of any of these infor- mal norms, try violating them sometime and see just how uncomfortable you make those riding with you. Indeed, start a conversation about religion or politics with your elevator mates, or stand facing them while invading their space, or get on your hands and knees and closely examine a spot on the floor. You’ll see just how quickly the discomfort level will rise, and you will know that your behavior has violated the rules that informally keep our behavior in check.
Perhaps a more criminologically relevant example would be how many of us handle holiday family get-togethers. We are there with family, whether we like it or not, and at times the veneer of civility starts to wear thin. When the uncle you may have loathed for your entire life takes the best piece of turkey right before you get to it, what stops you from beating him about the head with the gravy ladle? Is it because there are laws telling you that doing so is illegal—is that what stops you? Unlikely. The more likely explanation is that you have a set of bonds in the form of morals and values that tell you that bludgeoning someone with a serving implement is not an appropriate response to turkey pilfering—that is what keeps your behavior in line. Thus, the formal legal rule prohibiting assault-by-ladle likely plays little to no role in your decision to simply move on to the mashed potatoes.
In essence, Hirschi (1969) argued that juvenile delinquents and adult criminals lack these bonds to conventional society. Offenders behave the way they do because they are not controlled; their “natural instincts” are not curtailed. In taking this position, Hirschi created one of the deepest divisions within criminology—one where the very premise of all “motiva- tional” theories was called into question. The legacy of this division is still with us today and can be seen, for example, in how vehemently scholars from the “control” versus “learning” camps disagree with one another (see McGloin, Pratt, & Maahs, 2004). This is a debate that has stayed with us for decades and is likely to continue well into the future. What is often overlooked, however, is the extent to which this debate was fueled not necessarily by Hirschi’s idea itself, but rather the way in which Hirschi presented his theory.
