Forensics - Psychological Explanations: Differential association Flashcards
What is differential association theory?
An explanation of offending behaviour in terms of learning theory, how interactions with others lead to the formation of attitudes about crime as well as acquiring specific knowledge about how to commit crimes.
What is learnt?
A child learns attitudes towards crime i.e whether it is desirable or undesirable. Therefore a potential criminal is someone who has learned pro-criminal attitudes from those around them. A child may also learn about specific methods for committing crimes.
Who is it learned from?
Attitudes and behaviours are learned from intimate personal groups , such as family and or peer group. They are also learned from th wider neighbourhood. The degree to which the local community supports or opposes criminal involvement determines the difference in crime rates from one area to another.
How is it learned?
The frequency, length and personal meaning of such social associations will determine the degree of influence. Operant conditioning .
Explain research support
Osbourne and West found that where there is a father with a criminal conviction 40% of the sons had committed a crime by age 18 compared to 13% of sons of non-criminal fathers. Genetic issue for these findings.
What methodological issues are there?
Data collected is correlational , which does not tell us about the cause and what is the effect. In terms of peer influences it could be that offenders seek out other offenders and this would explain why offenders are likely to have peers who are offenders. Some critics argue that the theory is not testable because of the difficulty of disentangling learned and inherited influences . The issue is about how one measures the effect of number and strength of associations on subsequent attitudes.
Other limitations
Rules out biological influence
Can’t account for all crimes
