Psy Explanations- Differential Association Flashcards
Sutherland proposed the differential association theory which is an explanation of offending behaviour in terms of the learning theory. It suggests how interactions with others lead to the formation of attitudes about crime as well as acquiring special knowledge about how to commit crimes.
A child can learn attitudes toward crime whether it’s desirable or not. A potential criminal is someone who has learned pro criminal attitudes from those around them. Children may also learn what types of crime are acceptable within their community. Finally a child may learn about specific methods to commit crimes.
Attitudes and behaviours are learned from intimate personal relationships. They’re also learned from the wider neighbourhood. The degree to which the local community opposes or supports criminal involvement determines the differences in crime rates from one area to another. The individual or social groups may not be criminals themselves but may still hold deviant attitudes or an acceptance of such attitudes.
Sutherland suggested that the frequency length and personal meaning of such social associations determines degree of influence. The mode of learning is likely to be both direct and indirect operant conducting. A child may be directly reinforced for deviant behaviours through praise or may be punished for such behaviour by family or peers. If a role model is successful themselves in criminal behaviour this provides indirect reinforcement.
Sutherlands key nine principles.
Sutherland proposed that criminal behaviour is learned through associations while others are innate. The association is with intimate personal groups. Techniques and attitudes are learned. This learning is directional. If the number of favourable attitudes outweighs unfavourable a person becomes an offender. General need for example money is not a good enough explanation for crime because not everyone with those needs turn to crime.
A major strength of the theory is that it changed people’s views about the origins of criminal behaviour. Instead of only blaming individual factors we can now look at social factors as well. This theory suggested that crime did not need to be explained in terms of personality but could be explained in terms of social experiences. This therefore means that there is a useful application to everyday life. The theory identifies that children need to be taught the values and attitudes of law abiding behaviour to prevent them from breaking it. This is extremely useful as child rearing practices are easy to change whereas genes are not
In addition to this there is a lot of support from research evidence. One form of evidence for this theory is that criminality appears to run in families. For example researchers found that where there is a father with a criminal conviction 40% of the sons had committed a crime by 18 compared to 13% of sons of non criminal fathers. However such findings do not wholly support only the differential association theory as these findings could be explained in terms of genes as well. This highlights the fact that Sutherlands theory represents the nurture side of the nature nurture debate. It states that it’s purely social interaction with your intimate relations that causes you to turn to crime. However it can be argued that there is a level of biological causes to crime and that genes play a part or even that media has an influence on criminal behaviour.
In relation to this the absence of biological factors from this theory is a severe weakness. The diathesis stress model may offer a better explanation by combining social factors with vulnerability factors. Such vulnerability factors may be innate genetic ones or it may be that early experiences (maltreatment) acts as a vulnerability factor. The fact that this theory purely focuses on the social interactions rather than the role of biological factors or the role of both together highlights the problem that it is a very reductionist approach. If you have two individuals in exactly the same situation one may turn to crime and the other may not because there is a level of willpower involved when it comes to wanting to commit crime.
In addition the direction of cause and effect is unclear as there are methodological issues. The data collected is correctional which does not tell us what is cause and what is effect. In terms of peer influences it could be that offenders seek out other offenders and this explains why offenders are likely to have peers who are offenders. Some critics argue that the theory isn’t testable because it is difficult to measure the effect of number and strength of associations on subsequent attitudes. It is also not clear what ratio of favourable to unfavourable influences would tip the balance for someone to become a criminal.
Sutherlands theory can also be criticised as being extremely deterministic.
His theory suggests that we can learn criminal behaviour and that we have no choice. He suggested that out behaviour is caused by external causes which makes us commit crimes. This goes against the theory of free will and that we have a choice to actively decide what to do.
