Psychological explanations: Differential association theory

Question 1

A01

What is the Differential Association Theory?

Answer 1

A theory that proposes that individuals learn the values, attitudes & techniques & motives for criminal behaviour through association & interaction
e.g, a person might associate with people who have accepted & frequently commit crime, & so this what will form the basis of their future attitudes towards offending

Question 2

A01

Outline the scientific basis for differential association theory

Answer 2

Sutherland developed a set of scientific principles that could explain all types of offending
His theory is designed to discriminate between ppl who become criminals & those who do not regardless of race, gender or ethnic background

Question 3

A01

Explain offending as a learnt behaviour–sutherland

Answer 3

Sutherland suggests that offending behaviour can be acquired by the child through learning process depending on who child trusts & values & who they spend the most time with (e siblings & Peers)
He states its possible to predict likelihood that a person will commit offences by looking at their exposure to devaint & non deviant values
Offending arises from two factors: learned attitudes towards offending and learning of specific techniques

Question 4

A01

Outline Learned attitudes towards offending

Answer 4

When socialised into a group, a person will be exposed to that group’s attitudes, values & principles, & will learn & internalise these attitudes, values and principles
including motivations & rationalisations for committing a crime
Sutherland argues if number of pro-criminal attitudes the person is exposed to outweighs the number of anti-criminal attitudes, then risk of offending is increased

Question 5

A01

Learning of techniques

Answer 5

if a person is exposed to the technique of a behaviour and knows how to commit an act, they are more likely to adopt this behaviour
Sutherland suggests that a person may learn specific techniques for committing crimes, as well as being exposed to attitudes underpinning them
For instance, it would be easy to imitate act if a person has watched (and therefore learned how to) break into a car without triggering the alarm, or how to pick a lock

Question 6

A03

Complex concepts of DAT-difficult to test

Limitation

Answer 6

Differential Association Theory is difficult to test because of the lack of operationalisation within the concepts
Variables such as ‘pro-criminal attitudes’ are too complex to define and therefore operationalisation, can’t be measured
Without this test, the formulation of when a person will offend is redundant because the threshold at which a person is said to offend cannot be identified, thus ruining the scientific credibility Sutherland strived for

Question 7

A03

Good explanation of other crimes-white collar crime

Strength

Answer 7

Sutherland coined ‘white-collar crime’ through recognising clusters of crimes & where they were committed, showing that this theory has a wide reach in application and explanation of different crimes
For example, he recognised that burglaries would occur more so in inner cities amongst working class people, but that some offences (such as non-directly violent crime or money-related crime) occurred in more affluent areas
This increases the population validity of his theory