social psychology - differential association evaluation
- Created by: Elyseee
- Created on: 07-03-21 17:12
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- differential association evaluation
- Major contribution
- Strength - changes people’s view of what cause criminal behaviour
- Marked important shift from ‘blaming’ individual factors to pointing to social factors
- Suggests crime doesn't need to be explained in terms of personality, could be explained in terms of social experiences
- Important for real-world implications because learning environments can be changed
- Sutherland also introduced concept of ‘white-collar crime’ - highlights transgressions against law committed by people seen as respectable and in high social status (middle class)
- Non Violent crimes by business and government officials - fraud, bribery, copyright infringement, forgery , can be explained by differential association
- Supporting evidence
- Criminality appears to run in families
- Osborn and west 1979 - found 40% of sons with fathers with criminal convictions had also committed a crime by age of 18, compared to 13% of sons with non-criminal father - findings could also be explained in terms of genetics
- Akers et al 1979 - surveyed 2500 male and female adolescents in the US to investigate drinking and drug behaviour, found the most important influence was from peers. Differential association/reinforcement and imitation combined to account for 68% of variance in marijuana use and 55% of alcohol use
- Methodological issues
- Data collected is correlational - no determined cause and effect relationship
- Peer influence - criminals could seek out other criminals, would explain criminal peer groups
- Cox et al 2014 -argue theory isn’t testable, issue with how we measure effect of number and strength of associations and subsequent attitudes, not clear the ratio of unfavourable to favourable influences that could tip balance
- Can’t account for all types of crime
- Social learning influences probabaly confined to smaller crime rather than impulsive/violent crimes eg) ****, murder
- Differential association is only partial explanation
- But, smaller crime accounts for larger percentage of of crimes committed than violent/impulsive crime
- Eg - england and wales 2014, 500 homicides but >400,000 burglaries (ONS 2015)
- Differential association ant explain why most offences are committed by younger people
- Newburn 2002 - 40% offences committed by people under 21
- Eysenck personality theory can offer explanation for higher crime rates in young people - desire for risk
- Gudjuonsson and Sigurdsson 2007 - desire for risk was key factor
- Major contribution
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