Differential Association Theory, formulated by sociologist Edwin Sutherland in the early 20th century, is one of the foundational theories in the field of criminology and sociology. This theory seeks to explain why individuals engage in criminal behavior and delinquency by emphasizing the role of social interactions, particularly within peer groups and communities.
Differential Association Theory is rooted in the belief that criminal behavior is learned through social interactions and associations with others. Sutherland argued that individuals acquire both non-criminal and criminal values, attitudes, and techniques through their interactions with family, friends, peers, and other members of their social environment. The theory posits several key principles:
Criminal Behavior is Learned: According to Differential Association Theory, criminal behavior is not an innate trait but is instead learned through interactions with others. Individuals acquire criminal knowledge, techniques, and motivations from those they associate with.
Learning Occurs in Social Groups: The learning of criminal behavior primarily takes place within social groups and associations, such as family, peer groups, or close-knit communities. These groups transmit criminal values and norms.
Criminal Behavior Involves Techniques: Learning criminal behavior includes mastering specific techniques, such as methods of committing crimes, justifications, and rationalizations for criminal actions.
Criminal Definitions Favorable to Law Violations: Individuals may adopt criminal definitions, which are attitudes or beliefs that justify or rationalize criminal behavior. These definitions are often developed in opposition to conventional norms and values.
Frequency and Intensity of Associations: The likelihood of an individual engaging in criminal behavior is influenced by the frequency, duration, and intensity of their associations with individuals who advocate criminal conduct.
Differential Associations Vary in Quality: Not all associations are equal in their influence. Differential Association Theory suggests that the quality of associations matters, and individuals are more likely to adopt criminal behavior if they have close, intimate relationships with pro-criminal individuals.
Criminal Behavior is a Result of an Excess of Definitions Favorable to Law Violations: Criminal behavior occurs when an individual’s definitions favorable to law violations outweigh their definitions unfavorable to such actions.
The Historical Development of Differential Association Theory
Edwin Sutherland first introduced Differential Association Theory in the 1930s, challenging prevailing criminological theories of the time that primarily focused on biological and psychological factors as the main determinants of criminal behavior. Sutherland’s groundbreaking work shifted the attention to the sociological aspects of crime and deviance, highlighting the importance of social learning and environmental factors.
Sutherland’s theory was influential in reshaping the field of criminology, leading to a more sociological perspective on crime. It provided a framework for understanding why individuals from different backgrounds and environments might engage in criminal behavior, as it emphasized the role of social interactions in the acquisition of criminal values and behaviors.
The Relevance of Differential Association Theory in Contemporary Society
Differential Association Theory remains highly relevant in contemporary society and continues to be influential in the field of criminology and sociology. Here are some reasons why the theory remains applicable:
Social Learning in the Digital Age: In the digital age, social interactions and learning have expanded to include online spaces and virtual communities. Individuals can still acquire criminal values and behaviors through online associations, making the theory relevant in understanding cybercrime and online deviance.
Gangs and Street Subcultures: Differential Association Theory provides insights into the formation and activities of street gangs and subcultures, where individuals may engage in criminal behavior as a result of their associations and socialization within these groups.
Crime Prevention and Intervention: Understanding the principles of social learning outlined by Differential Association Theory is valuable for designing effective crime prevention and intervention programs. By targeting the social environments where criminal learning occurs, interventions can be more focused and impactful.
Juvenile Delinquency: The theory is particularly relevant in explaining juvenile delinquency, as it emphasizes the role of peer groups and family in the acquisition of criminal behavior among young individuals.
White-Collar Crime: Differential Association Theory has been applied to explain white-collar crime and corporate misconduct. It highlights how professionals and executives may learn to engage in unethical or criminal practices within their organizational cultures.
Policy Implications: The theory has influenced policy development and criminal justice practices. It underscores the importance of rehabilitation and reintegration programs that address the social learning processes of offenders.
Criticisms and Limitations of Differential Association Theory
While Differential Association Theory has made significant contributions to the field of criminology, it is not without its criticisms and limitations:
Lack of Testability: Some critics argue that the theory is difficult to test empirically because it relies on subjective assessments of individuals’ associations and definitions. Measuring the quality and quantity of social interactions can be challenging.
Neglect of Other Factors: Differential Association Theory focuses primarily on social learning and may not adequately account for other factors that contribute to criminal behavior, such as economic conditions, mental health, or genetic predispositions.
Simplistic Assumptions: The theory’s assumption that individuals simply absorb criminal values from their associates may oversimplify the complex processes that lead to criminal behavior. It does not address the role of individual agency and choice.
Limited Predictive Power: While the theory explains the acquisition of criminal behavior, it may have limited predictive power in determining which individuals will actually engage in criminal acts. Not everyone who associates with pro-criminal individuals becomes a criminal.
Culture and Subculture Variability: The theory does not fully account for cultural and subcultural variations in criminal behavior. What is considered criminal in one cultural context may differ in another.
Practical Applications and Policy Implications
Differential Association Theory has influenced various practical applications and policy implications in the field of criminology and criminal justice. Some of these applications include:
Rehabilitation Programs: Correctional institutions and rehabilitation programs often incorporate elements of social learning theory to address the factors contributing to criminal behavior. These programs aim to replace criminal definitions with prosocial ones.
Juvenile Justice Interventions: Differential Association Theory informs interventions aimed at preventing juvenile delinquency and guiding youth away from criminal associations. Early intervention programs target at-risk youth to provide positive alternatives.
Gang Prevention: Understanding the role of social interactions in gang formation and activities has led to targeted gang prevention and intervention strategies that focus on breaking the cycle of criminal learning.
Community Policing: Community policing initiatives consider the social environments that foster criminal behavior. Law enforcement agencies work collaboratively with communities to address the root causes of crime.
White-Collar Crime Investigations: In cases of white-collar crime, investigators often examine organizational cultures and associations that may have contributed to unethical or criminal behavior among professionals and executives.
Conclusion
Differential Association
Theory, formulated by Edwin Sutherland, offers valuable insights into the social learning processes that contribute to criminal behavior and delinquency. It has had a lasting impact on the field of criminology and continues to be relevant in understanding various forms of criminal conduct in contemporary society.
While the theory has its criticisms and limitations, it remains a foundational concept in criminological research and has practical applications in crime prevention, rehabilitation, and policy development. By emphasizing the role of social interactions and associations in the acquisition of criminal values and behaviors, Differential Association Theory underscores the importance of addressing the social environments that foster criminal learning and offers a framework for interventions and solutions.
Convergent thinking occurs when the solution to a problem can be found by applying established rules and logical reasoning. Whereas divergent thinking is an unstructured problem-solving method where participants are encouraged to develop many innovative ideas or solutions to a given problem. Where convergent thinking might work for larger, mature organizations where divergent thinking is more suited for startups and innovative companies.
The concept of cognitive biases was introduced and popularized by the work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in 1972. Biases are seen as systematic errors and flaws that make humans deviate from the standards of rationality, thus making us inept at making good decisions under uncertainty.
Second-order thinking is a means of assessing the implications of our decisions by considering future consequences. Second-order thinking is a mental model that considers all future possibilities. It encourages individuals to think outside of the box so that they can prepare for every and eventuality. It also discourages the tendency for individuals to default to the most obvious choice.
Lateral thinking is a business strategy that involves approaching a problem from a different direction. The strategy attempts to remove traditionally formulaic and routine approaches to problem-solving by advocating creative thinking, therefore finding unconventional ways to solve a known problem. This sort of non-linear approach to problem-solving, can at times, create a big impact.
Bounded rationality is a concept attributed to Herbert Simon, an economist and political scientist interested in decision-making and how we make decisions in the real world. In fact, he believed that rather than optimizing (which was the mainstream view in the past decades) humans follow what he called satisficing.
The Dunning-Kruger effect describes a cognitive bias where people with low ability in a task overestimate their ability to perform that task well. Consumers or businesses that do not possess the requisite knowledge make bad decisions. What’s more, knowledge gaps prevent the person or business from seeing their mistakes.
Occam’s Razor states that one should not increase (beyond reason) the number of entities required to explain anything. All things being equal, the simplest solution is often the best one. The principle is attributed to 14th-century English theologian William of Ockham.
The Lindy Effect is a theory about the ageing of non-perishable things, like technology or ideas. Popularized by author Nicholas Nassim Taleb, the Lindy Effect states that non-perishable things like technology age – linearly – in reverse. Therefore, the older an idea or a technology, the same will be its life expectancy.
Antifragility was first coined as a term by author, and options trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Antifragility is a characteristic of systems that thrive as a result of stressors, volatility, and randomness. Therefore, Antifragile is the opposite of fragile. Where a fragile thing breaks up to volatility; a robust thing resists volatility. An antifragile thing gets stronger from volatility (provided the level of stressors and randomness doesn’t pass a certain threshold).
Systems thinking is a holistic means of investigating the factors and interactions that could contribute to a potential outcome. It is about thinking non-linearly, and understanding the second-order consequences of actions and input into the system.
Vertical thinking, on the other hand, is a problem-solving approach that favors a selective, analytical, structured, and sequential mindset. The focus of vertical thinking is to arrive at a reasoned, defined solution.
Maslow’s Hammer, otherwise known as the law of the instrument or the Einstellung effect, is a cognitive bias causing an over-reliance on a familiar tool. This can be expressed as the tendency to overuse a known tool (perhaps a hammer) to solve issues that might require a different tool. This problem is persistent in the business world where perhaps known tools or frameworks might be used in the wrong context (like business plans used as planning tools instead of only investors’ pitches).
The Peter Principle was first described by Canadian sociologist Lawrence J. Peter in his 1969 book The Peter Principle. The Peter Principle states that people are continually promoted within an organization until they reach their level of incompetence.
The straw man fallacy describes an argument that misrepresents an opponent’s stance to make rebuttal more convenient. The straw man fallacy is a type of informal logical fallacy, defined as a flaw in the structure of an argument that renders it invalid.
The Streisand Effect is a paradoxical phenomenon where the act of suppressing information to reduce visibility causes it to become more visible. In 2003, Streisand attempted to suppress aerial photographs of her Californian home by suing photographer Kenneth Adelman for an invasion of privacy. Adelman, who Streisand assumed was paparazzi, was instead taking photographs to document and study coastal erosion. In her quest for more privacy, Streisand’s efforts had the opposite effect.
As highlighted by German psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer in the paper “Heuristic Decision Making,” the term heuristic is of Greek origin, meaning “serving to find out or discover.” More precisely, a heuristic is a fast and accurate way to make decisions in the real world, which is driven by uncertainty.
The recognition heuristic is a psychological model of judgment and decision making. It is part of a suite of simple and economical heuristics proposed by psychologists Daniel Goldstein and Gerd Gigerenzer. The recognition heuristic argues that inferences are made about an object based on whether it is recognized or not.
The representativeness heuristic was first described by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. The representativeness heuristic judges the probability of an event according to the degree to which that event resembles a broader class. When queried, most will choose the first option because the description of John matches the stereotype we may hold for an archaeologist.
The take-the-best heuristic is a decision-making shortcut that helps an individual choose between several alternatives. The take-the-best (TTB) heuristic decides between two or more alternatives based on a single good attribute, otherwise known as a cue. In the process, less desirable attributes are ignored.
The bundling bias is a cognitive bias in e-commerce where a consumer tends not to use all of the products bought as a group, or bundle. Bundling occurs when individual products or services are sold together as a bundle. Common examples are tickets and experiences. The bundling bias dictates that consumers are less likely to use each item in the bundle. This means that the value of the bundle and indeed the value of each item in the bundle is decreased.
The Barnum Effect is a cognitive bias where individuals believe that generic information – which applies to most people – is specifically tailored for themselves.
First-principles thinking – sometimes called reasoning from first principles – is used to reverse-engineer complex problems and encourage creativity. It involves breaking down problems into basic elements and reassembling them from the ground up. Elon Musk is among the strongest proponents of this way of thinking.
The ladder of inference is a conscious or subconscious thinking process where an individual moves from a fact to a decision or action. The ladder of inference was created by academic Chris Argyris to illustrate how people form and then use mental models to make decisions.
Goodhart’s Law is named after British monetary policy theorist and economist Charles Goodhart. Speaking at a conference in Sydney in 1975, Goodhart said that “any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.” Goodhart’s Law states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
The Six Thinking Hats model was created by psychologist Edward de Bono in 1986, who noted that personality type was a key driver of how people approached problem-solving. For example, optimists view situations differently from pessimists. Analytical individuals may generate ideas that a more emotional person would not, and vice versa.
The Mandela effect is a phenomenon where a large group of people remembers an event differently from how it occurred. The Mandela effect was first described in relation to Fiona Broome, who believed that former South African President Nelson Mandela died in prison during the 1980s. While Mandela was released from prison in 1990 and died 23 years later, Broome remembered news coverage of his death in prison and even a speech from his widow. Of course, neither event occurred in reality. But Broome was later to discover that she was not the only one with the same recollection of events.
The bandwagon effect tells us that the more a belief or idea has been adopted by more people within a group, the more the individual adoption of that idea might increase within the same group. This is the psychological effect that leads to herd mentality. What in marketing can be associated with social proof.
Moore’s law states that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles approximately every two years. This observation was made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965 and it become a guiding principle for the semiconductor industry and has had far-reaching implications for technology as a whole.
Disruptive innovation as a term was first described by Clayton M. Christensen, an American academic and business consultant whom The Economist called “the most influential management thinker of his time.” Disruptive innovation describes the process by which a product or service takes hold at the bottom of a market and eventually displaces established competitors, products, firms, or alliances.
Value migration was first described by author Adrian Slywotzky in his 1996 book Value Migration – How to Think Several Moves Ahead of the Competition. Value migration is the transferal of value-creating forces from outdated business models to something better able to satisfy consumer demands.
The bye-now effect describes the tendency for consumers to think of the word “buy” when they read the word “bye”. In a study that tracked diners at a name-your-own-price restaurant, each diner was asked to read one of two phrases before ordering their meal. The first phrase, “so long”, resulted in diners paying an average of $32 per meal. But when diners recited the phrase “bye bye” before ordering, the average price per meal rose to $45.
Groupthink occurs when well-intentioned individuals make non-optimal or irrational decisions based on a belief that dissent is impossible or on a motivation to conform. Groupthink occurs when members of a group reach a consensus without critical reasoning or evaluation of the alternatives and their consequences.
A stereotype is a fixed and over-generalized belief about a particular group or class of people. These beliefs are based on the false assumption that certain characteristics are common to every individual residing in that group. Many stereotypes have a long and sometimes controversial history and are a direct consequence of various political, social, or economic events. Stereotyping is the process of making assumptions about a person or group of people based on various attributes, including gender, race, religion, or physical traits.
Murphy’s Law states that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. Murphy’s Law was named after aerospace engineer Edward A. Murphy. During his time working at Edwards Air Force Base in 1949, Murphy cursed a technician who had improperly wired an electrical component and said, “If there is any way to do it wrong, he’ll find it.”
The law of unintended consequences was first mentioned by British philosopher John Locke when writing to parliament about the unintended effects of interest rate rises. However, it was popularized in 1936 by American sociologist Robert K. Merton who looked at unexpected, unanticipated, and unintended consequences and their impact on society.
Fundamental attribution error is a bias people display when judging the behavior of others. The tendency is to over-emphasize personal characteristics and under-emphasize environmental and situational factors.
Outcome bias describes a tendency to evaluate a decision based on its outcome and not on the process by which the decision was reached. In other words, the quality of a decision is only determined once the outcome is known. Outcome bias occurs when a decision is based on the outcome of previous events without regard for how those events developed.
Hindsight bias is the tendency for people to perceive past events as more predictable than they actually were. The result of a presidential election, for example, seems more obvious when the winner is announced. The same can also be said for the avid sports fan who predicted the correct outcome of a match regardless of whether their team won or lost. Hindsight bias, therefore, is the tendency for an individual to convince themselves that they accurately predicted an event before it happened.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
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