Strain theory is a prominent sociological framework that seeks to explain how social stressors and strains can lead individuals to engage in deviant or criminal behavior. Developed by American sociologist Robert K. Merton in the early 20th century, strain theory has played a significant role in the study of criminology and deviance.
Strain theory emerged as a response to earlier sociological theories that primarily focused on the individual’s motivations and psychological factors as the primary drivers of deviant behavior. Robert K. Merton, influenced by the works of Emile Durkheim and the broader functionalist perspective, shifted the focus toward the role of societal structures and cultural expectations in shaping deviance.
Merton’s seminal work on strain theory can be found in his 1938 article titled “Social Structure and Anomie,” where he introduced the concept of anomie—an individual’s sense of normlessness or lack of social integration. He argued that society’s norms and values could create a state of strain for individuals when they face a disjunction between culturally prescribed goals and the means available to achieve those goals.
Core Concepts of Strain Theory
Strain theory is built upon several core concepts that provide a framework for understanding the relationship between societal pressures and deviant behavior:
1. Cultural Goals:
Cultural goals represent the socially accepted objectives and aspirations that society encourages individuals to strive for. These goals typically include financial success, educational attainment, and social status.
2. Institutionalized Means:
Institutionalized means refer to the legitimate, socially approved methods and pathways individuals are expected to use to achieve cultural goals. These means may include education, employment, and entrepreneurship.
3. Conformity:
Conformity occurs when individuals pursue both culturally prescribed goals and institutionalized means. They abide by societal norms and adhere to the accepted rules of conduct.
4. Innovation:
Innovation refers to a deviant adaptation in which individuals strive for cultural goals but reject or modify the accepted means to achieve those goals. This often involves engaging in illegal or unconventional activities.
5. Ritualism:
Ritualism involves a situation where individuals abandon the pursuit of cultural goals but continue to adhere rigidly to the accepted means. They may become fixated on following societal rules without seeking the rewards associated with the prescribed goals.
6. Retreatism:
Retreatism occurs when individuals reject both cultural goals and the legitimate means of achieving them. They often turn to alternative lifestyles, such as substance abuse or homelessness, as a way of coping with the strain.
7. Rebellion:
Rebellion represents a form of deviance where individuals challenge and reject the established cultural goals and means. Instead, they seek to replace existing norms and values with their own ideals and create a new social order.
Empirical Research and Examples
Strain theory has been extensively studied and has yielded valuable insights into the relationship between social stressors and deviant behavior. Empirical research has explored various aspects of strain theory and provided real-world examples to support its principles:
1. Delinquency and Criminal Behavior:
Research has shown that individuals experiencing strain, such as economic deprivation or limited access to educational opportunities, are more likely to engage in criminal activities. For instance, youth from disadvantaged backgrounds may resort to theft or drug-related offenses as a means of achieving financial success when they perceive limited legitimate opportunities.
2. Innovation and Deviant Subcultures:
Strain theory has been used to explain the emergence of deviant subcultures, such as street gangs. Gang members often innovate by engaging in illegal activities, like drug trafficking, to attain societal success when they feel marginalized and excluded from conventional pathways.
3. Corporate Crime:
Strain theory has been applied to understand corporate crime and white-collar offenses. Some individuals in high-pressure corporate environments may resort to fraudulent or unethical practices to achieve financial success, driven by the strain created by competitive work cultures.
4. Political Activism:
Strain theory is not limited to explaining criminal behavior; it also helps understand non-deviant responses to societal pressures. Some individuals experiencing strain may channel their frustrations into political activism, advocating for social change and challenging existing norms and power structures.
Contemporary Relevance
Strain theory continues to be relevant in contemporary society for several reasons:
1. Economic Inequality:
Economic disparities and limited access to opportunities remain prevalent in many societies. Strain theory offers insights into how individuals facing economic strain may resort to deviant or unconventional means to achieve their goals.
2. Social Movements:
Strain theory can help explain the emergence of social movements that challenge established norms and institutions. Movements advocating for racial equality, gender equity, and climate change action often arise in response to perceived strains within society.
3. Digital Age Challenges:
In the digital age, individuals may experience strain related to online harassment, cyberbullying, and the pressure to maintain a curated online persona. Strain theory provides a framework for understanding the psychological impact of these modern stressors.
4. Substance Abuse and Mental Health:
The strain caused by social isolation, economic stressors, and limited access to healthcare services can contribute to substance abuse and mental health issues. Strain theory helps contextualize the relationship between these stressors and deviant coping mechanisms.
Criticisms and Limitations
While strain theory offers valuable insights, it is not without criticisms and limitations:
1. Simplistic Model:
Critics argue that strain theory provides a somewhat simplistic model of deviance, as it primarily focuses on the role of societal pressures and economic factors while downplaying individual agency and personal motivations.
2. Cultural Variation:
Strain theory may not fully account for cultural variations in deviance. Different societies have diverse norms and values, which can influence individuals’ responses to strain differently.
3. Overemphasis on Economic Goals:
The theory’s emphasis on economic success as a primary cultural goal may not align with the diverse aspirations of individuals in contemporary society, where personal fulfillment, social justice, and environmental concerns play prominent roles.
4. Limited Explanation of Non-deviance:
Strain theory is primarily concerned with explaining deviance and may not provide a comprehensive framework for understanding why individuals choose to conform to societal norms.
Conclusion
Strain theory, pioneered by Robert K. Merton, has been instrumental in advancing our understanding of the relationship between societal pressures and deviant behavior. It offers a nuanced perspective on how individuals navigate the tension between cultural goals and institutionalized means. While the theory has faced criticisms and limitations, it remains a valuable framework for comprehending the complexities of deviance in contemporary society. Strain theory encourages us to examine the societal structures and pressures that can lead individuals to choose conformity or deviance in their pursuit of success and happiness.
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.
