6.1 Chapter Introduction
Take a moment to reflect on the last few tasks you completed before reading this chapter. Maybe you reviewed your notes from a lecture, made a meal, or scrolled through your social media accounts (figure 6.1). Each of these are distinct actions, yet they all rely on one underlying thing—learned behaviors. As students, you figure out how to effectively study and process information from courses, understand how to read a recipe and combine the ingredients into a meal, and generate content, pictures, or videos to portray your life in the way you want. These behaviors were also not learned in a vacuum; you are surrounded by friends, fellow students, family, and other acquaintances who have talked about or shown you their study habits, cooking skills, or social media engagement. Through these associations and social interactions, you learn behaviors. The social nature of our day-to-day lives has direct implications for our understanding of antisocial behavior.
While Chapter 5 focused on broad macro-level approaches to explain how social structure can impact criminal behavior, this chapter will look more closely at learning and social interactions. First, we will explore theories that borrow concepts from the field of psychology to make sense of crime as a learned behavior. We will also look at theories that emphasize the importance of social interaction and reaction in understanding criminal behavior. Finally, this chapter will investigate the influence of culture, discussing how deviation from mainstream culture and adherence to subcultures can impact criminal offending.
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, students will be able to do the following:
- Locate the foundation of social learning, interactionist, and subcultural theories in terms of the race, gender, and societal status of the theorists.
- Explain the creation of seminal (classic) sociological understandings of crime.
- Compare the different ways in which people learn criminal behavior.
- Analyze the influence of social interactions and reactions on criminal behavior.
- Evaluate how a response to mainstream culture can lead to the development of subcultures that promote or accept criminal behavior.
- Assess ethical concerns associated with the policy implications of social learning, interactionist, and subcultural theories.
Key Terms
- Classical conditioning: a learning process in which an automatic conditioned response is paired with a stimulus
- Code of the street: Anderson’s theory that Black street culture places a high value on respect, which can lead to conflicts between community members
- Cultural deviance theory: Miller’s theory that the lower class have their own subculture and that parents in this group socialize their children into six focal concerns that run counter to mainstream culture
- Differential association theory: Sutherland’s theory that criminality is learned through a process of interaction with others who communicate criminal values and advocate for the commission of crimes
- Differential opportunity theory: Cloward and Ohlin’s theory that juvenile gang formation depends on the neighborhood type and both the legal and illegal opportunities within it
- Labeling theory: the theory that societal reaction and the application of stigmatizing labels can lead to someone becoming deviant/criminal.
- Operant conditioning: a learning process in which reinforcements and punishments guide behavior
- Social learning theory: Burgess and Akers’s theory that people learn attitudes and behaviors conducive to crime in both social and nonsocial situations through positive reinforcement (rewards) and negative reinforcement (punishments)
- Status frustration theory: Cohen’s theory that four factors—social class, school performance, status frustration, and reaction formation (coping methods)—contribute to the development of gangs and delinquency in juveniles
- Subculture: a group that shares a specific identity that differs from the mainstream majority, even though they exist within the larger society
- Subculture of violence theory: Wolfgang and Ferracuti’s theory that certain norms and values, such as violence being an expected and normal response to conflict, are part of working-class communities and help explain violent crime
- Symbolic interactionist theory: a theory that, in part, posits that people take on roles when interacting with others
- Theory of imitation: Tarde’s theory that crime is the result of imitating or modeling the behaviors of others
Licenses and Attributions for Chapter Introduction
Open Content, Shared Previously
“Chapter Introduction” is adapted from “Learning Theories and Crime“, Introduction to Criminology by Dr. Zachary Rowan and Michaela McGuire, M.A., which is licensed under CC BY 4.0, except where otherwise noted. Modifications by Jessica René Peterson, licensed under CC BY 4.0, include shortening and adding context for what this chapter will include.
Figure 6.1. “friends eating lunch in diner” by danielcgold is licensed under the Unsplash License.
