Hi everyone, today we're going to just do a quick video on differential association and social learning theories. The two theories really they're micro level theories so it's at the individual level as opposed to like socialist organization which looks at neighborhoods or enemy theory which looks at which can look at you know society so it's more aggregate it's it's a macro level so social learning theory is looking at the process of learning. Right, in differential association theory, it was the forefront to Aker's social learning theory. So we're going to cover both today and talk real quickly about Sykes and Matz's techniques of neutralization. It's a process of a way that individuals can rationalize the behavior that they're doing, the illicit behavior that they're doing to some degree.
So let's get it going. So Sutherland. Sutherland's differential association theory.
So Sutherland, he's associated with the Chicago School and we've talked about the Chicago School and how specifically with social disorganization and the theory of social disorganization. So in Chicago how it rapidly grew and changed in the late 1800s from like just a few thousand to a couple million within a few decades timeframe, right? And then in the 1920s you see Parks and Burgess and these individuals coming up with the idea of neighborhoods being associated with crime and these are causes, the ecology of crime.
But Sutherland, he came out a little bit later in the 1940s with a differential association theory. He said, well, just as easily as neighborhoods might be the influence of crime, individuals within those neighborhoods can just go outside and see that crime's going on. and learn that process and learn how to be a criminal essentially. So he said that is what you perhaps need to look at.
And really he's looking at trying to explain the process of learning crime. So and he's saying that just the same way you can learn conforming behaviors or normative behaviors within society, you can learn other behaviors essentially. So that's kind of a shift in the paradigm.
And it's bringing it back away from the positivist paradigm to more of the classical, right? People are responsible. They're calculated.
They're rational. They know what they're doing. So he argued that learning occurs through a process. People turn to crime when there's an excess of attitudes favorable towards lawbreaking. So when you're around in a situation or around a lot of folks that are getting benefiting from your perception from crime through the commission of crime, then perhaps it's not as difficult for one to resort to those methods.
So within his differential association theory, his original, he developed nine principles, right? Nine different propositions, and he really lays it out. I'm not going to read these out to you, but so if you look at it, crime is criminal behaviors learned, criminal behaviors learned through interactions with other persons in the process of communication. And really, he just lays it out step by step by step. And there's nine of them.
So. Do Google search, you can find these anywhere, right? Or you can pause the video here and write them down and read through them if you want to. But in some regard, you want to focus on principles number six and seven here.
So, because these are really essentially what's extended into social learning theory, the acres perspective. So a person becomes delinquent because of excess of definitions favorable to violations of law over definitions unfavorable to violation of law. So essentially that... When you see people getting profiting from breaking the law constantly as opposed to being punished for it, and you see the benefits that are being achieved through that, then it becomes more likely that one will resort to that.
So that's what differential association is, okay? And these are the fundamental concepts associated with it. And he really talks about the frequency, duration, priority, and intensity in differential association.
So if you think of differential association, The notion of differential is just different, a different association, and different being not normal, not conducive to societal norms, not acceptable to societal standards to some degree, right? That's kind of like a subculture, outside the culture, that's kind of disregarded to some degree. So these factors play a role specifically within social learning theories. To some degree Sutherland is more looking at the law, the process itself, but Burgess and Akers, along with Akers, he really advanced Sutherland's work and they're not competing theories. Akers really took Initially there were a lot of arguments that Sutherland's work is difficult, extremely difficult, if not impossible to assess and test adequately.
But Akers kind of advanced it into four different concepts or four different propositions, four main propositions associated with social learning theory. So if you talk about social learning theories, if anybody's got a psychology background to some degree, or if you take any courses within psychology, you're going to really. look at Bandura in his idea of social learning, all right, in his social learning theory. So Bandura really focuses on a broad spectrum of learning behaviors.
Akers really is focused within the sociology and criminology domain. So we'll just focus on Ron Akers for now, but just know that it exists. Bandura has a lot of, you know, unique studies and things that are rooted within him within psychology and really you'll focus on him a lot if you're in psychology and if you have a psychology background anchors might not be as as relevant to you but within criminology and criminal justice is definitely one of the leading theorists and leading theories within criminology to explain deviant deviant behavior delinquent behavior criminal behavior it comes from social learning theory and it also also applies offers an applied response, a legitimate response.
And we'll get to that in a little bit, of how to shift one's behavior. So essentially what social learning theory assumes that social structure, interaction, and situation produces both conforming and deviant behaviors, right? So no matter what you do, no matter what context you're in within your family, within your friend groups, within your work groups, within your school groups, these all have different... situations that you know that can influence you to behave normally or conform to societal expectations or to perhaps be deviant or become delinquent to some degree all right and the intensity and those types of things also factor into but really there's four main propositions and acres narrowed it down to this definitions differential association differential reinforcement and imitation and we'll talk about these real quickly so definitions so you definitions are one's attitudes or meanings that it that one attaches to a behavior so their orientations attitudes rationalization so it's basically and they can be grounded in general beliefs or specific beliefs general beliefs being your morals your moral compass perhaps religious or just a general belief right like such as drugs in general are bad right one might believe that or specific a specific belief might be Well, this drug is good because it cures cancer, right? Or it cures an infection.
So as opposed to general and specific. Let me take one quick step back real quick. Anchors really advanced his theory in a time, and so does Bandura, within the context of operant conditioning, right? If you heard of Pavlov, when he rang the bell, they'd give a dog a treat and the dog would salivate.
And so they'd ring a bell, give the dog a treat, and he would salivate, right? And they did this a few times. And then you ring the bell and the dog will start salivating, expecting a treat, but no treat is given to them. So it's the idea that the individual is being conditioned into that.
And that's some of the underlying principles associated with this theory. So being exposed to perhaps drug dealers on a constant basis, and they're getting money and seeing these and observing these definitions that perhaps might be favorable to crime and seeing that the individuals. you know, got the nice car and all these different things, well, that might push an individual into that type of direction, right?
So from definitions, the second proposition is really focusing on differential associations. So we talked earlier about how differential essentially means different. So a differential association refers to the people with whom one comes into contact with. So it's different associations.
So in early in life, you have your primary unit, in adolescence peer influences become greater as well obviously right your friend groups when you get to the teenage years and start trying to find who you are and all those types of things in the high school years junior high and all that and trying to get your own independence find your own footing and all that stuff in life and you find your friends and they might become more important than some of your family members if not all of your family members so really what differential association gets that is The association with delinquent peers, and this is often how it's measured, how it's tested, and how it's assessed within social learning theory. And within any type of theoretical test within criminology, when you're trying to say, well, this type of thing causes more crime, well, you need to actually account for delinquent peer associations because the idea that differential association occurs right hanging out with friends if your friends are smoking marijuana there's a great chance that you're smoking marijuana as well if all of your friends none of them smoke marijuana or they're vehemently against it well it's probably the same same thing for you right so you're probably not smoking marijuana and doing those types of things so that's what differential association really is tapping into a delinquent peer associations or being exposed to and even to some degree the family unit like if your parents are maybe if your family's in a mob or the mafia or something like that and they might pass the torch down you see this at a young age and grow up in that type of lifestyle right so these are important points that can be assessed empirically and it really helps address the theory and it really gives an applied response an actual way to address delinquency within society, offering more pro-social outlets, right? Different avenues that aren't necessarily delinquent, not, you know, kids after school, they don't have to go hang out with those kids smoking marijuana. They can go to the after school club, right? Or have mentors or anything like that.
And those tend to be effective because they're pro-social and give, you know, mentorships and offer youth a different path to walk that they might be relegated to, right? differential reinforcement so it's a different type of reinforcement so being reinforced essentially for the negative behavior for the delinquent behavior for selling drugs well you sold drugs on last weekend made more money than you would have made at McDonald's last month right flipping burgers and all that type of stuff well it only took two days to get all this money and drive these nice cars right you give them reinforce for that behavior it's more likely you're going to continue to do that behavior so It refers to the balance of anticipated or actual rewards and punishment that follow or are consequences of behavior. So really the type of punishment in the actual rewards and the anticipated rewards that can occur from any type of behavior, especially if it's a different type of behavior, will really influence the decision to partake in that behavior. And then it becomes conditional, right?
So if you're... continually being reinforced for its negative behavior. I walked in a store, stole some candy.
Did it again, stole some candy. Next time, you're constantly being reinforced for that. The individual might continue to do that and take it to the next step and take it a step further.
Go steal their car next time and steal whatever, right? So go rob a bank because they've been continually going through that process, being reinforced, and then see the actual rewards versus the punishment because a lot of those crimes do go unpunished. for a variety of reasons.
But that's kind of the third proposition associated with it. And the final proposition is imitation associated with social learning theory. So it refers to the engagement of behavior after observation of similar behaviors and other. So really, Akers has noted before that imitations where a lot of delinquent behaviors first occur.
So if you got a cousin or an older brother or sister or whatever. there's cool kids right that are in a few grades higher and they're out there smoking weed at the park or you know spray painting something or breaking into cars well then that youth might go ahead and imitate that behavior because they see the other kids doing it so and that might be their starting point into a delinquent and criminal lifestyle so that being said uh these things can be tested a lot if we take it back to There's a lot of things I have skimmed over and I've glossed over and that's really what this video is about. It's just glossing over social learning theory and differential association theory to some degree.
But this can be, this is kind of difficult to assess because the question comes, does the chicken come before the egg or the egg before the chicken, all those types of things. Do I start smoking marijuana before I hang out with other people who smoke marijuana or do I see those people smoking marijuana and then want to hang out with them and then I start smoking? So that's kind of...
a question, but a lot of this stuff's been tested and analyzed through longitudinal data sets, through time ordering, right? So if you analyze a kid every year, these national youth survey, the national longitudinal surveys of youth, if you catch them in sixth grade, ask them if they smoke marijuana, ask them if they hang out with delinquent peers in seventh grade, ask them if they're smoking at eighth, and then you figure out kind of the process. You can see these things in surveys, and there's lots of good data and lots of good applied responses.
So Akerning, Akers and Jensen, I think it was in 2011, they wrote social learning theory is one of the most tried and tested theories in criminology, and it offers one of the most policy-based effective types of responses. And really, when you hear of cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT, and those types of things, programs that really address it and offering pro-social outlets and things like that, they're rooted to some degree in social learning theory, whether it be Akers or Bandura's social learning theories. But they tend to be much more effective than deterrence-based practices and other types of practices in reducing delinquency and delinquent behavior.
They tend to observe significant effects and be highly productive. So that's kind of social learning theory in a nutshell. And the big four propositions you all should be aware of. And those things can be tested independently and isolated.
And it really derives from Sutherland. So I'm just going to talk real quickly about the techniques of neutralization. This can be consistent with subculture theories, subcultural theories. But it becomes relevant to some degree because the question comes, How do individuals go about their daily lives? Because not everybody wears one hat, right?
If there's a criminal, you're not always a criminal, right? Or if you're delinquent, you're not always delinquent, right? You get caught up in some incidences or some context where you are, or you have to be, or you believe you need to be. But, you know, people go to jobs, people go to work, people go back to their families, they have grandmas, they have brothers and sisters, and all these types of things.
So the question Sykes and Moxley were attempting to address was well how do people rationalize these behaviors these negative behaviors to going out and robbing in breaking into people's homes and stealing cars and all these other types of things that are going on so they developed this idea of the techniques of neutralization the five ways to deal with these so people justify their acts it allows you to partake in deviant behavior while maintaining a self-image as a conformance so it's really more subcultural it's kind of loosely very loosely tied to The learning theories, but it's relevant to know at this point in time so They say the denial of responsibility Really it wasn't me. It's not my fault the devil made me do it any type of excuse in the world That's one way an individual can Justify the behavior denial of injury. We're just smoking weed. It didn't hurt nobody or you know selling some drugs It's not a big deal.
Nobody's getting hurt denial of a victim we robbed the bank we didn't rob any people we just stole money out there we robbed the car dealership we burned down the car dealership or whatever right they got insurance there's there's no victim there they have insurance there's all this that and the other so condemnation of the condemner like who are you to judge you were probably out there smoking weed you're out there selling right um appeal to higher loyalty so this is really specific to delinquent youth and like gangs and those types of things When it goes from the primary, when youth, you know, start, stop looking so much as their parents and go through the teenage years and start looking to different groups, perhaps, you know, gang, gangs and all these types of things. These are higher loyalties than certainly obeying the law, right? Well, my friends got shot, so we had to go shoot them back, right?
Or these types of things. So you appeal to your higher loyalties. So those are the three theories in a nutshell. Differential Association Theory really it's Sutherland's theory he came up with nine propositions it's really more focused on the process itself the law-breaking process. Social Learning Theory Anchor's perspective really gets into you know operate conditioning right the underlying mechanisms that exists right because how's how's done how it's reinforced how you're exposed to these definitions favorable how how you associate with people who are likely to be involved in that type of stuff, and then how it's reinforced in the imitation of those behaviors.
And techniques of neutralization, which it's really a stretch to attach it to social learning theory, but I'm just introducing it now. But it's really just a way of justifying those types of behaviors. So you have a good picture of it all.
But there's been a lot of work and a lot of applied policy responses in social learning theory when... things when programming addressing delinquent youth or deviant youth within society is rooted in the principles of social learning theory or takes those principles into account certainly it's much more extensive there's books on it and Nager's written extensively on it much more than this video gets to but they tend to be highly effective in reducing delinquent recidivism and delinquent activities so Hopefully this video helps you guys out a little bit, but just understand those concepts that exist, read more about it, look into it some more, and y'all have a great day. Take care.