Learning Theories

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Learning Theories
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A Life of Crime?

• Could you go out tomorrow and embark on a life of
  crime? What would you do? How would you do it?

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Learning Theory

• Criminal behavior is learned in a social context
• Values, norms, motives, techniques
• We become the company we keep
• Criminals are the same as everyone else
• The difference lies in what they have learned,
  from whom, and in what contexts
• A reaction against biological determinism

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Edwin SutherlandsDifferential Association Theory

1. Criminal behavior is learned
2. In interaction with other people
3. Particularly intimate groups (family and peers)

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Differential Association Theory

• 4. Learning includes
• Techniques (important for some crimes)
• Motives, drives, rationalizations, and attitudes
• 5. Criminals are people who learn to define the
  legal code as unfavorable

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The Heart of Differential Association Theory

• 6. Crime results from an excess of definitions
  favorable to law violations over definitions
  unfavorable to law violations (a ratio)
• - Depends, to a degree, on opportunities for
  associations present in the larger context

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Differential Association Theory

• 7. Differential associations vary in frequency,
  duration, temporal priority, and intensity
• 8. Learning crime is the same as learning
  anything else
• 9. Criminal and noncriminal behavior are the
  result of learned needs and values (desire for
  material success)

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Cheating on an Exam

• Can we explain cheating on an exam using
  differential association theory?

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Limits of DifferentialAssociation Theory

• Difficult to test empirically
• Causal direction is difficult to show
• Perhaps birds of a feather flock together?
• Depicts people as passive
• Tabula rasa, de-emphasizes free will

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Social Learning Theory

• What makes differential association work?
• Sutherland learned attitudes -gt behavior
• Not supported by War and Stafford (1991)
• Akers answer Social Learning Theory
• Behavior is influenced by its consequences
• Rewards and punishments determine crime
• Soft behaviorism cognitive appraisal

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Four Principles ofSocial Learning Theory

• Differential association with others
• We learn behaviors and norms
• Definitions
• We learn moral attitudes about right wrong
• Include neutralizations rationalizations
• Differential Reinforcement
• Lifetime balance of anticipated or actual rewards
  and punishments -gt probability of behavior
• Imitation
• Explains onset of behavior, but not persistence

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Questions

• How would social learning theory explain white
  collar crime?
• Street crime, drug dealing, robbery
• Sex crimes, rape, child molestation
• Minor crimes, shoplifting

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Policy Implications

• Informal interventions
• Spending time with children
• Putting kids in activities with good kids
• Formal interventions
• Big brother / big sister
• Behavioral modification quit smoking
• Token economy prisons and psych hospitals