Differential Association

• Differential Association


  Learn the behaviours, values, attitudes and techniques from association and interaction with others, as a cultural tradition
• Socialisation


  Process of which individuals learn norms and values
• Sutherland (1924)


  Theory of scientific principles that could explain all types of offending

  • Learned rather than inherited
  • Vary in frequency
  • Association learning through personal groups
  • Favourable attitudes outweight unfavourable, becoming criminal
• Frequency + Intensity + Duration = Likelihood of Offending
• Pro-Criminal Attitudes


  Different deviant norms and values
• Reinforcement


  Behaviours are reinforced through reward, expectation and approval from other people
• Offending techniques are passed through generations, kept in the family
• (+) A03: Social Groups

  Explains why certain crimes are committed by certain social groups e.g. white collar crimes, as they are learnt through association
• (+) A03: Rejects Racism


  Went against other explanations supporting the eugenics movement like Atavistic form as an explanation for crime, moved psychology away from that idea
• (-) A03: Correlational


  Differential association is hard to prove, the amount of socialisation cannot be operationalised, creating a correlational link rather than causal, it may be that offenders seek out others rather than being around them initially