Learning and Situational Factors

Situationism

Belief that a person’s interaction with the environment and situation are primary determinants of behavior (no free will or independent thinking)

Operant Conditioning

Learning to either make or withhold a response because of the consequence; probability of behavior is changed by change in consequence

Reinforcement (increases likelihood), punishment (decreases likelihood), extinction (no reaction to undesired behavior)

Behaviorists believe crime was learned and maintained through reinforcement

Expectancy Theory

Performance level is based on the expectation that the behavior wil lead to a particular outcome

Differential Association-Reinforcement (DAR)

People learn to commit crime through interpersonal interactions (operant conditioning)

Strength of deviant behaviors depend on amount, frequency, and probability of reinforcement in the past (social and nonsocial)

Frustration-induced Criminality

Behavior becomes more vigorous when behavior directed at a goal is blocked (ex. rioting)

Socialized offender: product of learning, conditioning, modeling

Individual offender: product of long, intense frustrations from unmet needs

Fundamental Attribution Error

Human tendency to discount influence of situation and explain behavior by referring to someone’s personality instead (self-serving bias)

Deindividuation

Loss of sense of individuality in a crowd, removed self-imposed controls, and neutralized internalized moral restraints (collective behaviors, group disguises)

Moral Disengagement

Process of freeing oneself from own moral standards to act against them and/or reconstructing behaviors in their mind (ex. denial, dehumanization, etc.)

Explains how “good” people can do bad things under pressure

Crimes of Obedience

Authority figure as the instigator of criminal behavior

Bystander Effect