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LEARNING TO BE BAD: ADVERSE SOCIAL CONDITIONS, SOCIAL SCHEMAS, AND CRIME
Ronald L Simons1, Callie Harbin Burt
1Department of Sociology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30606.
Criminology : an Interdisciplinary Journal
|July 16, 2011
Summary
Adverse social factors like family, peer, and community issues foster criminal schemas. These schemas, including hostility and cynicism, predict offending by shaping how individuals interpret situations, particularly among African American teens.
Area of Science:
- Criminology
- Social Psychology
- Developmental Psychology
Background:
- Social factors are linked to individual offending.
- Existing theories inadequately explain how disparate social conditions converge to influence crime.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and test a social schematic model explaining the link between social factors and crime.
- To investigate how family, peer, and community conditions promote specific social schemas that lead to offending.
Main Methods:
- Structural equation modeling was used.
- Data from approximately 700 African American adolescents were analyzed.
Main Results:
- Adverse social conditions (community crime, discrimination, harsh parenting, deviant peers, low collective efficacy) increased commitment to three key social schemas.
- These schemas (hostile worldview, preference for immediate rewards, cynical view of norms) were interconnected and formed a latent construct.
- This construct strongly predicted increases in crime, largely mediating the effects of adverse conditions.
Conclusions:
- The social schematic model provides a unified framework for understanding how social factors influence offending.
- The findings highlight the indirect pathway from adverse social conditions to crime through the development of criminogenic knowledge structures.
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