SOCI 3410 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Masculinity, Labeling Theory, Annihilators
7 Jun 2018
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SOCI3410 June 6, 2018
1
Mass Murder Cont’d
Elements of Mental Illness
• Many have chronic depression
• Heightened inability to deal w
frustration
• Externalize responsibility
• Have delusions
But If Not Just Mental Illness Then What?
• Long history of frustration & failure
o Frustration often results in aggression in serial murders
o Entire life is one long series of frustrations… experienced as a failure
• Externalize blame
o These frustrations & failures are the result of something someone did to them
o World vs. them
• Lack emotional support
o No support there, or not know how to accept it
• Suffer a precipitating event (catalyst)
o Can be one precipitating event or a series
o May spark a fantasy & deliberate planning
• Access to a weapon powerful enough to exact revenge they seek
o If they lack access, they may grow out of their frustration
Theories of Mass Murder
1. Social Learning
2. Strain Theory
What is Learning?
• Habits & knowledge that develop when individuals interact w their environment
o Not instinctual or biological
o Ex. learning to take notes during class through observation & instruction
• Current learning theories based on association
o Classical Conditioning (aka passive learning)
▪ Associating bell w meat produces salivation when bell rings
o Operant Conditioning (aka active learning)
▪ Organism learns how to get what it wants
▪ Press a lever to get food – associate lever w food
▪ Ex. learning to get a good grade by doing readings & going to class
o Social Learning (aka active learning + cognition)
▪ Direct - reinforcement through rewards & punishments
• Humans respond better to reward than punishment
o Punishment results in avoidance
▪ Vicarious - reinforcement by observing what happens to others
• Not always positive
o Ex. learning through observation that membership in a
gang may result in reward (i.e. money, status)
▪ Criminological Theories - crime is a “normally learned behavior”
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
SOCI3410 June 6, 2018
2
Learning Crime through Differential Association (Sutherland)
• Criminal behavior is learned from persons who transmit ideas or “definitions” that favor
law-breaking
• Two basic elements of the theory
o Content of what is learned
▪ Techniques of committing the crime
▪ Underlying drives, rationalizations & attitudes
o Process by which learning takes place
▪ Learning occurs in intimate groups
• Motives & drives for behavior originate in attitudes towards legal codes by a person’s
social group
o “Normative conflict” – societal & group norms may be in conflict
o “Definitions” can be favorable/unfavorable to lawbreaking
o Delinquency caused by an excess of definitions favorable to lawbreaking
Views on Differential Association
• Criticisms
o It focuses on juvenile crime committed in groups
▪ Perhaps delinquents simply “flock together”
▪ Not all who associate w delinquents become delinquent
o Hard to test… how can we identify & count the definitions favorable/unfavorable
to law in each setting?
o Cannot apply to all kinds of crime
▪ Leads to concerns about the copycat effect re: mass & serial murder
o Difficult to use to explain differences in crime rates in different places & btwn
different demographic groups
• Defenses
o Strength & intensity of associations varies
o Includes a cognitive (active processing) component in learning
o Those with more delinquent friends do commit more crimes
o Those reporting more definitions favorable to crime commit more crime
Akers: Learning through Differential Reinforcement
• Behaviors can be learned as well as ideas
• Differential association – behaviors can be learned socially from others & from
“reference groups” whose definitions are favorable or unfavorable to lawbreaking
• Differential reinforcement – behaviors can be learned socially & non-socially
according to their actual or anticipated consequences (“differential reinforcement”)
o Learned socially through approval/disapproval by others
o Learned non-socially (ex. getting sick/high on drugs)
o Learned vicariously by observing consequences of behavior for others
• Once criminal behavior begins, it continues if reinforced either socially or non-socially
o Labelling theory – negative label (ex. delinquent) becomes their master status
o Murderers begin to see themselves as a failure & look for ways to succeed
• Structural conditions (i.e. inequality & strain) affect a person’s differential associations,
definitions, models & reinforcements
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
