6.3.1: Differential Association Theory

 6.3: The Symbolic Interactionist Perspective PT

 6.3.1: Differential Association Theory

 Going directly against the idea that biology or personality is the source of deviance, sociologists stress people’s experiences in groups. 

Differential association theory, which was developed by Edwin Sutherland in the 1920s, is an excellent example of this emphasis. 

The Theory Let’s start with an extreme example: boys and girls who join street gangs and boys and girls who join the Scouts. 

Immediately, you know that each learns different attitudes and behaviors concerning deviance and conformity. And this is just what the term differential association indicates—that from the different groups we associate with, we learn to deviate from or to conform to society’s norms (Sutherland 1924, 1947; Kobayashi 2019).

 Sutherland’s theory is more complicated than this, but he basically said that the different groups with which we associate (our “different(ial) association”) give us messages about conformity and deviance.

 We may receive mixed messages, but we end up with more of one kind of message than the other (an “excess of definitions,” as Sutherland put it).

 The end result is an imbalance—attitudes that tilt us in one direction or another. Consequently, we learn to either conform or to deviate. 

Families

You know how important your family has been in forming your views toward life, in laying down basic values, goals, and expectations, so it probably is obvious to you that the family makes a significant difference in whether people learn deviance or conformity. 

In your family, a form of involuntary differential association, you learned morality, ideas of right and wrong, and you have resulting feelings of guilt or shame when you violate that morality. In the extreme, families that are involved in crime tend to set their children on lawbreaking paths, while children reared in conforming families are much less likely to become involved in criminal activities (Salihu and Gholami 2018). 

Friends, Neighborhoods, and Subcultures Most people don’t know the term differential association, but they do know how it works. Most parents want to move out of “bad” neighborhoods because they know that if their kids have delinquent friends, they are likely to become delinquent, too. Sociological research also supports this common observation (Miller 1958; Vilalta and Fondevila 2019).

And how different neighborhoods are! In some neighborhoods, violence is so woven into the subculture that even a wrong glance can mean your death (“Why ya lookin’ at me?”) (Gardiner and Fox 2010). 

If the neighbors feel that someone who was killed deserved to be killed, they refuse to testify because “he got what was coming to him” (Kubrin and Weitzer 2003). 

In some neighborhoods/subcultures, killing can even be viewed as honorable: When sociologist Ruth Horowitz (1983, 2005), did participant observation in a lower-class Chicano neighborhood in Chicago, she discovered how the concept of “honor” propels(drive into particular situation) young men to deviance. The formula is simple. 

“A real man has honor. An insult is a threat to one’s honor. Therefore, not to stand up to someone is to be less than a real man.”

Now suppose you are a young man growing up in this neighborhood. 

You likely would do a fair amount of fighting, since you would interpret many things as attacks on your honor.

 You might even carry a knife or a gun, because words and fists wouldn’t always be sufficient. Along with members of your group, you would define fighting, knifing, and shooting quite differently from the way most people do. 

Suppose that you were a member of the Mafia. You would learn to intertwine ideas of manliness with killing.

 For you, to kill would be a measure of manhood. If a Mafia member were to seduce the capo’s wife or girlfriend, for example, you know how that seduction would slash at the capo’s manliness and honor.

 Without even thinking about it, you know that this offense, the breaking of norms, requires swift, violent retaliation. You would not be surprised when the offender’s body is found in the trunk of a car parked at the airport and that the man’s penis is stuffed in his mouth. You also would know that not all killings bring the same respect, for in the Mafia book of morality “the more awesome and potent the victim, the more worthy and meritorious the killer” (Arlacchi 1980).

From this example, you can again see the relativity of deviance. 

Killing is deviant in mainstream society, but for members of the Mafia, not to kill after certain of their norms are broken would be the deviant act.

Do you understand how the definitions of deviance that Mafia members use underlie their behavior? 

Although their definitions are markedly different from ours, the process is the same.

 Shown here is John Gotti when he was the head of New York's Gambino Mafia. 

Convicted for murder, Gotti died in prison. Credit: Splash/Newscom 

Differential Association in the Cyber Age 

The computer has brought major changes to social interaction. 

I have seen people lying on a beautiful Florida beach with friends, not interacting with those next to them, not swimming or playing in the sand, but lying there, each on a smartphone absorbed in communicating with someone far away.

 I’m sure you have seen people walking on the sidewalk, engrossed in smartphones, barely aware of the presence of passersby. With whom are they associating? Friends and family remain the focus of most of these communications. But the computer has also opened easy access to areas of life previously hidden and accessible only with difficulty. Sociologists have begun to study how this can impact people’s orientations to conformity. 

An example is how terrorist groups use the social media to motivate people to do violence (Borau and Wamba 2019). 

Differential association with the social media is new, and at this point everything about this intriguing topic is preliminary

Prison or Freedom? As was mentioned in Chapter 3, an issue that comes up over and over again in sociology is whether we are prisoners of socialization. 

Symbolic interactionists stress that we are not mere pawns in the hands of others. 

We are not destined to think and act as our associations and groups dictate.

 Rather, we help to produce our own orientations to life. 

By joining one group rather than another (differential association), for example, we help to shape the self. 

One college student may join a feminist group that is trying to change ideas about fraternities and rape, while another associates with women who shoplift on weekends.

 Their choices point them in different directions. The one who joins the feminist group may develop an even greater interest in producing social change, while the one who associates with shoplifters may become even more oriented toward criminal activities.