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Deviant or antisocial behavior can be understood as any behavior that contrasts with the dominant norms of a society. There are several theories about the causes that lead a person to oppose the norms of the society that integrates. There are biological, sociological and psychological explanations. Sociological explanations study how social structures and their relationships encourage these behaviors, while biological explanations focus on how physical and biological differences can generate antisocial behaviors.
Psychological explanations take a different approach. All psychological approaches that seek to explain antisocial behavior have some aspects in common. To begin with, they consider the individual as the main object in the analysis; that is, they say that human beings as individuals are solely responsible for their antisocial acts. In addition, they consider that the preponderant factor in the motivation to commit acts that violate social norms is the personality of the individual.
Psychological approaches also propose that criminals suffer from deficiencies in the structure of their personality, which means that crimes are the result of abnormal, dysfunctional or inappropriate mental processes, which are associated with the individual’s personality. These dysfunctional mental processes could have various causes, such as mental illnesses, inappropriate learning processes, inadequate social insertion, and the absence of positive role models or the strong presence and influence of role models that lead to the violation of social norms. On these bases, three theories that explain antisocial behaviors are basically developed: psychoanalytic theory, cognitive development theory and learning theory.
psychoanalytic explanation
Psychoanalysis is a series of psychological theories developed by Sigmund Freud. In broad strokes, it establishes that human beings have impulses that are repressed in the unconscious. He also insists that all human beings have criminal tendencies, which are repressed in the process of socialization. A child who is inappropriately socialized could develop a personality disorder that causes him to internalize his antisocial impulses or bring them out. Individuals who internalize them become neurotic while those who remove them become criminals.
Explanation according to the theory of cognitive development
The theory of cognitive development posits that criminal behavior is the result of the way in which people structure their thoughts regarding morality and the law. Lawrence Kohlberg was a psychologist who adhered to this school of psychological thought and proposed that there are three levels of moral reasoning.
In the first stage, which develops during childhood, moral reasoning is based on obedience and how to avoid punishment . In a second stage, towards the end of childhood, moral reasoning is based on the expectations that the child’s family and her affective circle have of him. And the third stage, which takes place during early adulthood, is the time when people can transcend social conventions and value the laws that order society. People who do not fully go through these three stages may have limited moral development and develop antisocial behaviors.
Explanation according to learning theory
The third psychological theory that explains antisocial behaviors is the learning theory. This theory states that people’s behavior is learned and sustained through the consequences or rewards it generates. People learn antisocial behavior by observing other people and recording the consequences or rewards associated with their actions. A person who watches a friend steal without being punished, thus obtaining a reward for her act, will tend to reproduce the behavior, believing that it will have the same consequence.
Differential association theory proposes that people learn values, attitudes, techniques, and even develop motivation for criminal behavior through their social interactions. It is a theory initially proposed by the sociologist Edwin Sutherland in 1939 and later revised in 1947, and which has great incidence in the study of criminology to this day.
Sources
Cid Moliné, José, Larrauri Pijoan, Elena. criminological theories. Explanation and prevention of delinquency . Publisher Bosch, 2013.
Matsueda, Ross L. Differential Association Theory and Differential Social Organization . Encyclopedia of Criminological Theory, eds. Francis T. Cullen and Pamela Wilcox. Sage Publications, 2010.
Ward, Jeffrey T. and Chelsea N. Brown. Social Learning Theory and Crime. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. Second edition. Publisher James D. Wright. Elsevier, 2015 .
