Theories Of Deviance Research Articles

Using the concepts of positive deviance, diffusion of innovation and normal curve for planning family and community level health interventions.

In medical schools across the globe, students are taught about the “THE NORMAL CURVE” as a part of statistics unit of Public Health, Community, and Family Medicine. However, its potentials for explaining the subject of health education and behavior change are grossly underutilized. Through this article, we attempt to demonstrate that this can be sorted out by integrating theories of Positive Deviance and Diffusion of Innovation through extrapolation of the concepts of “THE NORMAL CURVE” for explaining or planning things and events in Public Health, Community, and Family Medicine.

The strain theory of suicide

Suicide is a global public health problem, but very few theories have been developed for its etiology and effective prevention. Presented in this article is a comprehensive and parsimonious theory explaining the socio-psychological mechanism prior to suicidal behavior. Strain, resulting from conflicting and competing pressures in an individual’s life, is hypothesized to precede suicide. The strain theory of suicide (STS) proposes four sources of strain leading to suicide: (1) value strain from differential values; (2) aspiration strain from the discrepancy between aspiration and reality; (3) deprivation strain from the relative deprivation, including poverty; and (4) coping strain from deficient coping skills in the face of a crisis. This new model is built on previous notions of anomie (Durkheim, 1897/1951 ), strain theories of deviance (Merton, 1957 ) and crime (Agnew, 1992 ), although suicide is not a major target for explanation in those theories. Future research with rigorous quantitative data needs to be conducted to further test STS on a more comprehensive level.

Suspended Attitudes: Exclusion and Emotional Disengagement from School

We know far less about the unintended social-psychological consequences of out-of-school suspensions on students than we do of the academic, behavioral, and civic consequences. Drawing on theories of socialization and deviance, I explore how suspension events influence students’ emotional engagement in school through changes in their attitudes. Using longitudinal middle school survey data connected to individual student administrative records, I find that students who receive out-of-school suspensions are psychologically vulnerable prior to their removal from school. Accounting for demographic characteristics of students, prior year disciplinary involvement, and students’ beginning-of-year attitudes, I find suspensions might further harm students by negatively changing their academic identities and perceptions of adults in school. A series of robustness checks add nuance and strengthen the claims I infer from the main analyses. I close by discussing how the engagement-related consequences of suspension inform social theory and educational policy.

Students’ Perception of Cheating and the Best Time to Cheat During Examinations

This study presents a sociological overview of cheating, using sociological theories of deviance as an analytical lens in exploring the concept of cheating among university students in a public university in Ghana. This study used semi-structured interviews to collect data from undergraduate students. This study has revealed that both students and school authorities have their own constructs of what constitute an acceptable behavior during examinations. If students interpret and label some forms of communication in the exam as “team work, helping and a source of motivation”, it may explain the persistence of these forms of actions among students, irrespective of the deviant label put on it and measures put in place by school authorities to address it. Using this understanding as a basis, we argue that students will likely follow university instituted norms about examinations if they are made to understand clearly how following these norms is relevant and will benefit both their academic and future well-being. In doing so, the university must do more than simply making available the student’s guide handbook which specifies examination regulations.

The Relationship Between Self-Control and Friendship Conflict: An analysis of Friendship Pairs.

While Gottfredson and Hirschi's general theory of crime is one of the most empirically tested theories of deviance, the theory offers hypotheses that range far beyond how self-control should affect behavior. This study is broadly focused on how self-control operates between friends by considering how the general theory's main construct relates to friendship conflict. Using a large dyadic dataset, three-level hybrid item-response models regress the actor's proclivity to experience conflict with the friend onto measures of the actor's self-control, the friend's self-control, and an interaction between the self-control estimates. Results demonstrate that the actor's and the friend's self-control both significantly relate to friendship conflict, as the theory would expect. However, the actor's and friend's levels of self-control do not interact.

ТЕХНОЛОГИЧЕСКИЙ ПОТЕНЦИАЛ СОЦИАЛЬНО-КУЛЬТУРНОЙ ДЕЯТЕЛЬНОСТИ В ПРОФИЛАКТИКЕ ДЕСТРУКТИВНЫХ ПОВЕДЕНЧЕСКИХ СТРАТЕГИЙ ПОДРОСТКОВ

Social and cultural features of destructive behavior among adolescents, such as “subjective adulthood”, communication with peers, affilation, conformal behavior, emotional instability are considered. Destructive behavior is defined as a stable behavior of the personality, deviating from the most important social norms, accompanied by its social disadaptation. It is noted that modern theories of deviance interpret destructive behavior in the context of a hierarchical system of factors manifested at the individual and group levels. Modern types of destruction prevention are characterized (“direct” – information and educational activity in the study of the features of destruction and their destructive consequences and “indirect” – the formation of basic life skills). The successive stages of socio-cultural prevention deviant behavior in adolescents are selected: correctional and psychological (diagnosis and development of an adaptive prevention programs at the secondary and tertiary prevention); educational (social and cultural competence of teenagers development); art therapy (certain communication and interaction skills needed to adapt to the group norms development). The technologies of social and cultural activity are considered as an effective resource for creating conditions for personal realization. The review of social and cultural practices aimed at destructive behavior of teenagers prevention, implemented on the basis of the application of social and cultural activity technologies complex. Among the most effective forms of social and cultural prevention lectures, project activities, creation of multimedia catalogs, integration in volunteer activities, creative competitions, informal educational courses etc. are highlighted.

Social Deviance Theories: Can They Explain Rural Vandalism in the Twenty-First Century?

ABSTRACTRural crime is a heavily misunderstood and marginalized area of criminology. In the United Kingdom in particular, there is limited scholarship on the issue and even less on particular types of rural crime, such as rural vandalism. With this in mind, this article reviews the applicability of five deviance theories to several forms of rural vandalism, through a less traditional lens that challenges criminological and rural norms. The article concludes by arguing that most of the theories examined are relevant to explanations of rural vandalism. However, it also emphasizes the need for a solid definition of rural crime, and an overall move away from the urban focus of criminology.

A Comprehensive Investigation of Youth Deviance: Theoretical Distinction by Deviant Behavior Sub-Types

ABSTRACTScholars have critiqued the field of criminology as focusing too heavily on positioning theories against one another in competition to reveal a “general theory of crime.” Such an approach assumes that the same factors influence all forms deviance, which is a problematic assumption, given that different forms of deviance can be influenced by different sets of factors. This study draws on two prominent criminological theories to specify the individual mechanisms driving several different forms of juvenile delinquency. Findings demonstrate the need for different theories of crime and deviance, and have implications for the way scholars approach and study theories in criminology.

The behavioral benefits of other people’s deviance

Employees who violate significant organizational norms are organizational deviants engaged in organizational deviance. Yet, few acts of organizational deviance involve all members of an organization; in many cases, many people are uninvolved. The current research examined the responses of the nondeviant actors. Several literatures led us to predict that organizational deviance would cause nondeviants to experience cognitive dissonance, especially its vicarious form, and redouble their own work effort in response. Yet, we also predicted that low levels of identification with the deviant actors would weaken this effect. Three studies with multiple samples and methods supported these predictions, showing that nondeviants experience deviants’ dissonance and increase their own work effort, but only when more rather than less identified with deviants. In addition to extending and connecting theories of deviance and dissonance, these findings suggest that organizational deviance may have unexpected benefits for groups and organizations.

Gendered death risks among disabled individuals in Sweden

This study follows around 500 disabled individuals over their lifespan to examine their risks of dying in 19th-century society, in comparison to a reference group of non-disabled people. The aim is to detect whether people, due to their disability, had a higher probability of meeting an untimely death. We use Sweden’s 19th-century parish registers to identify people the ministers defined as disabled, and to construct a reference group of individuals who were not affected by these disabilities. By combining the deviance theories from sociology studies with demographic sources and statistical methods, we achieve new insight into how life developed for disabled people in past societies. The results suggest that disability significantly jeopardized the survival of individuals, particularly men, but also that the type of disability had an impact. Altogether, we can demonstrate that the disabled constituted a disadvantaged but heterogeneous group of people whose demography and life courses must be further researched.

The Centrality of Schools in the Lifecourse: The Case for Focusing on School-Related Influences in Developmental Theory and Research

ABSTRACTWhile the strength of the lifecourse/developmental (LCD) perspective in the examination of antisocial behavior has been clearly demonstrated, this work has given little attention to schools and education as salient influences. By contrast, there is much research using other theoretical frameworks to examine school-related risk factors of deviance. Given what we know about the importance of schooling and education on individual development and subsequent implications for behavior, we contend that academic influences should be more prevalent in LCD theories of deviance and that research using an LCD theoretical perspective should embrace non-LCD work examining school-related risk factors of antisocial behavior.

Driving under the influence…..”Of social factors”

Abstract The bulk of the research that seeks to understand driving behavior and decision making has been performed by behavioral psychologists and engineers. These studies have a tendency to focus on the individual driver, examining such topics as road and vehicle design, cognitive skills, and the effects of collisions on the human body. This disparate research has produced a wealth of knowledge but with little unifying theory. The act of driving occurs within social environments that exist at many levels; the same act can be viewed through multiple lenses. In its exploration of the social context, this paper moves from an analysis of the global scale to the regional to the local. Our roads are monitored by police services and illegal acts are punished by judicial systems; these social institutions attempt to modify behavior through punitive measures. These punitive measures are derived from social theories of deviance and deterrence, methods shown here to be flawed. Empirical data derived from observations in Al Ain, UAE, are used in a quasi-experimental design that describes how drivers alter their choice of speed based on their observations of other drivers. This paper concludes by suggesting that, both by examining and legislating for driver behavior, there is a pressing need to situate the driver within his/her social environment.

Higher nutritional quality at no additional cost among low-income households: insights from food purchases of “positive deviants”

It is unknown whether diet quality is correlated with actual food expenditure. According to the positive deviance theory, the study of actual food expenditure by people with limited economic resources could help identify beneficial food-purchasing behavior. The aims were to investigate the relation between actual expenditure on food and nutritional quality and to identify "positive deviants" among low-income households. Individuals in deprived social situations (n = 91) were recruited as part of the "Opticourses" nutrition intervention conducted in 2012-2014 in poor districts of Marseille, France. Opticourses participants collected food-purchase receipts for their household over a 1-mo period. "Actual diet costs" and "estimated diet costs" were calculated per 2000 kcal of food purchases by using actual expenditures and a standard food price database of food consumed by a representative sample of French adults, respectively. Mean adequacy ratio (MAR), mean excess ratio (MER), and energy density (ED) were used as nutritional quality indicators. "Positive deviants" were defined as having a higher MAR and a lower MER than the respective median values. Opticourses participants selected less-expensive food options than the average French population, both within a food group and for a given food item. Higher diet costs were associated with higher nutritional quality (higher MAR, lower ED), regardless of whether costs were calculated from actual expenditure or on the basis of standard food prices. Twenty-one positive deviants were identified. They made significantly healthier purchases than did other participants (MAR: +13%; MER: -90%. ED: -22%) at higher estimated diet costs. Yet, they did not spend more on food (having the same actual diet costs), which showed that they purchased food with a higher nutritional quality for their price. In this low-income population, actual diet cost was positively correlated with nutritional quality, yet the results showed that higher diet quality is not necessarily more costly when foods with higher nutritional quality for their price are selected. The Opticourses intervention was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT02383875.

Aristotle's Theory of Deviance and Contemporary Symbolic Interactionist Scholarship: Learning from the Past, Extending the Present, and Engaging the Future.

Although his work has been largely overlooked by symbolic interactionists and other students of deviance, Aristotle (c384-322BCE) addresses community life, activity, agency, and persuasive interchange in ways that not only are remarkably consistent with contemporary symbolic interactionist approaches to deviance, but that also conceptually inform present day theories of deviance and provide valuable transhistorical comparison points for subsequent analysis. Following (1) a brief overview of an interactionist approach to the study of deviance, attention is given to (2) classical Greek conceptions of good and evil (especially as these are articulated by Plato) before turning more directly to (3) Aristotle’s notions of wrongdoing as this is reflected in his considerations of community, morality, agency, and culpability. While informed by Aristotle’s considerations of causality (as addressed in Physics and Metaphysics), this statement builds most centrally on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Rhetoric. Striving for a broader understanding of deviance as a humanly engaged feature of community life, the paper briefly compares Aristotle’s “theory of deviance” with Prus and Grills (2003) interactionist analysis of deviance. The paper (4) concludes with an assessment of the relative contributions of contemporary interactionist scholarship and Aristotle’s materials for the study of deviance as a community-engaged process.

Délinquance des adolescents et maturation pubertaire analysées au travers du timing pubertaire perçu

The impact of pubertal development on the psychological and social functioning of the teenager arouses a particular interest; the most recent research shows the existence of complex relationships between pubertal development and the manifestation of internalized and externalized disorders. Two predominant hypotheses are used for explaining influence of pubertal timing on problem behaviors: the maturational deviance theory and the stage termination (early timing) theory. The deviance theory claims that the borderline or abnormal pubertal timing, whether early or late, causes difficulties for adolescent adaptation. The early timing theory suggests that early pubertal timing and the consequent early physical maturation put adolescents at greater risk of adjustment problems because early pubertal maturation interferes with normal progression through the developmental tasks of adolescence. Our study is interested specifically in the links between delinquency during adolescence and pubertal maturation in a population of 141 boys aged between 12 and 18. We measured the pubertal variable starting from the perceived pubertal timing (PPT), which evaluates the teenagers’ perception of their pubertal maturation, compared with that of their peers, to understand its impact on various dimensions of the functioning of teenagers: the self-perception (scale of Harter), aggressiveness (scale of Buss and Perry), association with peers and self-reported delinquency (attacks on property and individuals). We began with univariate analyses in order to determine the variables associated with early or late pubertal timing through comparison of scores obtained in those subjects with reference to average maturers. Subsequently, multivariate analyses were used in an attempt to sort out which among the studied factors could be predictor or a determinant of delinquency in relation to pubertal timing. Therefore, stepwise multiple regression analysis was performed. Statistical analyses were run with the SAS software, version 9.1. Our results support the thesis of precocity, the teenagers with an advanced PPT present score of delinquency and aggressiveness significantly higher than teenagers with a standard PPT. However, the sub-group of teenagers with delayed PPT present raw scores of self-revealed delinquency, which are higher than those of teenagers with a standard PPT. These teenagers can be characterized by a significantly higher hostility than the teenagers with a standard PPT. This cognitive dimension of aggressiveness, as evaluated by Buss and Perry, characterizes the functioning of the teenagers with the delayed PPT, who also present poorer self-esteem and dissatisfaction with their physical appearance. On the basis of this assessment, an analysis of multiple regression within each type of PPT aimed at identifying the variables likely to explain the delinquency of teenagers according to their PPT. The results show that the physical factor of aggressiveness is common to the three types of PPT. It is associated with the affiliation with delinquent peers for those teenagers with advanced and normal PPT, whereas for those teenagers with delayed PPT, it interacts with the factor of hostility, which is specific to them. Association with delinquent peers recognized as a major risk factor and predictive for the self-revealed delinquency of teenagers in general does not intervene for these boys who perceive their pubertal development late, compared to the others. The delinquency of teenagers with a delayed PPT cannot be explained by the factors that are considered in the general population, their social functioning and the socialization of these teenagers with delayed puberty is different from that of the other teenagers, as is their implication in delinquency, which is not explained by a kind of socialization with delinquent peers. These results confirm the importance of integrating the puberty variable into research on delinquency, but also at the level of intervention.

The Reversal of Lifelong Labeling: An Autoethnography

The periphery belongs to me. I was born and grew up in a poor neighborhood. In common imagery, it evoked the negatively stereotyped image of a place as a poverty and crime heap. Because of my neighborhood, I’ve suffered various forms of strain. A lifelong labeling process has plagued my life, while in many theories of deviance and crime I would be a criminal. Therefore, how did these theories function with me and with my behavior? How has my lifelong labeling influenced my identity? What suggestions does my life experience offer in terms of urban/social policies? Now I’m trying to answer these questions through my autoethnography.

Not in my back yard: control of Irish Travellers by paramilitaries and vigilantes across the island of Ireland

This article concerns control of Irish Travellers by paramilitaries and vigilantes. The main issues explored here relate to theories of deviance and debates as to the power of the ‘established’ over those regarded as outsiders. The topic of dangerisation is also considered. Across the island of Ireland, the accommodation needs of Irish Travellers have been largely overlooked by both governments. Amidst a wholesale failure to provide adequate accommodation, including transient sites which would permit nomadic Irish Travellers to continue to be so, harsh anti-trespass laws have recently been sanctioned. However, despite these recent anti-trespass laws and no doubt due to the failure to provide accommodation, across the island illegal encampments remain common. Thus, a failure of the public system is evident. As such, this article demonstrates how, in turn, this failure may encourage vigilantes to adopt self-help private violence as moral action against ‘deviant’ Travellers, whilst self-justifying their actions in comparison to the violence exhibited by, and, that inherent to, state sanctioned law.

Shutting Down the Streets: Political Violence and Social Control in the Global Era

Shutting Down the Streets: Political Violence and Social Control in the Global Era, by Amory Starr, Luis Fernandez, and Christian Scholl. New York/London: New York University Press, 2011. 207pp. $67.84 cloth. $23.00 paper. ISBN: 9780814741009. Kevin B. Anderson University of California, Santa Barbara kanderson@soc.ucsb.edu Categories: Collective Behavior and Social Movements Crime, Law, and Deviance Theory Word count: 1095 This book speaks to three sets of issues: First, it carries out an analysis based upon direct participant observation of some of the more radical edges of the global justice or alterglobalization (or anti-capitalist) movement, including the wing commonly associated with the term “black block.” Second, it discusses the new forms of state repression, surveillance, and control of urban space that have been carried out by security forces during global economic or political summits that faced large protest movements from the alterglobalization movement. Third, it constitutes an interesting and instructive example of using the Foucauldian theory of power and resistance as the basis for the study of some very contemporary developments. One of the hallmarks of contemporary social protest – at least since Seattle 1999 – has been its global character, with international groups of demonstrators assembling at various gatherings like the WTO, the G8, the FTAA, or NATO. Within those demonstrations, a relatively small number of participants have engaged in direct action of various types, sometimes committing minor acts of violence against property, security

Revisiting the Outsiders: Innovative Recruitment of a Marijuana User Network via Web-Based Respondent Driven Sampling

This study uses an innovative, network-based recruitment strategy (non-monetary, web-based respondent driven sampling) to gather a sample of il/legal marijuana users. Network-driven effects amongst marijuana users are examined to test the explanatory validity of several theories of social deviance. The study finds that respondent driven sampling techniques lack effectiveness without primary monetary incentives, even when meaningful secondary incentives are utilized. Additionally, the study suggests that marijuana user networks exhibit strong homophilic attachment tendencies.

The Intersection of Disability Studies and Health Science

The Intersection of Disability Studies and Health Science Sharon Cuff (bio), Kathleen McGoldrick (bio), Stephanie Patterson (bio), and Elizabeth Peterson (bio) On the first day of class I always ask my health science students, “Why disability studies?” Inevitably more than half the class answers, “Because I want to help people.” I groan and think, here we go again. I sit in my wheelchair facing a room full of future doctors, nurses, PAs, PTs, OTs, and human service providers, who have decided to forge their careers in healthcare services. To many disability activists, our students represent the medical model of disability—the enemy. They are those who see us as our disability. Who only see our deficits, and strive with their paternalistic knowledge to fix us and help us fit better into the construct of the normal they are accustomed to. Although I know they mean well, the task of changing over twenty years of societal indoctrination seems quite overwhelming and maybe a bit futile. I have to ask myself, “Why do I choose to attempt to educate future healthcare providers about what it means to live well with a disability? “Because if I don’t, who will?” — Kathleen McGoldrick Theoretical debates over which academic department disability studies (ds) is most aligned with can go on for days with no compromise, but the one thing most disability studies scholars usually agree on is that disability studies does not fit best within health science. After many decades of active struggle to establish a social model of disability and disengage from all things medical, why would anyone even consider such collaboration? Minds have been made up for some time and the resounding reaction to this suggestion has consistently been, “No.” Simi Linton, in her 1998 article suggesting an “interdisciplinary field of inquiry…called Disability Studies” states the importance of there being “two separate domains” isolating disability studies from what it is “Not”(Linton “Disability Studies” 528). She insists that it is important to situate disability studies within fields that treat it as a social phenomenon. Many activists and scholars do not see synergy between the study of medicine and disability studies. “One of Disability Studies’ major hang-ups is its default position with respect to the field of medicine….”(Souza). Traditionally, ds scholars have taken an adversarial stance against the medical profession and most would consider a collaboration to be treasonous. During the founding of disability studies and [End Page 37] while it was becoming established, such a conclusion and practice was logical and maybe necessary, but at this time, we respectfully disagree. Paul Longmore disagrees as well. He believes that, “Students interested in health care…need to have the opportunity to study this [disability] in the same way that they have the opportunity to study women’s history or African American history or Asian history”(Stanford University News Service). Ironically, the study of disability, as a social phenomenon is not new. Steven J. Taylor discusses the social theories of stigma, deviance, and labeling that took root in the 1960s (xiv), and addresses the implications that labeling of people with various disabilities has had on them. Within the health and rehabilitative sciences, disabled status was exclusively addressed as the consequence of impairment with which an individual had to live. It was not until the early 1980s that the minority group model of disability, fashioned after other civil rights causes, grew out of an effort by activists to address 1) the cultural, vocational, and political prejudices faced by those living with disability and 2) the absence of these issues in discussions about disability that solely focused on correcting impairment (Longmore 2). In 1982, the Section for the Study of Chronic Illness, Impairment, and Disability (ssciid) was founded by a cohort of sociologists and medical anthropologists and by 1986 the group was renamed the Society for Disability Studies (sds). sds is the most widely known “scholarly organization dedicated to promoting disability studies” (Society for Disability Studies About sds: Mission and History). Presented as a part of human existence, research and teaching about disability focused on the unique, individual experience of disability, “without examining the ignorance, fear, and prejudice that deeply influenced...