Strength Of Social Bonds Research Articles

Social Control, Delinquency, and Youth Status Achievement: A Developmental Approach

This study examines the impact of formal control and informal control on delinquency and youth status achievement. Theories relating to social control, delinquency, and status achievement, including labeling, deterrence, and social bond, are integrated under the life course perspective. A structural equation model based on a set of longitudinal data is used to test the impact of social control on delinquency and status achievement. This study finds that formal sanctions have a negative effect on status achievement. Informal social control, measured by the strength of social bond, increases the likelihood of high status achievement by decreasing youths' involvement in delinquent relationships and antisocial behavior. This study demonstrates the need for integrating both formal control and informal control into status attainment research.

Age, social learning, and social bonding in adolescent substance use

We propose that social learning and social bonding theories are capable of accounting for the well-known relationship of crime and delinquency to age. Models incorporating age and variables derived from these two theories are tested with data on adolescent substance use among a large sample of Midwest adolescents in Grades 7 through 12. Older adolescents consume more marijuana than younger adolescents, and the age-use curve is matched by the relationship between age and social learning variables. Differences in use by age are also correlated with differences in strength of social bonds by age, but to a lesser extent. The findings support the hypothesis that age variations in marijuana use are mediated by age-related variations in social learning; there is also support, although somewhat weaker, for the similar hypothesis that social bonding variables mediate the age-marijuana use relationship during adolescence.

Measuring the Strength of Social Bonds: Experiments With Hand-Reared Goslings (Anser Indicus)

AbstractAllogrooming, dueting and other behaviours observed only between pair or group members are often said to reinforce or strengthen social bonds, yet the strength of these bonds was not measured independently. 'Bond strength' should reflect the stability of an attachment relationship and thus the probability of a permanent separation from the partner. The latter is a function of opportunity or external force as well as of an internal 'divorce tendency'. Only the divorcc tendency is inversely related to that motivational variable which can be called 'bond strength'. To find a behavioural measure of individual divorce tendency, the relationship of hand-reared bar-headed goslings (Anser indicus) to their human foster parents was investigated in four experiments. The following results were obtained: (1) The subjects (n = 18) significantly preferred their own, familiar foster parent (Hp) to a less familiar person (Hu). (2) This was also true when the Hu was the preferred Hp of another group of goslings, indicating that familiarity and not his suitability as a 'goose parent' is the relevant factor. (3) Alone with one person on a lawn, all goslings (n = 12) also maintained proximity when this was an Hu, indicating a bond to him also. Median distances maintained to Hp and Hu did not differ significantly, and were therefore no indicators of a gosling's preference. But the distress calling rate was significantly higher and the feeding rate significantly lower when a gosling was with an Hu than when with its Hp. (4) Distress calling rate in the presence of a stationary person was also a good indicator of a gosling's (n = 15) tendency to leave him and follow a slowly moving stranger. Approaches towards the stranger were significantly longer when the stationary person was an Hu than when it was the Hp. The amount of distress calling in the presence of an Hu was positively correlated (p<0.01) with the distance that the subjects later moved towards the stranger. The distress calling rate therefore is a good relative measure of a gosling's tendency to abandon a particular object, this tendency reflecting what we may call the strength of a bond or attachment.