Differential Association and Social Bonding Theory

On a wet, dark, and snowy Sunday night an outsider wouldn't expect a Northeastern University campus bar to be crowded. In fact, most students can't even leave their dorms because there is too much snow. Yet a tiny pub, located barely off campus on Gainesboro Street, is packed wall to wall with students. A small community is drinking away their problems while discussing the probability of school being canceled. Many experts would describe this act as binge drinking, but any student would prefer to describe it as just a regular Sunday night.

Edwin Sutherland’s theory of Differential Association theory is about an individual learning criminal behaviour through interaction with intimate groups. His theory includes four modalities, which are frequency, duration priority and intensity. Sutherland’s theory is seen

Drinking on college campuses has become a huge problem. For example, in the 10th century only old people used to drink, but now students drink more than their parents. Students see their parents drinking, so they may think that drinking has no effect on health that anyone can drink so why can’t the students drink? Therefore, college students have been drinking alcohol since the 14th century. Barrett Seaman’s article “How Bingeing Became the New College Sport,” appearing in TIME magazine on August 29, 2005, explains how binge drinking is affecting college students. It also suggests that lowering the drinking age might help solve the problem of binge drinking. This article has much information on how and where students get drunk.

Wechsler takes on a more educational approach with statistics such as, “86 percent of college students drink” (Wechsler para. 8). Within the first few paragraphs, the researcher on alcohol and drug abuse expands his knowledge on college binge drinking and suggests that, “Parents who pay for college tuitions should demand a safe environment for their children” (Wechsler para. 11). Wechsler provides answers as to why college drinking is not widely acknowledged.

Social control/bond theory was developed by Travis Hirschi in1969. The social control approach is one of the three major sociological perspectives in understanding crime in our contemporary criminology. The theory holds that individuals will break the law as a result of the breakdown of the social bonds (Akers & Sellers, 2004, p. 16). Control theorists believe that an individual conformity to societal social values and rules produced by socialization and maintained through social ties to the people and institutions. The social bond may include family attachment, an individual commitment to social norms or institutions like school, employment, churches and mosques. The key elements of the social bonds theory are an attachment to other individuals in the society and the desire to remain committed to following rules. In addition, an individual involvement in typical social behaviours as well as one 's belief or the value systems a person ascribes. According to the theory, crime and delinquency will result when a person bond to society is weak or lose (Demuth & Brown, 2004, p.65). Moreover, as social bonds increase in strength, individual costs of crime increases as well and this ultimately act as a barrier for committing a crime.

“From the moment freshmen set foot on campus, they are steeped in a culture that encourages them to drink, and drink heavily. At many schools, social life is still synonymous with alcohol-lubricated gatherings” (Cohen). Binge drinking is a huge aspect of the culture of college life; many college students binge drink to become socially accepted in a particular group. Binge drinking is not only

From birth, our families, friends, and society influenced our choices. We were told what we could and could not accept. The music we listened to, the food we ate, and the clothes we wore were all influenced by someone in our community or household. These experiences from your childhood tend to determine the choices we will make as adults. We are living in a world that approaches life with a black or white perceptive, meaning decisions in life are either morally right or morally wrong. Differential Association Theory is defined as a criminological theory created by Edwin Sutherland that focuses on criminal behavior being learned through association with others (Walsh, 559). The theory focuses on an individual’s life that could lead them to a life of crime.

“80 percent of teen-agers have tried alcohol, and that alcohol was a contributing factor in the top three causes of death among teens: accidents, homicide and suicide” (Underage, CNN.com pg 3). Students may use drinking as a form of socializing, but is it really as good as it seems? The tradition of drinking has developed into a kind of “culture” fixed in every level of the college student environment. Customs handed down through generations of college drinkers reinforce students' expectation that alcohol is a necessary ingredient for social success. These perceptions of drinking are the going to ruin the lives of the students because it will lead to the development alcoholism. College students who drink a lot, while in a college

Individuals with strong and stable attachments to others within society, such as family, friends and community institutions are presumed to be less likely to violate social norms, because such behaviour would distress these respective attachments (Reginald et al, 1995). Second, is commitment, meaning having an individual investment in social activities. For example, an individual who has invested time, energy and resources into conforming to social norms, such as educational and career goals, is less likely to become involved in a gang (Goodwill 2009). In particular, since they have invested heavily in conforming these individuals have more to lose than those who have not invested in their future in a conforming fashion. (Reginald et al, 1995). Third, is involvement, which Hirschi utilized in order to illustrate that when large amounts of structured time are invested in socially approved activities, such as sports or work, the time for available deviance is drastically reduced (Reginald et al, 1995). Specifically, active engagement in conventional endeavors acts as a powerful protective factor against delinquency (Huebner and Betts, 2002). Hirschi’s final element of social bonding is belief. This pertains to an actor’s level of belief in the moral validity of shared social values and norms (Reginald et al, 1995). When an individual strongly believes in the conventional norms they are less likely to deviate from

The consumption of alcohol as a habitual behavior has long been associated with the American collegiate experience, despite the many known negative consequences a student who partakes in drinking can encounter. Because of the danger drunken students pose to a college’s reputation and the safety of its surrounding areas, much research has been done concerning the collegiate party and drinking scenes. This research mostly studied the demographics of the student body, so strategies developed to curtail the illegal or overconsumption of alcohol could be targeted towards the specific groups that demonstrated the highest likelihood of participating in these acts. When the strategies were implemented, however, there was little decline in the number of college students who chose to party and drink (Vander Ven 2011). This failure did not point toward a flaw in the research data, but instead a lack of research into the benefits a collegiate drinker receives that are rewarding to the point he or she cannot resist. This is the topic of Getting Wasted: Why College Students Drink Too Much and Party So Hard by Thomas Vander Ven.

First, there are seventy percent of college students, who consumed alcohol beverages in the last thirty days. Also, there are half of the college students, who are binge drinkers on campus. They attend to drink a lot in a short time period. The students imply drinking is part of campus culture and traditions, which resembles of rite of passage and independence.

Social bond theory shows an interesting way to look at the social problems, such as crime, that surround the world we live in. The theory primarily focuses on the peers and peer groups of individuals. The four basic elements that the theory focus on are attachment, commitment, involvement in activities including both criminal and noncriminal, and also the the common values that are giving to an individuals groups and subgroups. The element of attachment can be described as the values or the norms that someone has in their society. Attachment is most important with the figures that have a strong influence over a person 's life such as parental figures. Friends at school can also be important people related to attachment. Commitment is different than attachment in that it focuses on how much a person is committed to abiding by legal behavior. As a child we are hopefully taught was is the right thing

This paper takes a closer look at the social learning’s of society’s subculture that displays delinquent behavior. Using differential association I explain the learned behavior through the social environment such as role models, peer influence, and poverty stricken families. Delinquency is not biologically nor psychologically but is learned just as a person learns to obey the law. The study design is to help further the notion that criminal behavior is learned and not inherited due to genetic structure.

In another study done by Stephen Porter and John Pryor (2007), they related the number of drinks per week to time management and grades by separating the groups into gender and school type. Women typically seemed to spend less time drinking, especially at all women’s schools or research universities, than men at any kind of university. For the students who did seem to engage in heavier drinking, the smaller amount

Differential association theory can help to explain how people in polyamorous relationships engage in their deviant paper, without thinking about how they got to that level of deviance (Tittle, Burke, & Jackson, 1986). Most of the individuals involved in polyamory do not think about their deviant career and how they came to deviate so thoroughly from society unless asked about it. They do not view themselves as negatively deviant, which is how people most often think about deviance, so they do not view anything that they have done in their lives as wrong. The way that individuals in polyamorous relationships are labeled also can impact how they react to society and the labels that they are given (Davis, 1972).