LEARNING TO BE BAD: ADVERSE SOCIAL CONDITIONS, SOCIAL SCHEMAS, AND CRIME*
2011/05/01 by RONALD L. SIMONS, Ronald L. Simons, CALLIE HARBIN BURT +1 · 143 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Collective efficacy #Computer science #Construct (python library) #Crime Patterns and Interventions #Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis #Criminology #Preference #Psychology #Situational ethics #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Social psychology #Structural equation modeling
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/j.1745-9125.2011.00231.x
published in Criminology 49(2), 553-598 (Wiley)
openalex publication_date 2011/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Abstract
In this paper we develop and test a new approach to explain the link between social factors and individual offending. We argue that seemingly disparate family, peer, and community conditions lead to crime because the lessons communicated by these events are similar and promote social schemas involving a hostile view of people and relationships, a preference for immediate rewards, and a cynical view of conventional norms. Further, we posit that these three schemas are interconnected and combine to form a criminogenic knowledge structure that gives rise to situational interpretations legitimating criminal behavior. Structural equation modeling with a sample of roughly 700 hundred African American teens provided strong support for the model. The findings indicated that persistent exposure to adverse conditions such as community crime, discrimination, harsh parenting, deviant peers and low neighborhood collective efficacy increased commitment to the three social schemas. The three schemas were highly intercorrelated and combined to form a latent construct that strongly predicted increases in crime. Further, in large measure the effect of the various adverse conditions on increases in crime was indirect through their impact on this latent construct. We discuss the extent to which the social schematic model presented in the paper might be used to integrate concepts and findings from several of the major theories of criminal behavior.
Citations
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