Sex and Deviance: an Assessment of Major Sociological Variables*

This paper empirically examines the claim that many theories of deviance only have utility for explaining deviance committed by males because their conceptual development was tainted with inattention to females. Five variables representing the essence of major theories of deviant behavior are measured for a self-report sample of 1993 cases. Each variable is tested to determine how well it can account for deviance among females compared to males. In volume of deviance more males than females were classified as deviant but the underlying processes which the five theoretical variables address operated equally for members of both sexes. These findings support the position that the processes by which females come to commit deviance is similar to the processes for males. The findings suggest that exclusive focus on females is unlikely to yield more adequate explanations of female deviance.     

Gender,Race/Ethnicity,and Deviant Drinking: A Longitudinal Application of Social Structure and Social Learning Theory

Aker's (1998) theory of social structure and social learning (SSSL) argues that structural variations in deviant behavior, such as gender or race/ethnic differences in underage or heavy drinking, are mediated by social learning variables. However, longitudinal analyses of deviant drinking in an urban sample of white, black, and Hispanic adolescents fail to support the SSSL mediation hypothesis. Significant gender and race/ethnic differences persist after controls for social learning variables as well as for social bonding variables. Interaction effects involving two social bonding variables—family attachment and moral belief—point to theoretically important conditions that maintain a gender gap in underage drinking and relatively low levels of deviant drinking among African American adolescents.     

Gender,Social Bond,and Academic Cheating in Japan*

There is evidence that females are less likely to cheat than males on college campuses. A frequently offered but still untested explanation is that females, with a stronger sense of responsibility for the maintenance of social relationships, tend to develop a stronger bond to a conventional society—a key explanatory concept in Hirschi’s (1969) social control theory. With academic cheating as the dependent variable, we test the hypotheses that the four elements of social bond are the intervening variables linking gender to such dishonesty among Japanese students who, due to their stronger orientation toward masculinity on Hofstede’s (1980) scale of gender role separation, are subject to more gender distinct socialization, leading to greater gender differences in the strength of social bond than those previously reported in the United States. The analysis provides rather limited support for the theory, most of which is due to the stronger belief in the legitimacy of societal rules among the females.     

Parental and peer characteristics as modifiers of the bond-behavior relationship: an elaboration of control theory.

Three bonds are at the core of Hirschi's control theory: attachment to parents, commitment to conventional activities, and belief in the conventional rules of society. Control theory does not include parental and peer attitudes and behaviors, variables that frequently are implicated in adolescent behavior. This study examines whether parental and peer behaviors and attitudes modify bond/behavior relationships. Adolescent cigarette smoking is the behavior of interest. Panel data from a probability sample of 685 adolescents shows that the relationship between attachment and adolescent smoking is modified by parental smoking; the relationship between commitment to conventional activities and adolescent smoking is modified by father's smoking; but the relationship between belief in conventional rules and adolescent smoking is not modified by parental or peer variables. We conclude that control theory needs to encompass parental behavior when considering adolescent smoking behavior.     

Formal and Informal Social Controls of Employee Deviance*

Using the phenomenon of deviance by employees against the rules of the formal work organization as the behavior of interest, the differential saliences of both formal (i.e., management) and informal (i.e., co-worker) sanction severity are empirically compared. As hypothesized, the perceived threat of informal sanctions by one's fellow co-workers explains both property deviance and production deviance far better than the perceived severity of the more formal responses initiated by management. Further, if the two forms of social control are causally ordered, we find that management actions to constrain deviant employees do have an effect, albeit indirect, in that formal sanctions operate on deviance indirectly by shaping the informal sanctions.     

Age and Gender Differerences In a Social Process Model of Adolescent Cigarette Use*

This study examines how age and gender influence the ability of social process theory to explain adolescent cigarette use. Differences in the causal effects of social process variables for three age periods for male and female adolescents are examined. Longitudinal data from a sample of midwestern adolescents are analyzed using path analyses procedures. Findings from these analyses indicate that social process theory is better able to account for cigarette use among older females than any other age and gender group. For females, commitment to education and school activities were better predictors of cigarette smoking at a later age than an earlier age, whereas the opposite was found for belief in conventional societal rules. For males, previous smoking was the major variable in all three age groups to directly affect subsequent smoking. These findings are discussed in terms of previous age and gender research.     

Community Context and Theories of Deviant Behavior: An Examination of Social Learning and Social Bonding Theories

The social learning and social bonding theories of deviant behavior were investigated in four community contexts: farm, rural-nonfarm, suburban, and urban. The mean differences across these contexts on pertinant variables did not form a continuum from rural to urban. Rather, the farm and suburban areas were similar, and the rural-nonfarm and urban areas were more alike than either of the other two contexts. A number of the social bonding variables interacted with community context, but no systematic pattern was observed. Social learning variables did not interact with context. Rather, the different level of these variables appeared to account for the variance in deviant behavior.     

Precursors of Running Away During Adolescence: Do Peers Matter?

Although peer influence is a salient predictor of delinquency, how it operates in the etiology of runaway behavior is not fully understood. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study demonstrates the importance of taking peers into account in understanding the etiology of running away. The findings suggest that peer deviance is strongly associated with adolescents’ decision to run away, independent of social network characteristics and their own deviant and conventional behavior, parental attachment, and school bonding. However, the causal process that links peer characteristics and running away remains unclear. More studies are needed to disentangle the underlying reciprocal and interactional relationships among peers, individual behavior, and social contexts such as family and school.     

REVISITING STEBBINS:

An understanding of continuity in lines of action is crucial for middle-range theories of deviant careers in general and labeling theory in particular. Following Becker, Goffman, and Robert Stebbins, I propose that the answer lies in a clear and adequate conceptualization of commitment processes. The goal of this paper, accordingly, is to provide such a conceptualization. In pursuing this goal, I discuss Stebbins' approach to labeling and commitment to deviance and contrast it with other treatments of commitment, in particular those of Becker, Goffman, Kanter, and Stryker. Next, I present an alternative conceptualization—a three-fold commitment framework—as a multidimensional and generic approach. After describing the framework, I apply it to labeling and commitment to deviance, with illustrations from interviews with a former member of an outlaw motorcycle club. I conclude with a variety of suggestions for research that stem from the three-fold framework.     

CAREER JOBS, SURVIVAL JOBS, AND EMPLOYEE DEVIANCE: A Social Investment Model of Workplace Misconduct

We examine the relationship between career stakes, or the fit between workers' current jobs and their long-term career plans, and employee deviance. Most prior research has focused on the link between job satisfaction and deviance, but career stakes may be a more salient and theoretically relevant measure of workers' investments in their present positions, particularly in young adulthood. We hypothesize that people whose current jobs match their long-term career goals have made a social investment with their employers that inhibits deviant behavior. We analyze data from the Youth Development Study (YDS), a longitudinal community sample of individuals now in their mid-twenties. Our results show that career stakes and job satisfaction exert independent effects on worker misconduct even when prior levels of general deviance and workplace deviance are statistically controlled.     

Religiosity and Perceived Future Ascetic Deviance and Delinquency among Mormon Adolescents: Testing the "This-Worldly" Supernatural Sanctions Thesis

Previous religiosity-delinquency research primarily explores hellfire belief and aspects of religious social bonding. Both hellfire belief and religious social bonding have been hypothesized to reduce delinquency. Borrowing from classical deterrence theory, there are strong theoretical reasons for believing that an additional dimension of religiosity—namely, belief in "this-worldly" supernatural sanctions (i.e., belief that God rewards and punishes in this life)—may also be inversely related to adolescent delinquency. This dimension of religiosity has not been explored in past empirical research. This article addresses this lack by specifically testing whether belief in this-worldly supernatural sanctions is related to subjectively perceived future ascetic deviance and delinquency among a sample of 1,393 adolescent members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (i.e., the Mormons). Logistic regression results indicate that, along with religious social bonding, belief in this-worldly supernatural sanctions has an independent effect on perceived future ascetic deviance (e.g., alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use) and perceived future delinquency (e.g., property and personal offenses) when controlling for relevant demographic and theoretical variables.     

Robert Merton's Contributions to the Sociology of Deviance

This paper assesses the theoretical and policy significance of one of Robert Merton's most influential contributions to modern sociology, the anomie or "strain" theory of deviant behavior. The enduring theoretical significance of strain theory lies in its sociological completeness. Strain theory preserves the interconnection between culture and social structure which is neglected or defined away by cultural and control theories of deviance. In its emphasis on socially structured contradictions in the relations of consumption, strain theory is also broadly consistent with and complements more conflict-oriented theories of crime and deviance. A major weakness of Merton's argument is its failure to clearly distinguish the etiological significance of the distribution of opportunities (mobility) and the distribution of outcomes (equality), which has led to misinterpretations of the policy implications of strain theory. Ironically, these problems are revealed through a kind of self-criticism that applies the basic tools of Mertonian functional analysis to strain theory. The paper concludes that, ambiguities notwithstanding, for purposes of theoretical integration and substantive insight, strain theory remains an important sociological perspective on deviance, especially when set in the context of Merton's broader sociological legacy.     

The Social Marketability of Self: Toward a New Theory of Social Deviance

Abstract

Deviance theory has problems in accounting for. (a) the form deviance takes within and between social groups, and (b) why individuals continue or discontinue deviant careers and responses. This paper deals with these problems by providing a new conceptualization of social deviance. Essentially, the theory is a combination of two ideas. First, we can all be thought of as social commodities; our commodity value (marketability) is based on the qualities we possess that others desire. Second, we all desire certain identities (ideas of who we are or would like to be) validated by others through their actions. Deviance is viewed as a response to strains involving this marketability-identity nexus that is in a continuous process of change.     

Gender Differences in Receptivity to Sexual Offers

Abstract

Recent research on both the concept of illusion of fertility control and infant-mother attachment theory have provided insight into the nature of people's sexual behavior. The present investigation examined the influence of both (a) illusion of fertility control and (b) attachment tendencies on contraceptive behavior. The participants were undergraduates at a small Midwestern university who received partial course credit for participation. Multiple regression analyses revealed that illusion of fertility control and attachment style were related to contraception. Two subscales of the IFCS were related to contraception. More specifically, a belief in bodily control was associated with less effective current contraceptive use. In addition, females who felt more independence from their partners in making sexual decisions were characterized by a higher contraceptive failure rate. Other results indicated that individuals with a dismissing attachment style reported a history of less reliable contraception.     

THE PROFESSIONAL EX-:

Research on persons exiting deviance has centered on identifying the processes where-by they abandon the behaviors, ideologies, and identities associated with their specific career by replacing them with more conventional lifestyles and identities. This study suggests that relinquishing the behaviors and lifestyles associated with a particular deviant career does not always imply total abandonment of a deviant identity. The central tenets of Ebaugh's (1988) model of role exit are applied and adapted to provide an alternative conceptualization of exiting deviance. Drawing on data gathered through introspection and open-end interviews with 35 professional ex-s currently employed in a variety of community, state, and private institutions providing treatment to individuals with drug, alcohol, and/or eating disorder problems, four central stages of this specific exit process are explicated: emulation of one's personal therapist, the call to a career in counseling, status-set realignment, and credentialization. Preliminary analysis suggests that professionalizing rather than abandoning a deviant identity facilitates exiting deviance.     

Sex Differences in the Characteristics of Members Lost to a Longitudinal Panel: A Speculative Research Note

A nine-year follow-up of former adolescents reveals sex differencesin the relative deviance and drug involvement of individualslost to the panel in young adulthood. As expected, men who werereinterviewed were less deviant than the noninterviewed, whilethe opposite was observed among women. Specification by raceindicates that the female pattern applies especially to nonwhites,but all women who are reinterviewed, irrespective of race, areno less deviant than the nonreinterviewed. The paradoxical findingfor females may result from changing marital status in thatparticular period of the life cycle and an inverse relationshipbetween delinquency and marriage.     

Deviant Cases in Tests of the Status Integration Theory

Within each of seven age groups of black females, black males, white females, and white males, the correlations among marital statuses between 1990 integration measures and 1989 to 1991 suicide rates are predominantly negative and substantial. That finding is consistent with previous reports, but those reports did not examine deviant cases, meaning populations that appear to be extreme exceptions to the status integration theory. Such populations—particular age groups or particular marital statuses—are identified here, and they are especially likely when a marital status has few occupants. The interpretation: a small population size tends to result in unstable suicide rates, and that instability tends to reduce the correlation of the rates with status integration. There is no conventional methodology for analyzing deviant cases, and this paper does not offer one. Nonetheless, the findings are relevant for any theory pertaining to variation in rates.