Differential Association Theory And The Social Learning Theory

Since very early childhood, children are encouraged to socialize with other people to be able to learn all kinds of different skills. They start socializing with their parents to learn all the basic things such as learning to walk and talk and then move on to socialize with different family members and friends to learn how to have better social skills. As they grow up they learn how to do things by watching the people around them who influence them the most and then they proceed to try and mimic what they see. Albert Bandura called this the Social Learning Theory, saying that people learn how to do things by observing others. As the child grow, it learns what is right from wrong, but what happens when the child starts going to school and learning

Most are highly influenced by their family, friends, environmental surrounding, etc. When they are in their juvenile ages they will be more influenced by their friends as they are who the individuals spend more time with in school. Individuals seek the approval of each other to be part of their groups, “Differential association theory and social learning theory both suggest that peer beliefs have clear potential for contributing to the learning of deviant behavior.” (Regan 2014). Juveniles feed off each other in the sense that if one individual does something “cool” a next individual will want to do it to be “cool” and thus, be more prone to engage in delinquent acts and follow the step of their peers. In Daniel Regan’s article, it is also argued that some juveniles also choose their friends by finding people that have similar beliefs and not necessarily only of social

In their article, they discuss various theories but the one that worked for them in their study was the socialization model. They say,” In other words, while many researchers assume that a direct relationship between peer associations and individual behavior is evidence of overt peer pressure, our findings suggest that such an assumption may be largely incorrect.” (Reed and Rountree,