Contacting with violent patterns and violent peer and students violent drift an application of edwin sutherland’s differential association theory

562 Contacting with Violent Patterns and Violent Peer and Student's Violent Drift: An Application of Edwin Sutherland’s Differential Association Theory Nguyen Thi Nhu Trang* Abstract

562

Contacting with Violent Patterns and Violent Peer and

Student's Violent Drift: An Application of Edwin

Sutherland’s Differential Association Theory

Nguyen Thi Nhu Trang*

Abstract: Applying Edwin Sutherland's Differential Association theory, this article

attempts to explain the conditions facilitating student violence in Hanoi‟s high-schools Data for this article was collected through participant observation at a high-risk school in Hanoi, in-depth interviews with different stakeholders, and self-administered questionnaire survey at three high-schools Results support differential association propositions that contact with violent patterns and having aggressive peers increase students' drift toward violent solutions Some illustration of the mechanism in which contact with violent pattern and peers encourage students to resort to violence, and further discussion on the application of differential association theory in the context of Vietnam are also presented

Keywords: Contact with violent patterns; student violence; differential association theory;

Edwin Sutherland; Hanoi-Vietnam

Received 21 st September 2017; Revised 12 nd October 2017; Accepted 30 th October 2017

1 Introduction *

For about a decade, school violence has

become an alarming issue in Vietnam, since

video clips of student fight have been

continuously uploaded onto the internet and

mass media regularly kept reporting serious

violent incidents between students which

resulted in permanent injury or even death

Despite parental concern and effort from

both schools and government authorities,

research also documented that school

violence still occurred quite rampantly and

seriously and hence a need for the

understanding why school violence has

become so widespread and this problem is

still present (Nguyen Thi Nhu Trang 2016)

*

VNU-University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Ha

Noi, Viet Nam; email: maiphivn@yahoo.com

In a search for identifying social factors conducive to school violence, Edwin Sutherland‟s differential association theory was applied in this study to establish an understanding of how violent conducts were learnt and spread Before presenting this theory, it is necessary to acknowledged that violence, as other types of social deviance,

is not a repercussion of the operation of one single social factor Instead, it is a result of concurrent operations and interactions of several social factors discussed in several theories of deviance such as anomie, labeling/stigmatization, social learning, and opportunities to break the law, just to name

a few It is hence impossible to provide a full explanation of school violence in particular and social deviance in general It

is also difficult to pick out certain theories

among such a profuse source to thoroughly

explain school violence

However, given that the subject of this

research are adolescents, this study searches

explanation for their resorting to violence in

social force that has the greatest impact on

adolescents according to lifespan theorists,

namely peers Hence, this study borrows

arguments from Differential Association

Theory (DAT) by Edwin H Sutherland

(1974) to explain how interaction with peers

might facilitate and propagate violent

solutions among students Briefly,

Sutherland's differential association theory

explains deviance at both the individual and

societal level At the individual level, it

argues that deviance is bred from an

individual's close associations with deviants,

which exposes the person to and hence

makes him liable to absorb definitions and

patterns favorable to deviance At the

societal level, this theory claims that the

high rate of crime is a result of the way

society is organized, allowing patterns and

definitions favorable to crime to be spread

Applying Sutherland's differential

association theory to the interpersonal level

of reasoning, this study examines how

patterns and definitions favorable to

violence spread via (1) association with

violent peers and (2) witnessing violent peer

confrontation are linked to students‟

violence drift

This article will first briefly introduce

Different Association theory and its nine

propositions, and hence results on how

association with violent peers and

witnessing violent peer confrontation relates

to students‟ violence drift Lastly, it

discusses some implications for applying

DAT in general and applying it in the context of Vietnam

2 Differential Association theory

Sutherland did not write a great deal to present his theory of differential associations, but his theory has made notable contributions to deviance theories

He points out essential criteria for

constructing a theory explaining the causes

of social deviance, and he provides a theory that serves to explain deviance at different levels and one that is testable in empirical studies

The vital principle Sutherland proposes for constructing a scientific explanation for crime is that „the conditions which are said

to cause crime should be present when a crime is present, and they should be absent when a crime is absent‟ (Sutherland and Cressey 1978: 189) Normally, theorists often look for factors „present when a crime

is present' and hardly pay attention to the corollary, i.e if the crime is absent if these factors are absent Thus, existing theories of crime mostly address predictors of crime rather than the causes of crime

In an attempt to propose a general explanation for crime, Sutherland formulated nine propositions explaining how crime is caused Briefly, these propositions claim that crime is learned via association with delinquent persons By associating with delinquents, individuals gradually learn values, norms, motivations, rationalizations, and techniques of committing a crime What they learn will be translated into action when an opportunity presents itself

However, not everyone who has the association with delinquents will become delinquent The likelihood of becoming

delinquent depends on the state of this

association (that is why Sutherland called

his theory the differential association

theory) Differential associations have a

differential influence on an individual's

behavior The more intimate the association

is, the earlier in life the association starts,

the more intensive and frequent the

interactions, the more likely people having

an association with delinquents are to learn

to commit a crime and engage in crime

Applying Sutherland‟s differential

association theory to the study of violence,

his nine propositions can be outlined as

follows:

- Violent behavior is learned People do

not invent violence; rather, they learn it

from their close associations

- Violent behavior is learned in

interaction with other persons in a process of

communication Through daily interpersonal

interaction, not violent video games or

movies and lifeless things, violent behavior

is propagated

- The principal part of learning violent

behavior occurs within an intimate personal

group This means that the closer people are

with violent individuals, the more likely

they will be to learn violent behaviors

- When criminal behavior is learned, the

learning includes (a) techniques of

committing violence, (b) the specific

direction of motives, drives, rationalizations,

and attitude

- The specific direction of motives and

drives is learned from definitions favorable

to violence

- A person becomes violent because

definitions favorable to using violence

override definitions unfavorable to using

violence This is the principle of differential

association Students resort to violence

because of their contact with violent patterns

and (emphasis added) because of isolation

from anti-violent patterns Much of our experience is, in fact, neutral (i.e neither pro-violence nor anti-violence) such as studying or walking This neutral experience

is important as it occupies a student's time

so that chance for engaging in violence is reduced

- Differential associations may vary in frequency, duration, priority, and intensity

- The process of learning violence by association with violent and anti-violent patterns involves all of the mechanisms that are involved in any other learning Thus, learning violence is not simply a process of imitation

- While violent behavior is an expression

of general needs and values, it is not explained by those general needs and values, because the non-violent behavior is also an expression of the same needs and values For instance, some students may resort to violence in order to assert their social status However, desire for higher social status is not the cause of violence, since it also explains the effort put forth to reach an excellent level of academic performance Since its publication, Sutherland's differential association theory has received both praise and criticism This theory is valued in that its explanatory sphere is quite large Given the fact that no single theory is able to explain every type of crime, the differential association argument is praised for its explanation of broadly varying observations, more so than any existing theory, as claimed by Cressey (1960) It is also highly appreciated for highlighting the idea that an effective explanation of human behavior is consistent with explanations of epidemiology, as mentioned at the beginning of this section However, some of the concepts used in this theory are criticized for being somewhat vague and

difficult to be operationalized for empirical

tests, such as definitions of „excess' or

„favorable to' and „unfavorable to' Besides,

the differential association theory by

Sutherland is also criticized for

oversimplifying the complex and diversified

process in which deviant behavior is learned

(Cressey 1960)

However, when applied to empirical

tests, the differential association argument

appears quite effective in explaining

deviance In a study of how broken homes

affect delinquency among black and

non-black youth, Matsueda and Heimer (1987:

826) found that „in both populations, the

effects of broken homes and attachment to

parents and peers are mediated by the

learning of definitions of delinquency, a

finding that supports differential association

over social control theory.' Heimer (1997)

specifically pointed out that association with

violent peers influenced violence indirectly

through its impact on the learning of

definitions favorable to violence Consistent

with the findings of Matsueda and Heimer

(1987) and Heimer (1997), Hoffman (2002)

also found that those who hold conventional

definitions are less likely to be involved in

delinquency; yet, he noted that the impact of

definitions varies across urban communities,

suggesting that theories need to be

developed with more attention to specific

contextual processes More recently, the

study of Haynie and Osgood (2005) also

supported the differential association

arguments, showing that adolescents tend to

engage in delinquency if they are associated

with delinquent friends or if they indulge in

a great deal of unstructured socializing with

friends

In sum, research has provided evidence

supporting differential association

arguments, mainly with regard to the effect

on the delinquency of association with

delinquent peers and learning definitions favorable to delinquency Following this proven-to-be-effective line of explanation, this study seeks explanations for the overwhelming use of violence among high school students in Hanoi based on students' contact with violent patterns and association with aggressive friends

3 Research method and key concepts

Three main research methods were applied to collect data for this study, namely participant semi-structured observation, in-depth interviews, and self-administered questionnaire survey

First, participant semi-structured observation was conducted in a high school

in Hanoi Researcher played the role as volunteer full-time school social worker for one school year Beside daily fieldwork diary, an observation table was used to record some patterns of interaction between students and their significant others as peers, homeroom teachers, and parents

During observation, 24 in-depth interviews were made with students (students who witnessed their peers‟ violent confrontation, those who resorted to violence and those victims of violence), teachers, school superintendents, parents, and civil defense officials

At the end of data collection period, a self-administered questionnaire survey was conducted at three public high schools in inner districts of Hanoi (Ba Dinh, Dong Da, Cau Giay), with the participation of 604 students selected by simple random sampling technique The number of questionnaires collected was 560, response rate reached 92.7%

Two hypotheses derived from Sutherland‟s DAT was developed to

establish the correlation between students‟

violent drift and their contact with violent

patterns and peers

Hypothesis 1: Exposure to violent

patterns increases students‟ violent drift

Hypothesis 2: Association with

aggressive peers positively correlates to

students‟ violent drift

Student violent drift is a scale measuring

how far students are involved in and

committed to violent solutions This scale is

composed of three items, including (1) have

you ever been involved in a violent

confrontation with other student(s) in your

school in the previous school year; (2) Have

you ever given your friend a hand in their

fight against other students in the previous

school year; and (3) Thinking of your most

recent violent clash, if you could live your

life again, would you participate in that

fight? The higher the score indicates a

higher degree of students' violent drift

Exposure to violent patterns was

measured via the students' frequency of

witnessing their peer's violent confrontation

at school Students were asked to report

their frequency of witnessing (0=Hardly

witness; 1=Sometimes per semester;

2=Sometimes per month; 3=sometimes per

week; 4=Nearly daily) six types of school

violence, ranging from verbal violence to

physical violence using lethal weapons The

higher the score students got, the more

exposed to violent patterns they are

Association with the aggressive peer(s)

was measured by a variable of how many

friends of student have been involved in school violence in the school year prior to the survey The higher the score student got, the more they are associated with violent peers

4 Students’ contact with violent patterns and peers and their involvement in school violence

It is argued in this study that the more students witness other students resorting to violence to deal with peer conflicts, the more likely they will be to apply violent solutions to handle their own peer conflicts Hence, we first present how frequently students at research sites witnessed violent confrontations between their peers

4.1 Rate of students who witnessed violent confrontation between their peers

The following figure 1 shows the percentages of students who witnessed one

or more violent student incidents in their school during the school year prior to the survey in the three sampled high schools in Hanoi Generally, witnessing rate is significantly higher than the victimization rate Overall, up to 90 % of survey respondents reported that they witnessed violent conducts on the part of peers in the school year prior to the survey, whereas the overall rate of students who were victims of violence is 46.8%

Figure 1: Rates of witnessing violent incidents during the school year prior to the survey, by types of violence

(Source: Nguyễn Thị Như Trang 2017)

As shown in above figure, swearing and

humiliating is the most common violent

behaviour observed among students on the

research sites 85.7% of survey respondents

reported they observed such violent verbal

confrontation between their peers Not

surprisingly, fighting with weapons is the

least observed among six types of violent

behaviors However, it's alarming that the

rate of students who witnessed such serious

violent incident as fights using weapons1 is

remarkably high (27.2%)

Another alarming fact showing the

prevalence of weapon use in violent

confrontation between high school students

in Hanoi is that up to 33.3% of survey

respondents reported that they did witness a

student or a group of students using

weapons to threaten another student(s), even

though most of them observed this type of

violence at a low frequency (sometimes per

semester) Only a small percentage reported

that they observed this type of violence at a

1 Weapon in this study was defined as arms that might

cause dangerous injury or death such as knife, sword,

metal stick Things students sometimes use in a fight but

not likely to result in serious injury or death such as a

book or wooden ruler were not counted as a weapon

higher frequency (sometimes a month) However, this rate suggests that students are being exposed to contact with serious school violent incidents Interviews with students provide the same indication

„Yes, I did [see a fight where a weapon

was used] Last semester a boy in my class

pressed a knife into another boy to threaten him But he just wanted to threaten; he dared not do anything else I know him; his truculence is just on the surface He dares not do anything, even if you paid him a lot.‟ (Girl, grade 12, academic performance: Average)

I myself also saw students using knives

at school during the field study at the research site Once, when I was talking and eating some fruits with a group of school-girls before their class, a boy came and asked if we needed a knife to cut the fruits Before we answered, he stuck an old kitchen knife on our wooden table The girls laughed and reacted as if it was a petty joke and the presence of the knife was nothing at all: they continued talking and ignored the knife on the table Another time, a 10th -grade boy quarreled with a group of about 5

to 7 boys from another class in the corridor

during recess Suddenly he took out a knife

and angrily threatened his opponents

Fortunately, his classmates, both girls and

boys, held him back and took the knife away

from him so nothing serious happened

between the two angry sides Some 12th

-grade boys told me that „many‟ students,

especially boys, brought weapons to school,

some to protect themselves and some only to

show off It is not sure what „many‟ means,

but it is sure that weapons were sometimes

brought to the high school where I

conducted my fieldwork

Even though this type of violence is less

serious than physical fighting in terms of

instant physical consequences, using a

weapon to threaten others portends potential

very serious consequences to both the one

who threatens and the one who is

threatened The former will be immediately

expelled from school if his conduct is

discovered, while the latter faces the danger

of being seriously injured or even killed

That may be the reason why the rate of

students who witnessed threats using a

weapon is much lower than those who

witnessed physical fighting (33.3% and

67.3% respectively)

The rate of students who witnessed

physical fighting in the school year prior to

the survey is only lower than the rate of

students witnessing their peers using foul

language and humiliating one another

(67.3% and 85.7% respectively) It is

remarkable that the frequency of witnessing

physical fighting is also quite high Up to

14.5% of respondents reported that they

witnessed physical fighting sometimes a

month and 42.3% witnessed it sometimes a

semester

„I have seen [student fighting] a few

times [in the last school year], but I don‟t

know any of them [those who fought]

Reasons for fighting are varied They [the

students] may even beat someone up just

because s/he looks unfavorable to them Jealousy is also a popular reason.‟ (Girl, grade 12, academic performance: Good)

It is also noteworthy that the rate of students who observed student fighting where weapons were used is quite high (27.2%) Notably, up to 20.9% of respondents reported they saw fighting using weapons at a frequency of sometimes a semester This rate significantly contributes

to the notion that some students are being exposed to the contact with serious violent incidents in school settings

In summary, it was found in the survey that the rate of students who witnessed student violence in the school year prior to the survey is very high In other words, the proportion of students who are exposed to violent patterns is quite large

A question then emerges: Does this fact bear a relationship to the rampant resorting

to violence among high school students? Regarding the association between a student's witnessing violence and subsequently getting involved in violence, data shows that the two variables are positively correlated (Pearson's r= 336, p

<.001) The relatively high correlation coefficient (.336) indicates that the association is quite strong, supporting the differential association theory in that a student's contact with violent patterns increases his/her possibility of being involved in violence The results from this study are consistent with results from other studies (Hoffman 2002; Heimer 1997; Matsueda and Heimer 1987), documenting that learning definitions and patterns favorable to delinquency (or violence in this particular study) induce delinquency A further discussion on the association between students' exposure to violent

patterns and their involvement in violence

will be presented in part 5

4.2 Associating with aggressive peer(s) and

student’s involvement in violence

Previous studies on juvenile delinquency

(Haynie and Osgood 2005; Heimer 1997;

Heimer and Matsueda 1994; Warr 1993),

based on differential association arguments,

have continuously documented the

statistically significant positive association

between a juvenile‟s having delinquent

friends and that juvenile‟s engagement in

delinquency More importantly, peer

influence is often found very strong on

juveniles Warr (1993: 259) claimed that

„the immediate pressure of peers on

adolescents is so great that peer-induced

pressures to violate the law can be

overcome only by avoiding the company of

delinquent peers altogether.‟ This author

also warned that „although attachment to

parents may inhibit the development of

delinquency friendships, it apparently does

little to reduce delinquency among those

who already have delinquent friends‟ (p

257)

The results of my survey on the

association between a student having

aggressive peers and his/her involvement in

violence are in line with the above findings

Data indicates that when the association

between witnessing violence and getting

involved in violence is strong; the

association between involvement in violence

and having a friend who commits violent

acts is found even stronger Again, the

association is found positive (Pearson's

r=.430, p<.001), supporting the argument

that the more violent friends a student has,

the more likely he/she is to get involved in

student violence

Regarding how having violent friends strongly predicts a student‟s involvement in violence, psychological habit is one of the mechanisms promoting this association Generally speaking, people tend to agree with those they like such as their friends Social psychologists have produced

evidence that people ordinarily equate liking with the agreement Generalized the work of

other research, Warr (2002: 71) maintain

that there is a “tendency on the part of

people to perceive that they should somehow agree with those they like and like those with whom they agree.” To be more specific,

Warr (2002) claimed that the strong emotional attraction between adolescents who consider each other as friends can induce genuine attitudinal changes as individuals seek to reconcile their beliefs with their feelings for others Accordingly, once considering a violent peer as a friend, teens tend to consider the violent conduct of that friend as an appropriate way of dealing with peer conflicts

5 Discussion

As shown in previous part, both contact with violent patterns (i.e witnessing violent behaviours) and having aggressive friends are found positively related to a student‟s tendency to resort to violence, supporting the differential association theory in that close association with violent individuals and contact with violent patterns induce a student to learn about and resort to violence when he/she feels such is appropriate

However, based on the differential association theory, it may also be inferred that contact with aggressive practices of parents also has the same effect on a student's resorting to violence This effect is activated by the same process as that of

having aggressive peers and observing the

violent behavior of peers: „Any person

inevitably assimilates the surrounding

culture unless other patterns are in conflict;

a southerner does not pronounce r because

other southerners do not pronounce r’

(Sutherland and Cressey 1978)

Interestingly, while witnessing the violent

conduct of peers and having aggressive

friends increases the tendency to use

violence, exposure to aggressive parental

punishment is found in this study to have no

statistically significant correlation with

adolescent involvement in violence

This finding is also different from what

Strauss (1991) found, which maintains that

parental aggressiveness has a positive

association with the probability of using

violence when the children grow into

adulthood The possible reason, I suspect, is

that because the study of Strauss (1991) and

mine were conducted in two significantly

different social contexts, whereas social

context plays a vital role in shaping the

operation and interaction of social forces

(Hoffman 2002) To be specific, violent

parental punishment is commonly opposed

in the US, whereas it is a very common way

to tackle child's misdemeanors in Vietnam

(Mai Huy Bích 1993) As an old Vietnamese

saying goes that „[if you] love someone,

give him a caning; if you hate someone, give

him sweet words.'2 Where aggressive

parenting is commonly practiced, it is

difficult to find any statistically significant

association between it and other social

matters such as student violence

Although looking to this as a factor

determining whether or not Vietnamese

urban adolescents commit violence in school

is related to the way their parents treat them

2 Original version: „Yêu cho roi cho vọt, ghét cho ngọt cho

bùi’

at home is a presumption, it is worth it, I believe, to give more attention to future research on school violence to the role of the cultural context in determining the operation and interaction of social forces, which in turn influences the state of school violence

The process in which witnessing violence and having aggressive peers influences a student’s resorting to violence

It has been statistically documented that witnessing violent confrontations and having aggressive friends increase the chance that a student will resort to violence when he/she feels it is appropriate A question hence arises: How does resorting to violence increase by witnessing violent peer confrontations and having aggressive friends?

As found over the course of my participation observation, witnessing violence has two significant effects on students The most notable are the learning effect By witnessing various3 violent confrontations involving their peers, students learn some definitions favorable to

violence (such as the popular view „if you

wrong your friend, you deserve to be beaten up’); they learn the techniques of organizing

a violent confrontation and they can also learn various violent behaviours/patterns as well as what kind of weapon can be used

In addition, witnessing violence is not a static experience It often brings about a

spread of information on the incident

observed, and especially a dramatization of

what happened, which leads to the formation

of imaginary violence This imaginary

violence, in turn, increases a student‟s

3

As presented in figure 1, the rate of students who witnessed their violent confrontations of their peers in a previous school year is very high, and the frequency of their witnessing such is also high

premonition of violence by, mostly,

preparation for violence, such as bringing a

weapon to school or trying to make friends

with aggressive peers

Importantly, frequently witnessing

violence, along with the effect of imaginary

violence, is inducing students, at least in my

research site, to believe that violence is a

normal, acceptable way to resolve peer

conflicts It can be said that witnessing

violence has normalized such

unconventional conduct as violence, so that

students who frequently witness student

fights tend to think that violence is common,

sometimes even a required, reaction It is

observed during fieldwork that, due to this

normalization of violence, some perpetrators

of student fights even did not need to adduce

what Sykes and Matza (1951) called

techniques of neutralization to rationalize

their violent attack against their peer They

completely believed that what they did was

right

As for witnessing violence, having

aggressive peers also facilitates a student‟s

learning to accept and use violence It

happened quite commonly on my research

site that when a student had a peer conflict,

some friends would not only advise him/her

to beat up his/her opponent, but also advise

him/her on how to take revenge, and provide

useful information such as the opponent‟

schedule or details of the opponent‟s power

base (e.g number of aggressive friends) or

lack of it

Besides, having violent friends also

increases a student's potential engagement in

violence by providing direct support to

resorting to violence: aggressive friends not

only encourage resorting to violence but

also offer to lend a helping hand in the fight

This direct support explains why more than

half of violent student confrontations in the

three sampled high schools involved three or more students as presented in Chapter 3 However, it should be noted that friends

do not always encourage violence Even though most existing studies found that peers tended to incite students in conflict to fight instead of dissuading them (e.g Espelage and Holt 2001; Kreager 2004; Larson 2005), my study, both by survey and

by field observation, found that friends, concerned for their friend‟s safety, tried to avert a potential fight in some cases Sometimes they even tried to reconcile their friend and his/her opponents Up to 26.3%

of survey respondents also reported that their friend disagreed with their involvement

in the last violent confrontation, 13.1% of respondents reported their close friend asked them to apologize to their opponent, and 10% said that their close friend informed their parents about the fighting

The reason why my finding is somewhat different from the findings of previous studies is probably that I asked students about the response of their close friends to the most recent fight they were involved in Previous studies examined the response of bystanders This finding, hence, suggests that the role of a peer in the onset of student violence (i.e inciting or averting violence) depends on not only whether that peer is aggressive or not, but also how close that peer is to the student in conflict Close friends often take into account the safety of their friend, so they, even though they themselves may be aggressive, sometimes may dissuade their friend from engaging in violence

This finding is, however, not inconsistent with the differential association theory According to it, crime is caused not only by contact with criminals but also by the fact that criminal patterns overwhelm anti-criminal patterns That means having