cumulative continuity and injection drug use among women: a test of the downward spiral framework

In this analytic essay. I shall utilize the framework of Individualism and structuralism in an attempt to realize an overview of theory in the sociology of deviance.¹ A major advantage of this framework is that it provides a perspective that sensitizes one to a theory's basic locus of causation and motivation for deviance. This takes us into the question of why some people, but not others, commit deviant acts even though they know those acts will be negatively viewed by others and bring sanctions upon themselves. As I apply this framework to selected major theoretical orientations.² I shall also note limitations of each theory. In addition. I shall Indicate contrasting practical Implications of deviance theory that have far‐ranging ramifications for social life—Interconnections between our changing political orientations and Individualism and structuralism in deviance theory.     

Self‐esteem and anomie: An integration of Adler and Merton as a theory of deviance

The purpose of this paper is to show that while anomie theory on the social level offers a valid explanation of deviance, in order to understand the phenomenon in its entirety, we must consider the individual level as well. The psycho‐dynamic dimension of individual action is a crucial component of deviant behavior and one which must be integrated into a broader theory of overall deviance. With this in mind we will attempt to integrate the social and the psychological by incorporating the Adlerian and Mertonian models in order to create a more dynamic theory of deviance.     

How do People Attribute their Polydrug Use? A Mixed Methods Approach

ABSTRACT

In Finland, polydrug use is generally seen as stigmatized deviant behavior. By means of the mixed methods approach, this article focuses on how people explain their polydrug use and what they attribute it to. Our findings show that these explanations vary according to sociodemography. Moreover, polydrug use is not always presented as planned and goal-oriented behavior, but also something that can occur due to sudden situational factors beyond the control of the person. Our findings implicate that the judgments regarding the deviance of polydrug use are contextual and different sociodemographic groups consider whether it is deviant behavior or not differently.     

Goal Commitment Buffers the Negative Effects of Perceived Abusive Supervision

Abstract

The effects of abusive supervision may be more intricate than what reason would suggest. To examine why individuals may respond differently to perceptions of supervisor abusive, this study relies on goal-setting theory to present a model that accounts for the influence of abusive supervision on job performance and organizational deviance. To be precise, motivation control and self-defeating cognition are proposed to mediate the interaction of perceived abusive supervision with goal commitment in predicting organizational deviance and job performance. In particular, the extent to which goal commitment alleviates the deleterious effects of abusive supervision is examined such that when goal commitment is high, the indirect effects of perceived abusive supervision on job performance and organizational deviance via motivation control and self-defeating cognition were predicted to be weaker. The proposed model was supported by multisource and multiwave data. The understanding of when the deleterious effects of supervisor abuse as perceived by followers are likely might help the human resource personnel to adopt measures that buffer against such outcomes.     

Culpable Control and Causal Deviance

Actions that are intended to produce harmful consequences can fail to achieve their desired effects in numerous ways. We refer to action sequences in which harmful intentions are thwarted as deviant causal chains. The culpable control model of blame (CCM) is a useful tool for predicting and explaining the attributions that observers make of the actors whose harmful intentions go awry. In this paper, we describe six types of deviant causal chains; those in which: an actor’s attempt is obviated by the intervention of another person or the environment; the intended effects could not have been produced regardless of the actor’s behavior; other causes diminish the actor’s causal role; the actor brings about foreseen but undesired consequences as a result of pursuing his or her focal goal; the focal action produces a chain of increasingly remote causal events; and the actor derives unforeseen benefits from his or her nefarious actions. A basic assumption of the CCM in these cases is that attributions for the participants’ actions will depend on positive and negative evaluations of their intentions and behaviors. We describe empirical findings that are consistent with this assumption, and predict other findings for causal deviance phenomena that have not yet been investigated empirically.     

The Consequences of School Environment and Locus of Control on Adulthood Deviant Behavior

We examine the long-term effect of school environment on individual deviant behavior. Specifically, we contrast the effects of school deviance and students’ perception of school deviance on personal deviance later in life. Using longitudinal data from four waves of more than 3,100 participants in the Kaplan Longitudinal and Multigenerational Study, we are able to show that school deviance in 7th grade has only a short-term effect on individual deviance. However, when students perceive a lack of deviance in their school at 7th grade, it decreased their personal deviance in their mid-forties if they were both deviant in 7th grade and reported an external locus of control.     

What motivates deviant behavior in the workplace? An examination of the mechanisms by which procedural injustice affects deviance

This research examines the motivational and social-cognitive processes underlying the procedural injustice and deviance relationship. Based on psychological need and self-determination theories, it was hypothesized that intrinsic motivation would mediate the relationship between procedural injustice and deviance. Based on the general aggression model and social-cognitive theory, it was hypothesized that this positive indirect effect would be moderated by dispositional aggression. Two studies were conducted, including multi-wave and multi-source data, to test these relationships through mediation and moderated mediation procedures. Results supported both hypotheses: intrinsic motivation mediated the procedural injustice and deviance relationship; and this positive indirect effect was moderated by dispositional aggression, such that higher levels of aggression increased the magnitude of the indirect effect. Results were consistent across multiple measures of intrinsic motivation, aggression, and deviance (self- and other-report). Theoretical and practical contributions include support for a process-based theory of deviant behavior in the workplace and organizational interventions aimed at enriching one’s job to develop greater feelings of intrinsic motivation.     

Deviant scientists and scientific deviance

Fraud in the form of data fabrication/manipulation by scientists, heretofore ignored owing to its presumed nonexistence, is discussed as an area of potential interest for the study of deviant behavior. By way if illustration, twelve recent cases of scientific fraud are described. These examples serve to highlight the question of prevalence as their existence is evidence that deviance in science exists, and belies the argument that the normative structure of science makes such acts unlikely. Primary attention was given to the problem of explaining this atypical form of deviant behavior. Current popular efforts tend to be either individualistic “bad apple” explanations, or indictments of the pressures to produce inherent in the structure of modern science. A sociology of scientific deviance 1s offered by reveiwing the potential contributions of anomie, interactionist, and conflict theories. All were found to have significant application to the study of scientific deviance as a number of questions for further research are suggested.     

Guilt by Association: The Relationship between Deviant Peers and Deviant Labels

This study broadens labeling theory by examining the role deviant peers play in earlier stages of the labeling process. We propose that deviant peers serve as a source of information used in the decision to apply a deviant label by parents and school authorities. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health with cross-sectional (n = 12,011) and longitudinal (n = 9,267) samples, results show that higher levels of peer deviance are related to receiving both informal and formal labels. We also find that associating with deviant peers amplifies the effect of individual deviance on receiving an informal label.     

DEVIANCE AND CAUSALISM

Drawing on the problem of deviance, I present a novel line of argumentation against causal theories of action. The causalist faces a dilemma: either she adopts a simple account of the causal route between intention and outcome, at the cost of failing to rule out deviance cases, or she adopts a more sophisticated account, at the cost of ruling out cases of intentional action in which the causal route is merely unusual. Underlying this dilemma, I argue, is that the agent's perspective plays an ineliminable role in determining which causal pathways are deviant and which are not.     

More than Just a Flock? The Independent and Interdependent Nature of Peer Self-Control on Deviance

ABSTRACT

The goal of this study is to test whether a peer’s self-control is related to deviance and whether it conditions the extent to which an actor’s self-control is related to deviance. To examine these research questions, the study begins by highlighting a series of theoretical inconsistencies in expected direction of peer effects in Gottfredson and Hirschi’s self-control theory. Using dyadic data, crime is regressed onto measures of attitudinal and behavioral self-control from the actor and the friend. Regardless of how self-control is measured, findings demonstrate that the peer’s self-control relates to deviance. Additionally, peer self-control independently and interdependently relates to deviant involvement. Peer self-control is meaningful for deviance in multiple ways among people in friendships, thereby suggesting that the importance of peer self-control on offending behaviors is greater than just being part of a flock.     

Coping with a deviant identity

Most interactionist literature dealing with the creation of deviance focuses on one of two major areas: acquisition of a deviant identity and coping with a deviant identity. In the present paper, we explore the coping strategies used by members of a national weight control organization to deal with the devalued character of obesity. Data were gathered using the “triangulation” of direct observation, structured and unstructured interviews, and personal experience. We found five generic coping strategies used by our respondents. We call them: (1) Avoidance, (2) Compliance, (3) Reaction Formation, (4) Compensation, and (5) Accounts.     

Not quite normal,but not really deviant: Some notes on the comparison of elite athletes and women political activists

Elite athletes and women political activists are compared to analyze the notion of “defiance.” First, it is established that each of these groups is perceived and defined as slightly deviant. It is then shown that traditional concepts of labeling fail to provide an adequate explanation for how deviant labels are applied to and used by these particular deviant actors. The elite athletes and women activists cultivate their marginality so as to appear not quite normal, but not really deviant. By straddling the boundary between deviance and normalcy, the members of each group gain a good vantage point from which to ideologically advance social change efforts.     

Congress as a Deviant Organization: An Application of Ermann and Lundman’s Organizational Deviance Framework

ABSTRACT

In 1978, Ermann and Lundman put forth the most sophisticated organizational deviance framework to date. They conceptualized organizational deviance as actions by an organization that interfere with the flow of benefits to actors with legitimate claims upon that organization. Further, they stipulated that these claims are protected by “controlling organizations.” We apply Ermann and Lundman’s framework to Congress and conclude that it is a deviant organization. We then contemplate the challenges to social control that congressional deviance poses, and contend that the “exempt status” enjoyed by Congress – in that it writes its own rules and polices itself – should be removed.     

Deviant Workplace Behavior as Emotional Action: Discriminant and Interactive Roles for Work-Related Emotional Intelligence

ABSTRACT

Employees are thought to engage in deviant workplace behaviors (e.g., sabotage, theft) when they are stressed, frustrated, or angry. Given the emotional nature of these actions, individual differences in work-related emotional intelligence (W-EI) should, potentially, be consequential. Three studies (ns = 91, 198, & 147) examined this possibility by assessing variations in emotion perception and management skills with an ability measure specifically designed for the workplace context. Employees who received higher W-EI scores were less prone to both interpersonal deviance and organizational deviance and these relationships displayed discriminant validity as well as meaningful interactive effects with organizational stressors. The investigation extends our understanding of workplace deviance in a way that highlights an important role for work-related variations in emotional intelligence.     

Attachments,gender, and delinquency

The purpose of this study is to contribute to a gender‐integrated theory of delinquent behavior by testing the assumptions of gender specialized delinquent behavior and of sex typed bonds as inhibitors of deviance. Data from self‐administered questionnaires completed by a sample of teenagers in the 10th grade and one year later were used in the study. We found no clear evidence of gender specialization in the deviant behavior reported by the youth. Furthermore, the analysis did not lend support to traditional theories that link male and female delinquency to the weakening of different bonds. The testing of an inclusive model of bond theories produced very similar results for both genders.     

The moral career of the reformed compulsive eater: A study of conversion to charismatic conformity

This paper reports the findings of an intensive study of participants in a “self‐help” weight control group. The objective of the study was to investigate the development of deviant identity among the obese and the process by which the group of reformed deviants effected changes in the eating behavior of its members. Participant observation and interviews revealed successful members experience a radical conversion and that these converts to conformity (self‐controlled eating) shared common biographical characteristics, i.e., moral careers. Theoretical implications of such conversions from deviance to conformity are then discussed.     

Does Forced Sexual Contact Have Criminogenic Effects?

Abstract

According to derailment theory, tactics girls and women use to survive a history of abuse, strategies shaped by their abuse, and societal reactions to it estrange them from non-deviant social networks and situations and increase the likelihood of criminal offending and the application of criminal labels. This process is self-reinforcing, with interactions of substance abuse, sexual deviance, criminal offending, and social control constraining choices through alienation and stigmatization. In short, a dynamic of cumulative disadvantage is set in place that puts some women at greater risk for involvement with the legal system. Empirical evaluation of this theory suggests that alienation from and marginal positions in pro-social networks have parallels in anti-social networks sufficient to decrease the likelihood of criminal offending and contact with crime control agencies.     

Animal Abuse among High-Risk Youth: A Test of Agnew’s Theory

ABSTRACT

Concern over animal abuse among policy-makers, law enforcement officials, and the general public remains high. Although research has marked animal abuse as an indicator of a variety of deviant outcomes, fewer projects have examined the correlates of cruelty towards animals. In this study, we apply Agnew’s theory of animal abuse to explore how a wide-range of characteristics relate to deviance towards animals. In support of Agnew’s theory, results reveal that a combination of individual traits and behaviors, socialization experiences, and mechanisms of social control significantly relate to animal abuse. However, measures of strain do not appear to relate to animal abuse, providing only partial support to the theory.     

Giving and receiving autonomy support in a high-stakes sport context: A field-based experiment during the 2012 London Paralympic Games

ObjectiveRecognizing that high-stakes competitions tend to pressure coaches toward a maladaptive controlling motivating style, we sought to evaluate the capacity of an intervention to help coaches adopt a more autonomy-supportive style as they and their athletes prepared for the 2012 London Paralympic Games.DesignWe adopted a coach-focused experimental research design that longitudinally assessed coaches' and athletes' self-report, rater-scored, and objective dependent measures.MethodWe randomly assigned 33 coaches and their 64 athletes from 10 sports into either an experimental or control group and assessed their motivation and functioning longitudinally.ResultsIn the control group, athletes and coaches both showed a significant longitudinal deterioration in all measures of motivation, engagement, and functioning. In the experimental group, none of the measures of motivation, engagement, and functioning deteriorated but, instead, were generally maintained. In terms of performance, athletes of coaches in the experimental group won significantly more Olympic medals than did athletes in the control group.ConclusionEnacting an autonomy-supportive coaching style within the context of a high-stakes sports competition functioned as an antidote to coaches' otherwise situationally-induced controlling style.