55-3 Developing and Evaluating the Scale for Social Benefits and Losses of Deviant Behaviors

Chung-Chin Wu
National Pingtung University


 
Social Learning Theory, General Strain Theory, and Social Control Theory are three sociopsychological theories, which proposed to account for deviant behaviors. Social Learning Theory argued that differential reinforcement of behaviors, definition in favor of crime, the imitation of criminal models, and attached to deviant peer are four key influential factors leading to deviant behaviors. Deviant behaviors could be positively and negatively encouraged to be prolonged. For instance, someone who initially smoks may be encourage for his/her brave, and it may be also thought that is the way keeping his/her friendship. How people define certain behaviors as good or bad may be decided by his or her propensity of committing criminality. Moreover, deviant peer may also provid a model for imitating their deviant behaviors. Further, people who attaches to deviant peer may also learn deviant motivation and definition. General Strain Theory argued that failure to achieve positively valued goals (e.g. did not get good grade), inconsistent between expectations and achievements, removal of positive stimuli (e.g. divorce), and appearance of negative stimuli (e.g. been bullied) are crucial for deviant behaviors. Both theories try to find out encouraged factors for deviant behaviors. Instead, Social Control Theory proposes that relationships among individuals, commitments, values, norms, and beliefs prevents someone from deviant behaviors. Therefore, if moral beliefs (what is this?) are internalized, people will voluntarily limit their intention to commit deviant behaviors. This theory tries to understand the possible factors to reduce the likelihood of deviant behaviors. However, measurement of these three theories were rarely investigated the processes of social benefits and losses for expected behavioral outcome. The positive effects of negative reinforcement to deviant behaviors and inhibition effects of deviant behaviors to others feeling (social losses) were rarely measured in related measurement in empirical studies. This study constructed social benefits evaluation items based on Social Learning Theory and General Strain Theory to respectively capture positive effects of positive and negative reinforcements on deviant behaviors. Meanwhile, items for measuring social losses, based on social control theory, were designed to capture inhibition effects of affective connections to important others on deviant behaviors. This study included eighth grader as participants to evaluate the reliability and validity of social benefits and losses scale. Results showed: (1) Model of two second-order factors consisting four factors fitted to the observations. (2) Social benefits evaluation processes included pursing peers' recognition and avoiding negative life events. (3) Social losses evaluation processes included losses evaluation for attached to peers and parents. (4) "Pursing peers' recognition" and "avoiding negative life events" were considered as driving force, and there was only "attached to parents" was considered as pull force for inhibiting deviant behaviors. Results clearly showed that in evaluation process of social benefits, adolescence may try to get recognition from peers by means of committing deviant behaviors. It was also possible that they tried to unpleasure and pressure accompanied by avoiding negative life events throughout engaging in deviant behaviors. As to social losses evaluation process, loss evaluation of attachment to peer and parents were clearly different. Adolescence who considered more about peers' thought were more likely to consider parents' negative feeling. According to the results, further researches could not only re-examine the reliability and validity of this scale, but also could incorporate other theoretical variables to examine the fitness to the data. In practical, teachers are encouraged to conduct various teaching activities based on evaluation foci of social benefits and social losses, to weaken the driving force of deviant behaviors and reinforce the pull force to inhibit deviant behaviors.

Keywords
Deviant behaviors, social benefits, social losses.

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