Gang Lee

A Longitudinal Test of Social Learning Theory: Adolescent Smoking:

A general social learning theory of deviance is applied to adolescent smoking as a form of sustance use and tested with data from a 5-year longitudinal study of a panel (N=454) of respondents in grades 7 through 12 in an Iowa community. The major components of the process specified in the theory are differential association, differential reinforcement, definitions (attitudes), and modeling. The process is one in which the operation of these variables produces abstinence or smoking, but with some reciprocal effects of smoking behavior on the social learning variables. Previous research on various kinds of deviance and substance use has been supportive of the theory. The findings in this study from LISREL models of the overall social learning process and each of the component of association, reinforcement, and definitions are also supportive.

age, social learning, and social bonding in adolescent substance use

We propose that social learning and social bonding theories are capable of accounting for the well-known relationship of crime and delinquency to age. Models incorporating age and variables derived from these two theories are tested with data on adolescent substance use among a large sample of Midwest adolescents in Grades 7 through 12. Older adolescents consume more marijuana than younger adolescents, and the age-use curve is matched by the relationship between age and social learning variables. Differences in use by age are also correlated with differences in strength of social bonds by age, but to a lesser extent. The findings support the hypothesis that age variations in marijuana use are mediated by age-related variations in social learning; there is also support, although somewhat weaker, for the similar hypothesis that social bonding variables mediate the age-marijuana use relationship during adolescence.

Does Victim Gender Increase Sentence Severity? Further Explorations of Gender Dynamics and Sentencing Outcomes

Theoretical and empirical research pertaining to the influence of gender on sentencing outcomes has focused almost exclusively on the gender of offenders. What this literature has not fully considered is how the gender of crime victims might affect sentencing outcomes. Using data for offenders convicted of three violent crimes in the seven largest metro counties in Texas in 1991, the authors find evidence that offenders who victimized females received substantially longer sentences than offenders who victimized males. Results also show that victim gender effects on sentence length are conditioned by offender gender, such that male offenders who victimize females received the longest sentence of any other victim gender/offender gender combination. However, whereas these effects are observed for sentence length, no victim gender effects are observed on whether offenders received an incarcerative or nonincarcerative sentence. The authors address the implications of their findings for theory and subsequent research.

Gender and Well-Being in the Czech Republic

American women are stressed by network events and men by economic events outside the home, with women internalizing distress symptoms and men externalizing them. This gender pattern of stress-distress in the United States was tested in the 1990–1991 Czech Republic with a two-wave panel based on 294 households, 90% of which are Czech. This analysis is restricted to the 192 respondents who completed questionnaires in the second wave, 1991. The country was in the shock phase of its transition from state socialism to democracy and a market economy, and people were experiencing economic hardship and uncertainty. Czech women and men reported similar exposure to economic and network stress and were similar in their vulnerability to stress (mastery and social support) as well. Women reported higher levels of internalized distress symptoms (depression, anxiety, and somatization) than men, but there were no significant gender differences in externalized symptoms (hostility). The effects of economic and network stress on the distress symptoms were the same for women and men. Mastery buffered the relationship between economic stress and somatization and hostility, but social support was not a buffer between the stressors and distress, and these were true for both men and women. Interpretations of the results rest on the convergence of gender roles in the Czech Republic since 1948, which exposed Czech women and men equally to the shock phase of the post-communist transformation.

The relevance of social and cultural contexts: Religiosity, acculturation and delinquency among Korean Catholic adolescents in Southern California

Abstract Although research shows an inverse relationship between religiosity and delinquency, this association is not well understood. Scholars have attempted to explicate these findings in a number of ways, including arguments that: (1) the religiosity–delinquency relationship is limited to certain types of delinquency, (2) other theoretical variables explain or interpret the relationship, and (3) the relationship is stronger in the context of what are termed moral communities. We address these issues using a sample of Korean-American adolescents attending Catholic Sunday school. Within this relatively homogeneous moral community, one religiosity measure demonstrates an initial inverse association with three different delinquency measures, but the inclusion of control variables renders this relationship spurious. Additional results show that acculturation increases delinquency as well as interacts with religiosity to influence delinquency.

An Economic Theory of Deviance

We develop a model of deviance by incorporating the labeling effect into rational choice theory. In our model, we provide an explanation of the process through which a deviant is stigmatized and explore theoretically the relationship between the experience of having deviated and the incentive for deviation. Surprisingly, our study finds that an ex-deviant is not necessarily more likely to deviate, contrary to widely held belief. This is because the ex-deviant may hesitate to violate the norm one more time for fear of being labeled as a pathological deviant.