ABSTRACT
This chapter shows the origin, development, and current status of the social learning theory of crime and deviance. This portrayal revolves around intellectual, theoretical, conceptual, and empirical issues. Social studies were one of the "subject matter" specializations allowed within the secondary-education major, which included history, psychology, anthropology, sociology, and economics. Robert L. Burgess' specialty is social psychology, and his dissertation was an experimental test of an operant model of organizational communication patterns. Burgess agreed that Sutherland's theory was the most fruitful place to explore the ramifications of behavioral psychology for sociology beyond what George Homans had done with regard to small groups. Sutherland's conceptions of differential association and the balance of definitions favorable and unfavorable to crime are analogous to the Skinnerian concept of differential reinforcement as the balance of reward and punishment. Sutherland's theory, which the instructor interpreted to mean "differences in associations" with bad companions, was covered.
