ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the empirical research evidence on the validity of social learning theory as an explanation of criminal and deviant behavior. It asserts that social learning theory can be elaborated to account for criminological and sociological regularities, making sense of events at the micro-levels of temporal and ecological aggregation, providing a better explanation than other theories. The chapter describes the volume of studies and the positive findings, with few negative findings, provides greater empirical support for social learning theory than for any other major social psychological theory of crime and deviance. Social Structure and Social Learning model is a cross-level elaboration or integration that proposes that social structure has an indirect effect on criminal and conforming behavior through the social learning variables of differential association, and imitation. Imitation and contagion in macro level analysis are treated as part of a statistical problem eliminated through statistical adjustments and filtering.
