ABSTRACT
John B. Watson claims that behavior is learned through conditioning and that people are not born with many inherent emotions or behaviors. Watson's behaviorism is akin to what some call "blank slateism"—the idea that humans are born with few "original" emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. Unique personalities, in this view, are acquired through exposure and learning. Social learning theory, which was developed as differential association theory, starts from the premise that all behavior is learned behavior. Social learning theory is thus most akin to behaviorism in the vein of John Watson in terms of its assumptions of human nature. When it comes to theories of crime, Ruth Rosner Kornhauser provided a scathing critique of social learning theories. The problems she saw with social learning or cultural deviance approaches were numerous. Travis Hirschi specified what strain and social learning theory implied and how they should be measured.
