ABSTRACT
Vandalism—briefly, the defacement or destruction of property—began to be studied seriously by psychologists in the 1950s in connection with juvenile delinquency. Later, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Philip Zimbardo, among others, examined the power of environmental situations to influence (anti)social behavior by setting up conditions for vandalism to occur. In psychology, vandalism continues to be viewed as a marker of adolescent maladjustment, but it is a more complex concept socially and cross-culturally. The threat of vandalism may be a pretext for repressing adolescent girls’ development of identity and autonomy in street culture. No culture is immune to vandalism, and a further expedition can be made to gather as many instances as are necessary to demonstrate the breadth and diversity of vandalism worldwide.
