ABSTRACT
What You Need to Know
■ The Classical school of thought holds that humans are free-willed and choose their behavior, while the Positivist school sees behavior as dictated by outside causes beyond the control of the individual. Neoclassicism takes a middle ground where choices can be made from limited options.
■ Early theories of behavior relied on biological explanations. Lombroso and others relied on physical features to identify criminals.
■ Modern biological theories are best considered as biosociology, which refers to the fact that there are both biological and environmental influences on behavior, and it is necessary to consider the interaction of these factors.
■ While psychological theories have a long history, they are limited by three common features—they focus largely on early life experiences to the exclusion of other variables, they are highly individualistic, and they are most useful in treatment settings.
■ Freudian psychoanalysis seeks the cause of behavior in the unconscious/instinctual parts of humankind, particularly in the battle between the id, ego, and superego.
■ Developmental explanations argue that everyone develops through certain stages, with each stage contributing to the knowledge a person needs to be a successful conforming member of society. Deviance results when an individual fails to advance successfully through all the stages.
■ Attempts to identify antisocial personalities have been common but have not succeeded in being able to assess adequately who will and will not be deviant.
■ Low IQ has often been used as an argument for why some people break the law; however, a key unknown is the extent to which IQ is inherited or is a result of one’s environment.
