Thirty-five studies examining the relationship between social class and crimeldelinquency are reduced to comparable statistics using instances where the relationship was studiedfor specific categories of age, sex, race, place of residence, data type, or offense as units of analysis. The findings from 363 instances are summarized and patterns are identified. The overall results show only a slight negative relationship between class and criminality, with self-report studies reflecting lower associations than official statistics studies. Moreover, analysis demonstrates a clear historical decline in magnitude of association to the point where both self-report and official statistics studies done in the current decade find no class variation. This historical trend is shown to be due to changes in the findings from studies using official statistics as indicators of criminality. Alternative interpretations are discussed, but all lead to serious doubts about the adequacy of theories of deviance that contain assumptions of class differences.
A personality measure of individual differences in sex-role stereotyping and sex discrimination was developed. The “Macho” scale fulfills satisfactory psychometric criteria of internal consistency and reliability, and the 28 items are controlled for social desirability. Personality correlates of macho include sex-role orientation among males, and authoritarianism, and the scale discriminates between criterion groups selected from different ethnic and educational subcultures. Research applications of the scale to experimental and correlational studies in personality, social psychology, and sociology are proposed.
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