Gender, Age, and Crime/Deviance: A Challenge to Self-Control Theory

Abstract

on gender and age variations and using various measures of self-control and of crime/deviance, the authors'provide additional evidence concerning the strongest implications of self-control theory-that self-control interprets the main demographic facts about crime/deviance and is of approximately equal import for all subcategories of individuals. On one hand, the results are strongly supportive of the theory, showing that some measures of self-control not only predict misbehavior but they interpret the associations between gender and age and measures of crime/ deviance. On the other hand, self-control does not appear to predict misbehavior equally well among various subcategories of individuals, particularly not for age groups, even failing to predict misbehavior at all for some groupings. Moreover, support for the strongest claims of the theory are not robust, varying depending on how self-control and crime/deviance are measured.

Sex differences in longitudinal pathways from parenting to delinquency

“…For example, results of the study of Tittle et al (2003) indicated that selfcontrol indeed explained the association between sex and crime. The study of Higgins (2007), which included parenting, also found support for the mechanisms proposed by self-control theory.…”

Understanding who cyberloafs from the self-control perspective: A study in the public service sector

“…Although it is acknowledged that self-control may improve as individuals grow older (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990), and researchers have acknowledged that there are empirical support for the age-deviance relationship (Loeber and Farrington, 2014;Farrington et al, 2013), Tittle et al (2003) found that self-control could not explain misbehavior among different age groups. As cyberloafing behaviour is often engaged in when employees have access to the Internet at work, this could serve as a situational trigger for the behavior (Weatherbee, 2014), and in this study, since the opportunities may be equally available to younger and older employees, it is therefore likely that the tendency to cyberloaf among both age groups is not significantly different.…”

“…However, studies by Tittle et al (2003) and Restubog et al (2011) revealed that low self-control employees had greater propensity to engage in deviant behavior, and monitoring low selfcontrol employees through, for example, tracking employees' email and other Internet activities followed by disciplinary actions, may help organizations to deter cyberloafing. Additionally, a study by Vazsonyi and Belliston (2007) has also found that self-control is a more important predictor of deviant behavior, compared to other predictors.…”

“…Based on this theory, it has been argued that because most people regard females as in more danger than males with respect to misbehavior, parents tend to monitor the behavior of girls more carefully than that of boys (Tittle et al, 2003). This excess monitoring may continue into adulthood as society attempts to lessen opportunities for misbehavior among females.…”

Age and Crime

“…Invariance of the age-crime curve has been studied in relation to numerous factors, including gender (Steffensmeier, Allan, Harer, & Streifel, 1989;Steffensmeier & Streifel, 1991;Tittle, Ward, & Grasmick, 2003;Uggen & Kruttschnitt, 1998), race (Shulman, Steinberg, & Piquero, 2013;Ulmer & Steffensmeier, 2014), and most often by crime type (Farrington, 1986;Steffensmeier et al, 1989;Tittle & Grasmick, 1997). For the most part, these studies have found evidence of variance across the factors studied, but similarity is also often noted.…”