Travis Hirschi's Social Bonding Theory and Crime Causation

Introduction to Hirschi's Social Bonding Theory

Travis Hirschi asserts that those who exhibit deviant behavior desire to do so, and that criminal behavior is found among people with weak social bonds. In his social bonding model, he delineated four elements that constitute social bonds: attachment to a partner or spouse, engagement in conforming behaviors, holding conventional beliefs and values, and dedication to conventionality (Wolfzorn, Heckert & Heckert, 2006). Hirschi indicates that the stronger a person's attachment to fellow human beings, the greater their belief in conformist social values will be. Furthermore, the more a person invests in and involves themselves with conventional activity, the less likely they are to deviate (Chriss, 2007).

The Four Elements of Social Bonding Theory

Social bonding has four elements: attachment, involvement, belief, and commitment.

The first component — attachment — denotes individuals' ties to their spouses or partners and other members of the family. This aspect encompasses the extent of a person's emotional or affectional connections to key people in their life, how deeply they relate to these persons, and how much they value these persons' expectations. According to social bonding theory, people who have strong attachments to key figures in their lives are less likely to participate in deviant activities. In the case of young people, parental attachment is of utmost significance (Durkin, Wolfe, & Clark, 1999). The quality of parent-child communication is one of the main indicators of the parental attachment element.

The next social bonding element — commitment — denotes the cumulative investment of resources, time, and energy in performing conforming activities, such as attending college or going to work. Such investments are regarded as investments in conformism. Hirschi's social bonding theory postulates that people with strong commitments will try to avoid jeopardizing them by engaging in deviant activities. For college students, devotion to receiving higher education forms a salient aspect of life. Indicators of this devotion include GPA and academic orientation. A number of more recent research works on social bonding have also taken religious commitment into account, normally measured in terms of religiosity — that is, how sincerely a person respects their religion and its practices and values (Durkin et al., 1999; Chriss, 2007).

Involvement is the third social bonding component; it deals with the time an individual devotes to conforming activities, such as participating in sports or clubs or completing schoolwork. Social bonding theory holds that those who devote their time to conformist activities will simply lack the time to engage in deviant ones. For college students, involvement indicators include the amount of time spent studying or working part-time after class hours (Durkin et al., 1999; Wolfzorn, Heckert & Heckert, 2006).

The final element — belief — represents an individual's acceptance of a conformist value system. Hirschi's theory claims that any wavering of such conventional attitudes increases a person's likelihood of participating in deviant activities. This element involves regard for authority and a broad acceptance of societal conventions as ethically binding and obligatory (Durkin et al., 1999).

Social Bonding Theory and Conformity in America

In simple terms, people attempt to perceive and evaluate situations and other people accurately. They typically depend on social cues in their environment to help them interpret a given situation. A major research study examined the impact of social pressure exerted by a group of inaccurate respondents on an individual's drive for accuracy. The researcher found that when an easy task — or one whose correct answer was clear — was presented to a participant, their motivation to complete it correctly reduced the influence of social pressure from a group that answered it wrongly. That is, even when all other participants gave a different answer, the participant was confident in the correct response and therefore felt less pressure to agree with the incorrect group (Lumbert, 2005).

However, as a task's difficulty increased significantly, participants began to rely on group cues for guidance. Once again, the group deliberately gave wrong answers. Apparently, a person who is uncertain about how to perform a task or how to act will feel less anxious by choosing to agree with the larger group. Another study manipulated group confidence: the participant was again assigned a difficult task and the group again gave the wrong answer, but this time the group expressed very little confidence in its response. The researcher found that the group's uncertainty had no appreciable effect on the participant's reliance on it for cues. One may therefore conclude that as long as group members agree with one another, their unanimity overshadows any doubts arising from low or absent confidence (Baron, Vandello, & Brunsman, 1996).

Yet another study explored conformity levels across different age groups. Older adults were expected to be less affected by social pressure than younger people. Participants were asked to evaluate facial expressions (emotional stimuli) and geometric shapes (non-emotional stimuli) based on a set of provided labels — for example, "sadness" or "fury" for emotional stimuli and "rectangle" or "triangle" for non-emotional stimuli. The researchers investigated whether individuals in two different age groups were influenced by social pressure when making these judgments. For instance, if a 20-year-old woman was asked to label a painting of a square, and her group members labeled it a "rectangle," would she yield to peer pressure and label it incorrectly? The study confirmed the hypothesis: older adults were less dependent on social pressure when making judgments. With age, people appear to develop a stronger sense of independence and judgment, informed by accumulated experience (Pasupathi, 1999). Participants in both age groups were concerned about giving wrong answers; however, younger participants relied more heavily on peers in their decision-making. Taken together, these studies reveal that individuals are deeply motivated to get things right, and this concern drives conformity across many situations.