Agnew's Social Learning Theory

Research Question
Agnew’s general theory of crime and delinquency states individuals learn crime by seeing others and thinking that it is correct and appropriate in certain circumstances or some people teach crime to their children. Akers and Gang Lee wanted to test the social learning theory by applying it to adolescent smoking from a five-year study in the Iowa community which included 7th to 12th-grade students (Akers & Lee, 1996). They wanted to answer why the adolescents were smoking and how the social learning theory was applied to the concepts, differential association, definitions, differential reinforcement and imitation. Akers and Lee both note that tobacco use had increased which would lead to substance use and abuse, and smoking as an adolescent was seen as a deviant behavior, even in today’s society people see smoking in adolescents as deviant behavior and in today’s society the issue is not tobacco use but marijuana (Akers & Lee, 1996). The goal was to examine the behavior of these adolescents in this five-year study and determine how they learned to smoke, such as from friends or …show more content…
Just like Robert Agnew’s general theory of crime and delinquency expands the ideas of several theories which have received lots of empirical testing over the years and it gives his theory more credibility (Agnew, 2005). Agnew’s general theory of crime and delinquency focuses on the differ risk factors which he refers to as life domains which he believes have an effect on one another and on crime (Agnew, 2005). People do have the choice to choose to commit the crime or they may even learn how to commit a crime by someone who has previously committed a crime (Agnew, 2005). Through his general theory of crime and delinquent, he answers the question of why criminal offend (Agnew,