Social Learning Theories and Juvenile Delinquency essays

Social Learning Theories and Juvenile Delinquency essays One of the major problems of youth today is the issue of juvenile delinquency in society. Murder, rape, motor vehicle theft, robbery, aggravated assault, larceny, arson, and burglary are acts of violence that are steadily rising due to juveniles taking part in committing these acts violence. As years continue to pass, there has been enormous concern of how parents, police, counselors, teachers, and friends feel that the ability to control or stop juvenile acts of violence is slowly slipping away over time and are desperately trying to alter behavioral patterns that continue into these dangerous ways of life. Before attempting to determine the cause for this specific kind of behavior, consideration has to be given to the area of location, background of an individual, family pattern, and life at home as these variables affect how a child is raised and how they react to violence. So, to get an understanding of why juveniles participate in violence and act the way they do, it is important to explore the social theories of learning. These theories include four different techniques in understanding deviant behavior. They are classical conditioning, operant conditioning, differential association, and differential reinforcement and should help society get a better feel of the negative behavioral patterns and thoughts of our youth and should hopefully change the way future generations carry out their everyday lives. The first social learning theory that is important to the study of delinquency is the classical conditioning theory. This is an automatic type of learning where individuals develop responses to certain stimuli that are not naturally occurring in the environment. The theory also states that if a person commits a carefully calculated crime, the result is that the individual experiences more pleasure than pain. Ivan Pavlov was a physiologist who attempted to prove this theory by con...