Describes a theory that focuses on social conflicts and the concepts of power, influence, social identity and retributive justice. The text begins with an examination and critique of traditional theories of aggression, including biological, physiological and criminological perspectives.

Violence, aggression & coercive actions

Neutralization theory, though a popular framework for understanding deviant behavior, remains badly underdeveloped. Few attempts have been made to connect it to narrative and sociocognitive research in psychology and related fields. From this wider perspective, one reason neutralization theory has received only mixed empirical support is that it has been understood as a theory of criminal etiology. This makes little sense (how can one neutralize something before they have done it?) and makes the theory difficult to test. Neutralization should instead be seen as playing a role in persistence in or desistance from criminal behavior. The theory's central premises need to be substantially complicated. The notions that all excuses or justifications are "bad" and that reform involves "accepting complete responsibility" for one's actions are not tenable.

What Have We Learned from Five Decades of Neutralization Research

Humans are inexorably driven to search for order and meaning in their own and others' lives; accounts are a major avenue for sociologists to depict and understand the ways in which individuals experience and identify with that meaning and their social world. The accounts concept has a solid foundation and history in early sociological analysis and research. The current work on accounts focuses on “story-like” interpretations or explanations and their functions and consequences to a social actor's life. The concept is useful for gaining insight into the human experience and arriving at meanings or culturally embedded normative explanations. This concept deserves greater explicit attention in sociology and is in need of further theoretical development and stimulation. I argue that sociologists should embrace the concept of accounts; the foundation is set for a resurgence of work on accounts in sociology.

People's Accounts Count: The Sociology of Accounts

Comparing apology to equivalent crisis response strategies: Clarifying apology's role and value in crisis communication

The notion of ‘cognitive distortion’ has become enshrined in the offender treatment literature over the last 20 years, yet the concept still suffers from a lack of definitional clarity. In particular, the umbrella term is often used to refer to offence-supportive attitudes, cognitive processing during an offence sequence, as well as post-hoc neutralisations or excuses for offending. Of these very different processes, the last one might be the most popular and problematic. Treatment programmes for offenders often aim to eliminate excuse-making as a primary aim, and decision-makers place great weight on the degree to which an offender “takes responsibility” for his or her offending. Yet, the relationship between these after-the-fact explanations and future crime is not at all clear. Indeed, the designation of post hoc excuses as criminogenic may itself be an example of fallacious thinking. After all, outside of the criminal context, post hoc excuse-making is widely viewed as normal, healthy, and socially rewarded behaviour. We argue that the open exploration of contextual risk factors leading to offending can help in the identification of criminogenic factors as well as strengthen the therapeutic experience. Rather than insist that offenders take “responsibility” for the past, we suggest that efforts should focus on helping them take responsibility for the future, shifting the therapeutic focus from post hoc excuses to offence-supportive attitudes and underlying cognitive schemas that are empirically linked to re-offending.

A fundamental attribution error? Rethinking cognitive distortions †

An experiment within a questionnaire was designed to isolate factors that would predict the honoring of accounts. Subjects acted as bystanders and read short vignettes describing an interaction containing an offense by one actor, a demand for an account by the other, and an account by the former. The context and offense, the type of account, and the status relationship between demander and accounter were systematically varied. After reading each vignette, subjects rated the offense, the demand, the account, and the accounter on several dimensions. Factors found to affect the prediction of honoring behavior were: the moral worth of the offender, his penitence, his superior status relative to the demander, and the offensiveness of the violation. Honorability was predicted by moral worth, the offender's personal control over the offense, and the appropriateness of the demand. Differences in the prediction of honoring behavior and honorability were discussed.

Ernest Ishem

Papers

The honoring of accounts