Testing Situational Action Theory: A narrative review of studies published between 2006 and 2015:
TL;DR: An overview of the current state of research on Situational Action Theory (SAT) can be found in this article, where studies that have examined core propositions of SAT within the period 2006 to 2015 are reviewed.
Abstract: This work provides an overview of the current state of research on Situational Action Theory (SAT). Studies that have examined core propositions of SAT within the period 2006 to 2015 are reviewed. ...
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that self-control is necessary for deterring crime only when a person's morals are in conflict with a temptation or provocation; self control is unnecessary when people have strong moral views.
Abstract: Breaking Rules is mostly a book about situational action theory (SAT). Its four authors nicely summarize the theory’s main points and they present several tests of hypotheses suggested by the theory. SAT is primarily concerned with how individual attributes and environmental conditions jointly influence an individual’s decision to break rules, especially legal ones. SAT argues that people develop criminal propensities over time, based mostly on the degree to which they have internalized morality (i.e., accepted normative rules and corresponding negative emotions associated with thoughts about breaking these rules) and their ability to exercise self-control. SAT argues that while morality is necessary and sufficient for deterring crime, self-control is not a necessary condition. In an important twist on prior explanations, SAT argues that self-control is necessary for deterring crime only when a person’s morals are in conflict with a temptation or provocation; self-control is unnecessary when people have strong moral views. Furthermore, SAT sees self-control as a cognitive activity, rather than as a stable or fixed trait. SAT extends the propensity logic to the environment and maintains that settings also differ in their ‘‘criminogenic propensity.’’ Drawing on theories of social disorganization, routine activities, and collective efficacy, SAT argues that settings vary in their temptations and provocations; that is, in their moral context, the presence of moral norms, the level of rule enforcement, and the actions of others in the setting (e.g., behaving aggressively). Thus, SAT predicts that most crime occurs when individuals with high criminal propensity are exposed to settings that they perceive as high in criminal propensity. This exposure reflects a joint selection process: social selection (i.e., social forces) that result in people with a high criminal propensity finding themselves in criminogenic environments, and self-selection, whereby people with high criminal propensity choose to go to these settings. Per-Olof Wikström, Dietrich Oberwittler, Kyle Treiber, and Beth Hardie use an impressive set of data collected annually for five waves of the Peterborough Adolescent and Young Development Study (PADS). Peterborough is a modest sized U.K. city (2001 population ~156,000) where most youth spend their time in the city, rather than venturing to other urban areas (i.e., 93 percent of respondents’ waking hours were spent in Peterborough). It is also a diverse city: it has some of the country’s most affluent as well as the most economically disadvantaged neighborhoods, and approximately ten percent of its residents are nonwhite. PADS is a cohort study of ~700 young people and had a reasonable response rate (~72 percent) and a remarkable retention rate (~97 percent). The data collected include self-report information from youth first interviewed at age 12 and a primary caregiver, police records, a survey of community residents, census data, and a number of retrospective (i.e., the week-before) time-space diaries measuring how and where youth spent time over a four-day period during the week before each of the five waves of data collection. Comparisons with census and community data indicate that the demographic attributes of youth in the study closely resemble those of the larger population, as do the attributes of their caregivers. The authors use these data for a number of analyses some of which replicate results from earlier studies, while others bring new insights into offending. The former include Reviews 427
51 citations
TL;DR: The Situational Action Theory of Crime Causation (SAT) as discussed by the authors aims at providing a comprehensive account of the action-generating mechanisms that underlie rule-breaking.
Abstract: Wikstrom’s Situational Action Theory of Crime Causation (SAT) aims at providing a comprehensive account of the action-generating mechanisms that underlie rule-breaking. Paying tribute to the longst...
43 citations
Cites methods from "Testing Situational Action Theory: ..."
...When we instead base our analysis on Tobit, ordinal logistic or negative binomial regression models, even the common finding that high morality reduces the impact of self-control (and vice versa) cannot be reproduced (see also Pauwels et al., 2018)....
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TL;DR: In this article, the integrated framework of situational action theory (SAT) was applied to white-collar crime causation, drawing also on data from a small-scale study based on semi-structured interviews with whitecollar offenders.
Abstract: This article applies the integrated framework of situational action theory (SAT) to white-collar crime causation – previously unexamined in this perspective, drawing also on data from a small-scale study based on semi-structured interviews with white-collar offenders. The key arguments and findings are discussed around SAT’s categories, modified in accordance with white-collar crime particularities: criminogenic propensity, workplace environmental factors, and the individual-environment situational mechanisms. This initial SAT application shows that its constructs can be fruitfully deployed in explaining white-collar crime only to a moderate extent. The findings are not fully supportive of SAT’s “weak law-relevant morality” and deterrence arguments, while SAT’s moral correspondence situational mechanism provides a novel way to explain crimes within criminogenic workplace cultures.
30 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the effect of self-control ability on the perception-choice process in the Situational Action Theory of Crime Causation (SAT) is studied in conditions of conflict or correspondence between personal morality and circumstantial characteristics.
Abstract: This study focuses on the perception-choice process in the Situational Action Theory of Crime Causation (SAT). The effect of self-control ability is studied in conditions of conflict or correspondence between personal morality and circumstantial characteristics. We demonstrate a conditional effect of self-control ability on choosing a violent response in two scenarios. While we demonstrate that self-control ability matters in cases of moral conflict, we demonstrate some findings that seem to be at odds with theoretical tenets of SAT. The impossibility to empirically distinguish processes of perception and choice, together with SAT’s current measure of self-control ability may partially be responsible for this empirical ambiguity.
18 citations
Cites background from "Testing Situational Action Theory: ..."
...…mechanisms, and in SAT the key mechanism linking causes to outcomes is the 1Following hypotheses have been partially tested and are discussed in Pauwels, Svensson, and Hirtenlehner (2018): (1) the interaction between propensity and criminogenic exposure, (2) the interaction between morality…...
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TL;DR: The notion that morality and self-control are linked is deeply rooted in Western scholarly and religious traditions, yet few studies have examined this notion empirically as discussed by the authors, and to fill this gap, the authors of this paper have proposed a method for empirically examining this notion.
Abstract: The notion that morality and self-control are linked is deeply rooted in Western scholarly and religious traditions, yet few studies have examined this notion empirically. To fill this gap,...
17 citations
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the social consequences of low self-control in criminal events and individual propensities: age, gender, and race, as well as white-collar crime.
Abstract: Preface Part I. Crime: 1. Classical theory and the idea of crime 2. The nature of crime Part II. Criminality: 3. Biological positivism 4. Psychological, economic, and sociological positivism 5. The nature of criminality: low self-control Part II. Applications of the Theory: 6. Criminal events and individual propensities: age, gender, and race 7. The social consequences of low self-control 8. Culture and crime 9. White-collar crime 10. Organization and crime Part IV. Research and Policy: 11. Research design and measurement 12. Implications for public policy Index.
7,154 citations
"Testing Situational Action Theory: ..." refers background in this paper
...These attitudinal measures are heavily influenced by the Grasmick et al. (1993) scale, which was developed to capture self-control in the sense of Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) and at best depicts the ability to resist current temptations and provocations....
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...The debate on the expediency of longitudinal data is old and some scholars have keenly defended the necessity of analysing panel data (Laub and Sampson, 2003), whereas others, such as Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990), were strong opponents of longitudinal data analyses....
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...…(fear of negative consequences arising from the certainty and severity of punishment) is rather straightforward, it is important to note that SAT has proposed a conceptualization of self-control that differs from that introduced by Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) in their General Theory of Crime....
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TL;DR: In this article, a factor analysis of items designed to measure low self-control is consistent with their contention that the trait is unidimensional and the proposed interaction effect is found for self-reported acts of both fraud and force (their definition of crime).
Abstract: In A General Theory of Crime, Gottfredson and Hirschi propose that low self-control, in interaction with criminal opportunity, is the major cause of crime. The research reported in this article attempts to test this argument while closely following the nominal definitions presented by Gottfredson and Hirschi. A factor analysis of items designed to measure low self-control is consistent with their contention that the trait is unidimensional. Further, the proposed interaction effect is found for self-reported acts of both fraud and force (their definition of crime). Inconsistent with the theory are (a) the finding that criminal opportunity has a significant main effect, beyond its interaction with low self-control, on self-reported crime and (b) the substantial proportion of variance in crime left unexplained by the theoretical variables. Suggestions are offered for modifying and expanding the theory.
1,981 citations
"Testing Situational Action Theory: ..." refers background in this paper
...These attitudinal measures are heavily influenced by the Grasmick et al. (1993) scale, which was developed to capture self-control in the sense of Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) and at best depicts the ability to resist current temptations and provocations....
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TL;DR: In this paper, a neighborhood-level perspective on racial differences in legal cynicism, dissatisfaction with police, and the tolerance of various forms of deviance is presented. But the authors do not examine the relationship between race and tolerance for deviance.
Abstract: We advance here a neighborhood-level perspective on racial differences in legal cynicism, dissatisfaction with police, and the tolerance of various forms of deviance. Our basic premise is that structural characteristics of neighborhoods explain variations in normative orientations about law, criminal justice, and deviance that are often confounded with the demographic characteristics of individuals. Using a multilevel approach that permits the decomposition of variance within and between neighborhoods, we tested hypotheses on a recently completed study of 8,782 residents of 343 neighborhoods in Chicago. Contrary to received wisdom, we find that African Americans and Latinos are less tolerant of deviance -including violence- than whites. At the same time, neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage display elevated levels of legal cynicism, dissatisfaction with police, and tolerance of deviance unaccounted for by sociodemographic composition and crime-rate differences. Concentrated disadvantage also helps explain why African Americans are more cynical about law and dissatisfied with the police. Neighborhood context is thus important for resolving the seeming paradox that estrangement from legal norms and agencies of criminal justice, especially by blacks, is compatible with the personal condemnation of deviance.
1,240 citations
"Testing Situational Action Theory: ..." refers background in this paper
...In these studies, morality is mainly measured as deviant moral beliefs (perceptions of the wrongfulness of committing various acts of crime) or with the items of the legal cynicism scale (Sampson and Bartusch, 1998) that capture general attitudes towards rule-breaking (for example, ‘laws are made to be broken’)....
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...…morality is mainly measured as deviant moral beliefs (perceptions of the wrongfulness of committing various acts of crime) or with the items of the legal cynicism scale (Sampson and Bartusch, 1998) that capture general attitudes towards rule-breaking (for example, ‘laws are made to be broken’)....
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1,017 citations
"Testing Situational Action Theory: ..." refers background in this paper
...The debate on the expediency of longitudinal data is old and some scholars have keenly defended the necessity of analysing panel data (Laub and Sampson, 2003), whereas others, such as Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990), were strong opponents of longitudinal data analyses....
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors specify and test a rational choice model of corporate crime, which includes measures of the perceived costs and benefits of crime, perceptions of shame, persons' assessment of the opprobrium of the act, and contextual characteristics of the organization.
Abstract: We specify and test a rational choice model of corporate crime. This model includes measures of the perceived costs and benefits of corporate crime (for both the firm and the individual), perceptions of shame, persons' assessment of the opprobrium of the act, and contextual characteristics of the organization. Consistent with this model, we find that intentions to commit four types of corporate crime are affected by sanction threats (formal and informal), moral evaluations, and organizational factors. Net of the various incentives and disincentives for corporate crime, persons' personal moral code was found to be a very important source of inhibition. In fact, when moral inhibitions were high, considerations of the cost and benefit of corporate crime were virtually superfluous. When moral inhibitions were weak, however, persons were deterred by threats of formal and informal sanctions and by organizational context. We contend that theoretical models of corporate crime and public policy efforts must contain both instrumental (threats of punishment) and deontological (appeals to morality) factors
638 citations
"Testing Situational Action Theory: ..." refers background in this paper
...However, there are perceptual deterrence studies not inspired by SAT that provide additional support for the proposition that deterrent effects are greater among those with weak moral beliefs (for example, Bachman et al., 1992; Paternoster and Simpson, 1996; Wenzel 2004)....
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