DEGRADING SITUATIONS AND ANTISOCIAL-BEHAVIOR - AN EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH TO DELINQUENCY

What are the social psychological processes likely to lead individuals to commit antisocial behaviour? Two experiments are presented showing that students experiencing a publicly degrading situation (a failure on a fictitious test) agreed more often than non-degraded students to participate in a theft to the detriment of a fellow student or even to the detriment of a teacher. We were able to exclude an interpretation in terms of imitation or revenge and suggest that a publicly degradin g situation places subjects in a kind of social dependency state which is expressed by a vulnerability to influence. These results are discu ssed with due regard to the criminological and social psychological li terature.