Deviant Behavior Essay -- Psychology, Social Psychology

Deviance is described as being behaviour that is not part of the norms in your particular society. This can be different throughout the world because some cultures have very different norms (Stephens and Leach, 1998:17). Most deviant behaviour will attract disapproval from others in the society or punishment from authorities. There are many different types of deviance such as addiction, mental illness, alcoholism, criminality and homosexuality. Throughout this essay six types of theories will be discussed about how and why people are deviant. Four of these theories support the idea of deviance being biological and three support the idea of it being caused by your social construction. Also the essay will talk about the differences between the theories and a similarity amongst them as they don’t often agree. There are two main views that people see as to how a person becomes deviant; biologically or from a person’s social construction. The biological explanation of deviance is that it is part of who you are when you are born. Whether you are born into a long line of alcoholics or your mother has a mental illness, it is coming from your genes. There are many theories that support the biological explanation of deviance that will be explained in this essay. Some seem very unlikely and don’t have a lot of evidence but there are a lot of theorists that support this idea. The social constructionist explanation is that you become deviant from the way that you are brought up. It is believed that certain parts of your childhood can cause a person to become deviant. This could be that your parents or caregivers brought you up to be a deviant person because they were deviant themselves. It could also be that you were neglected as a child an... ...l determinants. Rod Lea does admit that deviance is not only caused by the â€Å"warrior gene†, that non-genetic issues would be involved as well (Dykes 2006). A similarity amongst the XYY theory and the â€Å"warrior gene† theory is that it has to do with your genes so this would have to do with your parents and the generations before you. Physical appearance is also passed down through generations so these two could also have got their ideas from Lombroso’s theory. Another similarity amongst the biological theories is that it is often pointing towards males. The â€Å"warrior gene† is over-represented in Maori men and the XYY chromosome represents hyper masculinity (Gillham 2011:135). Also in Lombroso’s theory he describes the appearances as large jaws and cheekbones and a general hairiness of the body which is normally associated with males (Burfeind and Bartusch 2011:119).