Attachment and Differential Association

In Hirschi’s Control Theory, strong attachments to family members, friends, and others make one more likely to conform while weaker attachments leaves one freer to engage in deviance. (Orcutt) Both Michael and Jean talked during their interviews about how their parents influenced their choices around bribery. Both of them also talked about how their family of three daughters played a role later on. Michael talked a lot about how running his business successfully was important for him and his family’s well being. (Interview 17:40) To deviate from what he thought was the standard way of life could end up harming his family.

As a result, and in concurrence with Control Theory, both had strong attachments to those around them and conformed to the socially accepted mode of doing things. This pushed them towards bribing officials and others, by trying to develop success for themselves and the people close to them. What attachment fails to explain is that while both Michael and Jean had strong attachments to family members and others, the two had very differing views on bribery and participated in it according to those views. Differential Association goes one step further to explain this.

Differential Association states that a person’s tendency toward conformity or deviance depends on that person’s contact with other people who are accepting and rejecting that kind of behavior. While attachment simply states that if one has attachments, they will conform, differential association makes the distinction that the views of those people that a person are attached to influence their conformity or deviance.

Jean explained that from an early age, her mother’s motto was never to bribe anyone and considered it against her religion. (Interview 36:06) Even when it would have been easier, her mother refused to bribe and as a consequence was forced to put in much more effort and time than those who simply bribed. As a result, Jean felt that “bribery was always strange” for her. It wasn’t until Michael came into her life that she had a strong attachment to a person that looked at bribery as a norm. (Interview 40:53) She explained later on that bribery wasn’t wrong, it was expected. You couldn’t do anything without some bribing, (Interview 45:50) though it was apparent that the way she viewed bribing had been heavily influenced by her mother and that she still had conflicted feelings on the matter. While Michael described bribery as “payment”, Jean stated bluntly that it is called bribery, and goes by no other name. (Interview 40:35) Michael, on the other hand, had no such person in his life to preach the wrongs of bribery, and as a result conformed, viewing bribery as “just a part of the payment system.” (Video 33:31)