The self-control theory of crime, proposed by Gottfredson and Hirschi in 1990, suggests that most crime happens because people lack self-control. Individuals with low self-control tend to be impulsive, seek immediate pleasure, and ignore long-term consequences. The theory argues that self-control develops early in childhood – mainly through effective parenting – and stays stable across life. In short, it’s not opportunity but poor self-control that makes crime more likely.
Key Takeaways
- Definition: The self-control theory of crime, developed by Gottfredson and Hirschi in 1990, explains criminal and impulsive behavior as the result of low self-control rather than social or environmental factors.
- Development: Self-control is believed to form in early childhood through consistent discipline, supervision, and emotional support from caregivers. Once established, it remains relatively stable throughout life.
- Characteristics: People with low self-control tend to be impulsive, risk-seeking, self-centered, and short-sighted, making them more likely to engage in crime or other risky behaviors.
- Evidence: Research largely supports the link between low self-control and a range of antisocial behaviors, though critics note that measuring self-control can be challenging.
- Criticism: Some scholars argue the theory oversimplifies crime by neglecting social, economic, and situational influences that also shape criminal behavior.
Introduction
Self-control theory of crime argues that low self-control is the main personal trait that explains why some people are more likely to commit crimes or act in reckless ways.
People with low self-control tend to seek quick rewards without thinking much about the long-term consequences of their actions.
This short-term focus often shows up through a range of personality traits and everyday behaviours.
What Low Self-Control Looks Like
Gottfredson and Hirschi described several traits that they believed were common among people who commit crimes.
Together, these are known as the “elements of self-control.”
- Impulsivity and Short-Term Thinking: They act on impulse and focus on what feels good right now rather than what might happen later. They tend to make quick decisions without thinking about the possible downsides.
- Dislike of Hard Work: They often avoid difficult or time-consuming tasks. Instead, they prefer easy or fun activities that give them instant satisfaction.
- Risk-Taking: They enjoy excitement and are drawn to risky behaviour, even if it could lead to trouble. The thrill of danger can be more appealing than the security of playing it safe.
- Self-Centeredness and Lack of Empathy: They may seem selfish or insensitive, caring more about their own wants than about other people’s feelings. They might hurt or inconvenience others without much guilt.
- Low Frustration Tolerance: They get angry easily and have trouble dealing with conflict calmly. Instead of talking things through, they might lash out or act aggressively when upset.
- Preference for Physical Activity: They usually prefer physical actions over mental effort—doing something rather than thinking deeply or planning ahead.
Examples
People with low self-control tend to act on impulse, seeking quick rewards without thinking about long-term consequences.
This makes them more likely to get involved in both criminal acts and non-criminal but reckless behaviours that have similar short-term payoffs.
Examples of crimes linked to low self-control:
- Delinquency and street crime: Petty theft, vandalism, violent assaults, burglary, robbery, shoplifting, and disorderly conduct.
- Assault and theft: Threatening or injuring others, stealing money or property, and other opportunistic acts such as pickpocketing or car theft.
- Illegal gambling: Taking risky bets despite poor odds or legal restrictions.
- Driving under the influence (DUI): Driving after drinking or drug use, putting oneself and others at risk for the thrill or convenience of it.
- Tax cheating and fraud: Engaging in deceit for personal gain, including small-scale scams, insurance fraud, and benefit fraud.
- Academic cheating: Breaking school or university rules to get ahead—plagiarism, test cheating, or falsifying results.
- Domestic and interpersonal violence: Acting on anger or jealousy in the moment, such as physical aggression in relationships or fights.
- White-collar crime: Non-violent offences like embezzlement, insider trading, identity theft, money laundering, and other forms of corporate or financial deception.
- Cybercrime: Examples include hacking, online scams, cyberbullying, piracy, and spreading malware. All of which provide quick excitement or profit with minimal effort and little thought about future consequences.
Analogous (Non-Criminal) Behaviours
Gottfredson and Hirschi argued that low self-control explains not only criminal acts (like theft or violence) but also a wide range of non-criminal but reckless acts, known as “analogous behaviours.”
Examples include:
- Substance use: Smoking, drinking, or drug use.
- Risky behaviour: Reckless driving, unsafe sex, or frequent accidents.
- Health neglect: Ignoring medical advice or refusing to wear seatbelts.
- Financial problems: Overspending, heavy debt, or failing to save for the future.
- Relationship issues: Frequent breakups or unstable marriages.
Why Analogous Behaviours Matter
Researchers use these analogous acts to measure self-control more reliably.
For example, instead of asking someone directly if they commit crimes, researchers might look at how often they:
- smoke,
- drink heavily,
- overspend,
- or end up in unstable relationships.
If someone frequently engages in these behaviours, it suggests a pattern of low self-control, even if they haven’t broken any laws.
This approach helps reduce what’s known as tautology — explaining crime by using crime itself as the measure of low self-control.
Instead, researchers can observe the broader lifestyle patterns that come from acting impulsively.
Theoretical propositions
Self-control theory of crime rests on three main ideas: called the parental management (or socialization) thesis, the stability thesis, and the spuriousness thesis (sometimes called the social consequences proposition).
Together, these ideas explain how self-control develops, how it tends to remain stable over time, and how it connects to other social factors often linked to crime.
- Parental Management: Self-control is learned early through good parenting.
- Stability: Once developed, self-control remains mostly consistent over life.
- Spuriousness: Other social factors linked to crime are really just by-products of self-control differences.
In essence, Gottfredson and Hirschi proposed a simple, one-cause model of crime:
poor parenting → low self-control → lifelong tendency toward crime and risky behaviour.
1. Parental Management / Socialization Thesis
(How self-control develops)
According to SCT, people are not naturally self-controlled — self-control has to be learned, mainly through effective parenting in early childhood.
Key ideas:
- Parenting matters most: Children develop high self-control when parents are warm, supportive, and consistent. Effective parenting includes:
- Attachment – forming a strong emotional bond with the child.
- Supervision – keeping close track of behaviour.
- Recognition – noticing when a child misbehaves or acts impulsively.
- Correction – responding with clear and consistent consequences.
- Timing is critical: This learning happens mostly in the first 8–10 years of life. If a child doesn’t develop strong self-control during this period, it becomes much harder to build later on.
- Parenting style: Research also shows that it’s not just about strict discipline. Children develop better self-control when parents combine firm boundaries (demandingness) with warmth, support, and positive reinforcement (responsiveness).
In short, self-control starts with good parenting early in life. Without it, children are more likely to grow up impulsive, risk-taking, and prone to rule-breaking.
2. Stability Thesis
(How self-control endures over time)
The stability thesis argues that once self-control is formed in childhood, it stays fairly stable throughout life.
Key ideas:
- A fixed trait: Gottfredson and Hirschi believed that by around age 10, people’s level of self-control is set. Those with high self-control tend to avoid crime and risky behaviour; those with low self-control are more likely to engage in it.
- A lifelong pattern: They suggested that people who fail to develop self-control early are unlikely to change much later — describing them as “doomed to a moment’s pleasure for a life of misery.”
- What research says now: Later studies (like Hay & Forrest, 2006) have shown that this isn’t completely true.
Self-control can change through adolescence and adulthood — for example, when people take on new social roles, build supportive relationships, or experience major life events.
These findings suggest that self-control is relatively stable but not fixed forever.
3. Spuriousness Thesis
(How self-control relates to other social factors)
The spuriousness thesis makes one of SCT’s boldest claims: that most things traditionally thought to cause crime — like poverty, peer influence, or weak social bonds — don’t actually cause it at all.
Instead, low self-control comes first, and these other factors are just side effects or outcomes of having low self-control.
Key ideas:
- Low self-control comes before everything else: People with low self-control are more likely to skip school, lose jobs, or have unstable relationships. But according to G&H, these outcomes don’t cause crime — they’re simply different expressions of the same underlying trait.
- No real causal effect: SCT argues that factors such as peer pressure, strain, or social disadvantage have little independent influence on behaviour once self-control is accounted for.
- Critics disagree: Later research has found that the relationship works both ways. Low self-control can lead to negative life outcomes (social selection), but those experiences — such as job loss, victimization, or supportive relationships — can also change a person’s level of self-control (social causation).
So while low self-control remains one of the strongest predictors of crime, the claim that it’s the only cause is now considered too simplistic.
Critical Evaluation
I. Conceptual and Measurement Challenges (The Tautology Debate)
Critics argue that the theory is sometimes circular, meaning that it uses criminal behavior to define the very concept it seeks to explain.
A. The Tautology Problem
Critics have charged SCT with being tautological because G&H sometimes define the cause (low self-control) in terms of the effect (crime).
G&H state that low self-control is synonymous with the propensity to commit crime, meaning the assertion that low self-control causes low self-control is true by definition.
The theorists contended that “the best indicators of self-control are the acts we use self-control to explain: criminal, delinquent, and reckless acts”.
If researchers can only determine a person has low self-control by observing criminal or analogous acts, the theory becomes tautological.
G&H insist they are proposing a logical rather than an empirical tautology.
However, to resolve this tautology problem, independent indicators of self-control are needed, but G&H have not provided clear, unequivocal terms for measuring self-control separately from crime.
B. Narrow and One-Dimensional Definition
Gottfredson and Hirschi described self-control as the tendency to seek short-term pleasure without thinking about long-term consequences.
However, psychologists define self-control more broadly—as the ability to inhibit impulses to pursue valued long-term goals (Baumeister et al., 1994).
This makes SCT’s definition narrower than most scientific understandings. Many researchers argue that SCT primarily measures impulsivity rather than genuine self-control (DeLisi & Vaughn, 2008)
Moreover, the traits G&H associate with low self-control (e.g., risk-taking, temper, self-centeredness) appear multidimensional, not a single trait.
Factor-analytic studies of the Grasmick et al. (1993) scale show that these dimensions—impulsivity, risk-seeking, self-centeredness, temper, preference for simple tasks, and physical activity—often load on multiple factors (Marcus, 2004).
Some scholars therefore view SCT’s indicators as reflecting a broader antisocial personality profile (Arneklev et al., 1999).
C. The Measurement Debate (Cognitive vs. Behavioral)
G&H prefer behaviorally based measures (analogous acts like smoking or having accidents) over cognitive self-report measures, believing the former would yield stronger support for the theory.
Yet empirical tests show that cognitive self-report instruments like the Grasmick scale predict crime equally well—or better—than behavioral indicators (Pratt & Cullen, 2000; Reisig et al., 2012).
Moreover, behavioral indicators such as smoking or fighting are not always inter-correlated (Longshore et al., 1996), making it difficult to build a reliable behavioral scale.
This suggests SCT provides little guidance about what truly measures self-control.
II. Challenges to Stability and Social Causation
SCT rests on two strong claims: that self-control is fixed after childhood and that social experiences later in life have no causal impact. Both have been repeatedly challenged by longitudinal research.
A. Self-Control Changes Over Time
Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) argued that by about age 10, self-control becomes stable for life.
However, longitudinal studies show that self-control continues to change during adolescence and adulthood (Hay & Forrest, 2006; Burt et al., 2014).
Life experiences—such as forming relationships, gaining employment, or experiencing adversity—can strengthen or weaken self-control (Moffitt et al., 2011).
Rather than being fixed, self-control behaves like a personality trait that evolves in response to social and developmental factors (Caspi & Roberts, 2001).
B. Social Factors Matter
SCT also claims that later-life experiences (e.g., marriage, friendship networks, or victimization) have no independent effect on crime, describing them as “consequences” rather than causes.
Yet evidence demonstrates that social bonds and life events influence both self-control and offending (Laub & Sampson, 2003; Wright et al., 2001).
For example, marriage and stable employment can increase self-control, while trauma or victimization can reduce it (Stewart et al., 2008).
Thus, the relationship between self-control and social experience is reciprocal, not one-way.
III. Limitations Regarding Scope and Criminal Motivation
SCT’s claims that it is a “general theory of crime” explaining “all crime, at all times” is limited by its assumptions about the nature of crime and motivation.
A. Not Everyone Is Equally Motivated
SCT assumes that everyone is tempted by the easy, immediate rewards of crime and that self-control merely determines who gives in.
In reality, individual motivation varies due to differences in goals, morals, and values (Agnew, 2001; Wikström & Sampson, 2003).
Many people with low self-control still avoid crime because of strong moral commitments or situational constraints.
B. Poor Fit for Planned or Complex Crimes
SCT depicts offenders as impulsive and shortsighted, which fits many petty or reactive offenses.
However, it struggles to explain deliberate, strategic crimes such as corporate fraud, tax evasion, or organized crime (Benson & Simpson, 2018).
These acts often involve planning, patience, and delayed rewards—the very capacities SCT suggests criminals lack.
Critics argue this undermines the theory’s claim to explain “all crime” (Tittle et al., 2003).
IV. Ignoring Situational and Contextual Factors
Although low self-control consistently predicts crime, the relationship is modest (average r ≈ 0.20–0.30; Pratt & Cullen, 2000).
This implies that social and situational contexts play an important moderating role.
Research shows that the impact of self-control depends on contextual conditions such as emotions, stress, fatigue, relationships, and environmental opportunity (Hirtenlehner & Hardie, 2016; Gottfredson & Hirschi, 2016).
Even individuals with generally high self-control can act impulsively when intoxicated, tired, or emotionally aroused (Muraven & Baumeister, 2000).
Scholars therefore emphasize the need to distinguish trait self-control (a stable tendency) from state self-control (momentary fluctuations) and to integrate situational moderators into models of offending (DeWall et al., 2011).
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