What are the social psychological proces.c.es 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 noiz-degraded students to participate in a theft to the detriment of a fellow student or even to the detriment of a teacher. W e were able to exclude an interpretation in terms of imitation or revenge and suggest that a publicly degrading situation places subjects in a kind of social dependency state which is expressed by a vulnerability to influence. These results are discussed with due regard to the criminologicul and social psychological literature.
INTRODIJCTION
Are we all likely to behave contrary to our morality or to commit illegal acts? This seems probable if we refer to past studies in social psychology. Milgram's subjects (Milgram, 1974) gave a 'lethal' reinforcement simply when ordered to do so by a 'scientific authority'. The 'guards' in Zimbardo's classic prison study (1 969) readily acted as torturers. However, the majority of criminological approaches to delinquency' (biological, psychological or sociological) are based on the implicit postulate that there are natural differences between delinquent and non-delinquent individuals. In consequence, there is little research on situational influences in the study of delinquency, compared to the attention given to the social and psychological attributes of offenders. As Amdur (1989) notes, natural differences