Researchers looked examined delinquency in teenagers as a component of self-esteem before Matsueda, with inconsistent results. Matsueda studied teenage misbehavior through the prism of how parents and authorities classified their children and how these labels impacted their sense of self–symbolic interactionism.
This study is unique in that it looks at informal labeling, or how other people’s perceptions of a teenager affect that adolescent’s behavior. From a theoretical standpoint, Matsueda drew on George Herbert Mead’s behavioral principles, which claim that one’s sense of themselves is shaped by one’s interactions with others.
Briar and Piliavin (1965) discovered that boys who are uncommitted to traditional frameworks for action can be incited towards delinquency by other boys, and this approach to delinquency from the standpoint of role-taking is based on their findings.
Because they are not thinking about how other people would respond, these males adopt each other’s roles, exhibit delinquent reasons, and act delinquently. The traditions of these organizations can have a significant impact on delinquent decisions. Short and Strodtbeck.
An adolescent whose parents view them as someone who gets into trouble or violates rules, as well as children who believe their friends, parents, and instructors regard them as someone who gets into difficulty or breaks rules, has greater levels of eventual delinquency, according to labeling theory.
These findings have been backed up by a slew of additional research and analyses. Later, Sampson and Laubclaimed that labeling and subsequent stigmatization of rebellious or problematic children might impair ties to conventional others such as family, school, and classmates.
