Psychopathy, Attitudinal Beliefs, and White Collar Crime
In 1939 Edwin H. Sutherland not only coined the term "white collar crime," he brought to light its importance as a basis for sociological inquiry. By illuminating the existence of crimes related to business or crimes of the elite, he gave rise to a new direction of research. Sutherland (1940) stressed the prevalence and harm of white collar crime, suggesting a need for more research in order to better understand its etiology. Still today, the prevalence and impact of white collar crime dramatically exceeds that of common street crime, with one in three American households being the victim of some form of white collar crime (Kane & Wall, 2006). Also, recent high profile cases such as Martha Stewart, Kenneth Lay, and Enron have brought white collar crime to the publics' attention. Nonetheless, white collar crime still remains under-researched. Even less researched are psychological explanations or personality traits of white collar criminals.
Four relationships are of primary focus: 1.) Do psychopathic personality traits account for variability in attitudes toward white collar crime?; 2.) Do attitudes toward white collar crime correlate with intentions to engage in white collar crime?; 3.) Are psychopathic personality traits related to intentions to offend?; 4.) Do attitudes toward offending mediate the relationship between psychopathy and intentions to offend?
Lightning looked at her laptop defeated, her fingernails drumming on the table since every time she was writing a word, it seemed wrong. Nothing made any sense in what she was writing and she was starting to get sick of it, her head feeling like it was about to burst into flames.
So as Alexis send her a text to tell her she was at a bar and wanted to play the pool, she didn't hesitate to turn her computer off in order to get ready to rush outside, making sure to make the most of her last night before her lesson.
Taking the car was useless since the bar wasn't very far away from her location and simply decided to walk with a cigarette in hand and earplugs in her ears, listening to some soft music giving rhythm to her every move. She took a long drag, looking at the people walking in the cold night, footsteps appearing in the snow and quickly being covered back by the one falling from the sky, the endless white shower starting again. Lightning sighed heavily, foam coming out from her mouth as her warm breath collided with the cold air before she finally spotted the bar called "Pool U up" and quickly walked towards it, crashing her cigarette in the outside ashtray before stepping inside.
The heat was overwhelming but not unpleasant yet. A few people were inside already playing and it didn't take Lightning a long time to spot Alexis in the mass with a cue stick in her hand, smiling at her appearance. She made her way towards the girl, avoiding the different people walking in front of her before reaching her friend, her own hand brushing her hair to put them away from her eyes. "Hey Alexis, you okay?"
"Yep! But working on the paper was driving me crazy, so I figured a little game would relax us." Lightning smiled and grabbed the other cue stick on the table while Alexis was placing the balls in the triangle to rack them up, the 8 firmly placed in the middle of it. "Want to break?"
"Alright, let's do this." Lightning positioned herself at the end of the pool table, placing the white ball in front of her and slightly leaned on the table, putting her index finger on the top of the stick and her thumb at the bottom of the stick, holding the base of it with her left hand, breaking the balls instantly. She was glad to see that a striped ball had made it into a pocket and winked at her friend before coming closer to her, performing the same action. As the stripped ball missed the pocket Lightning sighed and felt a small tap on her shoulder before watching the girl leaning on the table and giving a pretty view on her breasts.
"Eyes are up here Light." Lightning lifted her head up and gave the girl an embarrassed smile before watching the number 4 taping on the two corners of the table before entering a pocket, the pink-haired girl opening wide eyes at the impressive move. "By the way, I rock at pool."
"I can see that." Alexis winked, quickly placing a second ball in the pocket before failing the third time, carefully avoiding the 8 ball hated by every player, causing the loss instantly if it is only scratched, and let Lightning positioning herself perfectly on the table. She gently lifted her stick up and gave a sharp but powerful shot, a stripped ball making its way towards the pocket to enter it. "I'm not so bad either, apparently."
"Wait, you've never played the pool?!" Lightning turned around and shook her head before looking at the wanted ball, spotting the 8 right behind it. She aimed the table, hopping it would have the desired effect and sighed in relief as she managed to touch the stripped ball landing right in front of the pocket, but not going in it. "Wow. You're something, Light."
"Ha. Yeah we'll see that after you kick my ass." The two women smiled, the brunette winking at her before quickly going towards the white ball and continued playing the game. In the end, only the black ball was still on the table, Alexis placing it in quickly before sighing in relief.
"Shit, I thought I was going to lose." Lightning chuckled and looked at the white ball, watching a hand placing it in a pocket and placed her cue stick back on the table along with Alexis's, the two girls smiling at each other. "Want a drink?" the pink-haired girl nodded, ordering a cool beer before sitting down on a stool at the bar and taking the bottle in her hand. "The teacher is giving us the papers back tomorrow. Apparently it goes from the worst to the best grade."
"Really? So everyone knows if you have a terrible one? That's kinda brutal." Alexis shrugged, placing her own beer at her lips before a hand landed on Lightning's thigh, softly brushing it from the knee to the crotch, the pink-haired girl clearing her throat as the movement was starting to arouse her, her own breath getting louder and louder by the second. "What are you doing?"
"What? You said yourself you were going along with nature, sex being part of it. And last time was like, awesome, I figured you wanted a rematch." Lightning felt the hand moving away but quickly grabbed it back to place it on her thigh again, the brunette giving her a crooked smile before grabbing her beer bottle from the counter. The two women drank quickly, knowing what was waiting for her the minute they would step inside the apartment, paying as soon as the bottle were empty and leading back towards the flat, the clothes already falling on the ground the minute they were inside, their mouth crashing roughly and the two girls falling on the couch for another session of meaningless sex.
"Children…And weird hair." Lightning raised an eyebrow, locking eyes with her teacher for the repetitive use of the stupid nickname. "I have your papers. I've classed 'em from worse to best. Stand up and come get it when I'm sayin' your name, yeah?" the students were all seating nervously on their seats, waiting for the first name to drop. "Lightnin' Farron."
"Fuck." Lightning stood up painfully and walked down the stairs before being in front of her teacher, handing her hand to grab the copy.
"Actually, weird hair, F means failure, not fuck." Lightning clenched her jaw severely before almost snatching the copy from the woman's hands, hearing a small sigh coming from behind her before sitting back down, looking at the comments on the paper, scoffing as she was reading "Actually, the fact you never passed before isn't surprising." and glared at her teacher the next second, carefully looking at her pose while she was handing the different papers to the other students.
Lightning couldn't possibly fail the next paper, meaning she would have to spend the entire week-end and probably nights before handing it back on Monday, in exactly three days. She placed the paper next to her, listening to the names being called out, glad to find out Alexis was in one of the best, and simply stared at her screen, reading what she had wrote the day before for the dissertation.
"That's done. So, I've sent ya all an e-mail with the paper that I want at my desk a 10AM, not a minute later, yeah? Also, the lesson for today is online, go grab it kids." Lightning quickly went on her e-mail address, watching the 340ko document, opening wide eyes at the size of it and could already picture the thousands of pages she would have to read, print, underline, learn and learn again and simply clicked on download in the end, quickly glancing back at her paper with disappointment. Her sister's words rushed back to her ears like a drilling alarm "Yeah, you've always been a little cheeky. Be careful though Light, you can't screw this up, you paid a lot of money to enter the school", the girl shaking her head in slight disappointment towards herself before staring at her screen again.
"Ya all have it?" Lightning and the other students nodded, the pink-haired girl grabbing the paper to sign, hesitating to write a fuck you next to it but simply gave the paper to the person in front of her before looking at her computer again, clicking on the document to open it. Lightning looked at the first title and frowned before focusing her attention back to the teacher who was now leaning on the desk, giving her a splendid view on the high-heels, Louboutins for that matter before looking at the black dress. She raised an eyebrow, wondering how she could be wearing this while it was 4°F outside but simply shook her head before looking at the text in front of her.
"Alright. This first part is actually pretty simple, ya just need to pay attention see? What we have here, is an explanation of crimes seen differently in different countries, for instance in Canada ya have cities where smokin' in considered as a crime, while in the US or Europe, smokin' is not punishable by the law. Over the years, acts and laws are created to place restrictions. Can someone gimme an example of restriction not written in the paper?"
Lightning raised her hand along with other people but didn't bother to look at the teacher since she was positive she wouldn't be asked to speak, slightly flinching as her nickname brushed her ears. She stood up, looking at the other people in the room before locking eyes with her teacher. "Some states have a restriction about possession of guns, whereas in Texas, people are still allowed to buy them."
"Good, maybe there is hope for ya after all." Lightning sat back down, cursing between her lips for her teacher to be such a fucking prick and sighed heavily before feeling her phone buzzing in her pocket, letting it in his place and waiting until the end of the class to read it. "Yes that is indeed an example. The one I picked is about the consumption of drugs. As the Harrison Act appeared, the use of these drugs and possession was severely reprehended by the law. But do ya think it was a good thing?"
A girl raised her hand, quickly standing up as the teacher pointed in her direction. "No, because the law permitted the creation of new criminals who are now selling the drugs."
"Exactly. But it can also go the other way around see? Some laws have been dropped, dependin' on their absurd nature." Lightning began to read the paper, raising an eyebrow as she read the phrase "sodomy was legally punishable in many states", almost shivering in disgust simply thinking about it.
"But Professor-?" – "If ya want to speak up, raise your hand and wait for me to allow ya to speak, clear?" the girl quickly nodded and sat back down on her chair, the hand never raising back in the air. "Good, so as I was sayin', the law is different in every country, meanin' that crimes have different appreciation dependin' on the system put in place." Lightning looked at her teacher walking towards the board and grabbed a piece of chalk, and began to write different words on it. "Alright, crime or not crime?"
Ten people were interrogated, only three succeeding in the task at hand, the teacher losing her nerve piece by piece, giving them striking responses every time someone was having it wrong. "Ya are all over twenty-one yeah? Then ya have a functional brain, use it."
Lightning scoffed and quickly buried herself in her chair before feeling the teacher coming closer to her. She lifted her head up and noticed the sly grin on her face before scoffing again, in shock. "Weird hair, I want your copy on Sunday at 6PM. Send it to me in an e-mail, I will copy it for everyone in the class with your grade on it."
"Are you serious?" – "Do I look like I'm jokin'? 6PM, Sunday." Lightning closed her eyes and placed her head on the desk in despair, wondering what she could have done to be the scapegoat and had no idea how to get herself out of the situation. She lifted her head up and glared at her teacher while she was continuing the lecture but couldn't hear a single word anymore since her ears were whistling from the rage that was consuming her entire body piece by piece.
At the end of the class, Lightning was the first one to be out of it, smoking a cigarette in front of the building, taking long and enraged drags every ten seconds while staring at the ground. She had 51 hours left before giving her paper back, meaning that as soon as she was back to her apartment, she would spend her entire day and nights in front of her computer, looking into books and searching inside her own stupid brain for anything relevant that could help her getting a good grade. She sighed heavily, her eyes still locked on the floor, her arm going up and down to bring the cancer stick closer to her lips before watching a distinctive figure going towards the bike. She raised an eyebrow as they both exchanged an eye-contact, the woman's lips saying the words tic-tac, a reminder that if she was failing this, nothing else would ever get her back to the surface. As Lightning threw her cigarette away to reach her car, the bike was still positioned next to it, watching the brown hair going inside the helmet, and the helmet facing her. She quickly sat down and started the engine on before driving off, cursing between her lips at her own stupidity and drove away in a hurry, a new stick between her shaky lips.
Before making her way back to her flat, Lightning knew she would need to buy three things : food, coffee and cigarettes, everything for her long waking hours spent on writing the fucking paper that the fucking teacher had given her. Her cart was so filled with ten boxes of espresso's, boxes a ravioli and already made lunches and didn't hesitate to ask for three cartons of Marlboro's before paying the bill. As she walked back on the parking lot, she began to think about a possible summary, trying to decrypt everything she had learned, cursing between her lips because the three years at the LAPD wouldn't probably be of any use on this particular title. As she placed the bags back in her trunk, she felt her phone ringing in her pocket and quickly read the text as she was going behind the wheel "Sorry about the paper, if you need a break at some point, don't hesitate to text me." – "Thanks, I'll see how it turns out." She quickly placed the phone back inside her pocket and drove off to her place, noticing that the snow had finally stopped falling and that the sun was slowly appearing above her head.
"50 hours left, fucking fuck." Lightning pressed on the pedal, hurrying in order to get home as soon as possible, the traffic and stop signs making her task a little more difficult than planned, but managed to arrive safe and sound after twenty-minutes and was already in front of her glass table with her books, papers and laptop, a cigarette in the ashtray and mug in front of her.
"Psychopathy has become a highly researched personality disorder in order to better understand criminal and violent behavior…" Lightning frowned, trying to figure out if her sentence was making any sense before grabbing her second coffee to place it to her lips, before looking at her ceiling in defeat. She rubbed her eyes and placed the cigarette between her lips and stared at her watch, noticing it was already 8PM "Only 46 hours to go, right?" she sighed heavily while blowing the smoke away and took the book called Criminology : the Core, passing the introduction to find a precise point she could need, her eyes scanning carefully everything before she stood up in a hurry. She went to the end of her living room and grabbed the white board from behind the TV along with three different markers and placed it on her sofa, now turning her back on the table and began to write the three distinctive words on it "Psychopathy", "Attitudinal Beliefs" and "White Color Crime" before raising an eyebrow, the cigarette back between her lips.
At 4AM, Lightning was brutally wakened up by the alarm clock she had set in order to get an hour of sleep. She directly opened her eyes; feeling more stressed out than tired and rushed towards the kitchen to pour herself a fresh coffee, quickly going back towards her living room to look at her white board filled with the three different colors. She frowned, wondering how she could make a thirty pages dissertation on this subject and quickly sat back down on the floor to face her computer.
"As suggested by Friedrichs, anomie can be appropriately applied to WCC given the elevated levels of competition and celebration of success. For example, Keane found support for strain theory in a study of large corporations." Lightning was reading her last line, trying to figure out where she had left off before placing her hands back on the computer, yawning loudly as a wave of sleepiness rushed in her face brutally, her eyes getting filled with tears because of the lack of sleep she was experiencing. She quickly stood up and went back to her bedroom, looking at her bed calling for her like the song of a mermaid and simply grabbed her glasses from the desk before rushing back to the living room. She placed them on the tip of her nose and cleared her throat before grabbing her book again to dug her entire face in it, underlining everything she could use with a specific color code; the same used on the white board and looked at it more carefully before crawling towards it to add something else.
While empirical examinations of risk-taking or -seeking personalities are relatively scarce, indirect evidence of the influence of this trait can be garnered from studies employing self-control, as risk-seeking is a major component of self-control. Simpson and Piquero (2002) used scenarios to assess intentions to engage in corporate crime. They found that managers who endorse the situation as being exciting are more likely to engage in WCC. Alternatively, Szockyj and Geis (2002) found that individuals convicted on charges of insider trading tended to be more risk aversive given that the information used was a "sure thing." However, they did conclude that individuals who were in possession of insider information took risks based on the fact that they supplied it to others, which increases the likelihood of being caught. Therefore, it is possible that risk-taking or excitement-seeking is a characteristic of white collar offenders, although more research is needed.
While empirical evidence seems to support the relationship between the risktaking aspect of self-control and WCC, other aspects of the theory have not been so successful. For example, Simpson and Piquero (2002) did not find general support for the General Theory based on behavioral measures of self-control (with the exception of the risk-taking aspect as mentioned above) in explaining WCC. Other tenets of the theory remain equivocal, such as its proposition that street and WC offenders are essentially the same (Walters & Geyer, 2004). Other aspects of self-control, such as impulsivity, a 19 preference for simple tasks, and physical tasks, have not been subject to much empirical investigation.
Lightning bit her lip as she was reading her eleventh page carefully, looking at the clock behind her, the hand hour pointing dangerously towards the tenth hours of the day. "Only 32 hours left, and I only have a third done, without mentioning I still have to read everything carefully. I'm never going to pass." As the girl buried her face in her hands in defeat, she frowned heavily and lifted her head up, well decided to finish her paper, and to show her teacher what she was really made off.
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Hi guys! Thanks for your reviews and sorry about the late update. Also, the "paper" is coming from the website :
. ?article=5085&context=etd in case you want to read it, it's pretty interesting.