Differential association theory proposes that, through interaction with others, individuals learn the values, attitudes, techniques, and motivations of criminal behavior. In his theory, he has basic elements that explain how people come to commit criminal acts. I agree with this theory because people act to adapt and adapt to their environment and I will explain more why. The first thing he talks about right away is how criminal behavior is learned. I agree with this statement. Criminal behavior is not inherited like height, hair color, or health problems. Someone is not born to be a criminal. The way people become criminals is due to an inappropriate environment. Someone who was raised by abusive parents is more likely to be prioritized, meaning the acts those people faced first. So, a person is more likely to smoke marijuana than to take cocaine because they have been exposed to marijuana first and have been around enough of it to eventually do so. Intensity is situational, so if you're with a group of guys who want to smoke, you might not have the incentive to do so, whereas if you're with a girl you like and she smokes marijuana, the situation becomes more intense and you might end up wanting to do it too. The process of learning criminal behavior through association with criminal and anti-criminal models involves all the mechanisms involved in all other learning. This means that children could start smoking at a young age because they imitate their parents who smoke. Or if a person is seduced like in the example above, they would learn the behavior by association. Criminal behavior is an expression of general needs and values, but it is not explained by general needs similar to those of noncriminal behavior. For example, someone steals to make money while someone works hard to make money. So explaining criminal behavior by such general needs is not the right way to explain it, because if we taught this person that if they need money to go to work rather than steal, they would not not, that's why the loop is closed. behavior is learned and not