Shoplifting - Motivations

Motivations

Researchers divide shoplifters into two categories: "boosters," professionals who resell what they steal, and "snitches," amateurs who steal for their personal use.

Motivations for shoplifting are controversial among researchers, although they generally agree that shoplifters are driven by either economic or psychosocial motives. Psychosocial motivations may include peer pressure, a desire for thrill or excitement, impulse, intoxication, or compulsion.

Depression is the psychiatric disorder most commonly associated with shoplifting. Shoplifting is also associated with family or marital stress, social isolation, having had a difficult childhood, alcoholism or drug use, low self-esteem, and eating disorders, with bulimic shoplifters frequently stealing food. Some researchers have theorized that shoplifting is an unconscious attempt to make up for a past loss.

Researchers have found that the decision to shoplift is associated with pro-shoplifting attitudes, social factors, opportunities for shoplifting and the perception that the shoplifter is unlikely to be caught. Researchers say that shoplifters justify their shoplifting through a variety of personal narratives, such as believing they are making up for having been victimized, that they are unfairly being denied things they deserve, or that the retailers they steal from are untrustworthy or immoral. Sociologists call these narratives neutralizations, meaning mechanisms people use to silence values within themselves that would otherwise prevent them from carrying out a particular act.

A 1984 program in West Texas designed to reduce recidivism among convicted adult shoplifters identified eight common irrational beliefs of shoplifters:

• If I am careful and smart, I will not get caught.
• Even if I do get caught, I will not be turned in and prosecuted.
• Even if I am prosecuted, the punishment will not be severe.
• The merchants deserve what they get.
• Everybody, at some time or another, has shoplifted; therefore it’s ok for me to do it.
• Shoplifting is not a major crime.
• I must have the item I want to shoplift or if I want it, I should have it.
• It is okay to shoplift because the merchants expect it.

Developmental psychologists believe that children under the age of nine shoplift to test boundaries, and that tweens and teenagers shoplift mainly for excitement, are acting out or depressed, or are being pressured by their peers.