University of Oregon President Michael Gottfredson welcomed the Oregon Social Learning Center's annual conference to the UO today (April 26) by paying homage to OSLC work from more than 30 years ago that supported his own academic research on the causes of crime.

The UO president told his audience in the Knight Law Center he was studying the age distribution of crime and delinquency – which shows a curve that peaks during late adolescence – when he came across a paper by Gerald Patterson, the OSLC's founder and currently its senior scientist emeritus.

"In that paper, the author was watching young children behave, and measuring (incidents of misbehavior)," Gottfredson said. "It described the parental interaction."

The president said his research into the role of self-control as a determining factor in criminal behavior was built, in part, on "that research, and the idea of what happens very early in life – socialization, or the lack of socialization – has profound consequences … in so many other areas later in life."

Gottfredson had previously focused on outside influences such as peer groups as potential causes of criminal behavior. But he told the OSLC gathering that Patterson's paper contributed to a shift in his research toward individuals' abilities to exert self-control, and the parental influences that can affect those abilities.

Gottfredson soon co-authored the book, "A General Theory of Crime," with fellow criminologist Travis Hirschi. His academic work centers on the correlations between criminal behavior and misconduct early in life, the characteristic bell curve of criminal activity over a lifetime and the role of impulse control or self-regulation in reducing criminal behavior.

"That (self-control) is a concept that owes its roots to the OSLC," the president told his audience on Friday.

"I am delighted to be here to pay little bit of a tribute to this organization, which has had such a profound effect on my own career," he said.

The annual OSLC conference draws together the organization's researchers and scientists for a full day of hour-long sessions on various topics. The OSLC, founded in Eugene in 1977, is dedicated to increasing the scientific understanding of social and psychological processes related to healthy development and family functioning, according to its website.

- by Joe Mosley, UO Office of Strategic Communication