n toward deviant motivation is reflected by the person's control ratio (Tittle 1995). Therefore, the theory assumes that predisposition toward deviant motivation varies directly with a control imbalance in either direction from the balanced zone.As far as bodily and psychic needs are concerned it is simply revolved around control. Control does not imply complete prevention of the expression of behavioral motivations or goal achievements; rather, it implies that full realization of desires or impulses can be curtailed or limited. Control is conceived as a variable; the degree to which behavioral expression of impulses or desires can be limited, or curtailed, varies from person to person and from situation to situation. Thus being controlled, as Tittle uses it, is a continuous variable conveying the extent to which expression of one's desires or impulses is potentially limited by other people's abilities (whether actually exercised or not) to help, or reward, or hinder, or punish, or by the physical and social arrangements of the world.The second major concept in the theory is "deviant motivation." In general, motivation refers to the push, reason, impulse, or urge to act. The driving force for deviance has two components--one predispositional, and the other situational. The situational component is the individual's perception or feeling that committing an act regarded by most others as inappropriate or unacceptable might allow that person to alter the balance of control he or she normally exercises relative to that which he or she normally experiences, even if temporarily. The predisposition for deviant motivation is referred to as a desire for autonomy. Like a number of psychologists and social psychologists (Adler 1956; Charms 1968; Deci 1975; McClelland 1975; Burger 1992; Gecas 1989), Tittle contends that a desire for autonomy--escaping control over oneself and exercising more control over the social and physical world than o...
