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If you've spent your whole life feeling victimized by society then you do whatever little things you can to give a big middle finger back. If you're a Black single mom that has to work two jobs to get by, maybe it's easy for you to justify throwing your McDonald's wrappers on the parking lot ground.

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I have a different theory: I call it the "raised by wolves theory". If a person doesn't have the benefit of good parenting/good examples, they grow up to be less socialized.

The single mom in your example may have had little parenting because her mom was working 3 jobs perhaps.

Anyone else remember the "don't litter" public service announcement on TV with a crying Indian?

I think a much simpler explanation is that most people don't bother justifying much of their behavior in the first place.

The race of the person was not mentioned, it was interesting that you assumed that they were black -- although I do not disagree with your point.

It was an example of a kind of person being victimized by society.

This is an interesting way of looking at it. I wonder if this really is the psychology of people who do stuff like this.

If this is the case, it would be interesting to find out whether there is some correlation between wealth inequality and rates of littering.

A counter point would be all the smoking middle class people I see everyday that throw their butts on the ground.

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