DV - Social Control and Deviance Lesson

 

Social Control and Deviance Lesson

As you learned in the previous module, Social Control  refers to the techniques and strategies used for regulating human thoughts and behaviors in any environment or society in order to encourage  conformity.  Conformity is the ideology of sticking to one standard or social uniformity. Basically, it is doing what everybody else is doing in order to 'fit in.' It is the act of matching personal attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to group norms.

 

 

Psychologist Herbert Kelmen ascertained three universal types of conformity:

• Compliance
• Identification
• Internalization

Compliance  is an individual's public conformity while, perhaps, retaining his or her own original beliefs privately. Kelmen thought this phenomena came from the human tendency to conform or agree with the wishes of others based on our need for approval and fear of rejection. Identification  involves conforming to someone who is liked and respected. Usually this type of conformity is associated with a feeling of support, sympathy, understanding or belonging towards a person or thing who is liked and respected, and results in a deeper form of conformity than compliance. Internalization  is the accepting or internalizing of a cultural norm as one's own belief which leads to public and private conformity. Of the three types of conformity, internalization runs the deepest and its influence lasts the longest. All three types of conformity can occur when the individual is alone or with a group. For example, people still tend to chew with their mouths closed even when no one else is present.

Most sociologists differentiate conformity (seen as a desire to match the behaviors of the majority) and compliance (seen as a behavior influenced by peers) from obedience  (seen as a form of social influence in which an individual yields to instructions or orders from a person of authority).  Truly the difference stems from whom the influence on behavior comes. Because obedience is associated with an authority figure or figures it is not always a form of social influence that reflects the wider cultural norms of a society. As such, obedience is viewed with a degree of skepticism or suspicion and isn't always considered a good thing. For example, the obedience of a soldier told by a commanding officer to fire on an opposing military force probably will be considered favorably; however, the obedience of a soldier told by a commanding officer to fire on an incoming group of civilians probably will not. As you can see, the subject of obedience is a tricky one. At times, disobedience will fall under a virtuous label while at other times it will fall under a deviant one.

In an effort to understand the degree to which humans will comply or obey despite their better judgments, scientists conducted many famous experiments over the years:

Solomon Asch

As a 20^th century social psychologist, Solomon Asch wrote "Most social acts have to be understood in their setting, and lose meaning if isolated. No error in thinking about social facts is more serious than the failure to see their place and function" which he then followed with experiments on conformity.  Through these, Asch determined that group pressure could change personal opinions.  His most notable experiment was one in which he placed an unsuspecting subject to be studied within a group of five to seven others who were aware of the main purpose of the experiment and instructed to mislead the true subject.  Asch presented each group with a series of cards on which was a line that was to be matched with a similar line on another card. See image below. Members of the group chose between three lines on one card to match to the length of the line on another.  When giving their answers, Asch's "accomplices" always answered first with the true subject answering last. Initially when asked, the accomplices gave correct answers eventually switching to give blatantly incorrect answers to determine if the true subject would change his answer based on the others' responses.  Asch noted that a considerable percentage of subjects changed their answers to conform to the answers given by the majority, even when they knew the answers to be wrong.

Stanley Milgram

Another 20^th century social psychologist, Stanley Milgram recruited male subjects for an experiment supposedly testing how punishment affected learning. In reality, Milgram ran an experiment on the lengths to which people would go to obey an authority figure. Milgram gave the recruits for the experiment the role of teacher. They were told to administer small electric shocks to their learners when the learner answered questions incorrectly. Milgram had the learners seated in an electric chair through which the "teachers" could administer anything from 15 volts of electricity (that delivered a slight shock) to 450 volts of electricity (labeled on the dial as "Danger: Severe Shock"). The learners (labeled L in the diagram) and the electric chair were in one room while the "teachers" (labeled T in the diagram) and the electricity dial were in another room- they could not see each other but they could hear one another. In reality, the chair did not actually conduct electricity and the "learners" were actually Milgram's accomplices whose role was to exhibit different levels of pain based on the supposed dose of electricity the "teacher" chose to administer. An authority figure (labeled E in the diagram) stayed in the room with the "teacher" as the latter asked the "learner" questions. With each subsequent incorrect answer, the authority figure advised the "teacher" to increase the voltage applied to the learner by 15 volts. According to the plan, the "learner" would moan when the voltage "applied" was between 75 and 105 volts, shout out at 120 volts, scream in obvious pain at 270 volts, pound the walls at 315 volts, and become deathly silent at any higher level of voltage. Of the forty recruits who acted as "teachers," none questioned the use of electricity prior to administering 300 volts on the "learner" and twenty-six actually used the 450 volts setting on the dial. From this and other related experiments, Milgram concluded that while most people would say that they wouldn't hurt another person willingly, the opposite was actually true. According to this experiment, most people will knowingly hurt another human being in obedience to instructions from an authority figure. Since Milgram's experiment, sociologists argue over what can be learned. Naturally, what was gleaned from this experiment depended on the particular sociologist's theoretical perspective.  Upon reflection on Milgram's experiment, Structural-Functionalists theorized that members of society sometimes view the authority figure as larger and more important than the individual and will transfer responsibility for actions to the authority figure in an effort to more effectively do their duty. Social-Conflict theorists noted that the obedience of the subject might stem from their placing more value on the authority figure and less on the learner. Symbolic-Interactionists discussed the negotiation process of only ramping up the voltage by increments and that, in later, similar studies, proximity to the learner caused the teacher to hesitate in his acts of shocking the learner.

 

Philip Zimbardo

Most experiments on deviance or obedience focus on the participants as the reason for behaviors to change. But in the early 1970s, an American psychologist and professor, Philip Zimbardo, conducted an experiment to determine if the social character of a setting affected behavior. Having built a realistic prison setting in the basement of the psychology building on his campus, Zimbardo engaged 24 young men to act as prison guards and prisoners with the intention to have them play their roles out in the constructed setting for two weeks. The result: the behaviors of both the "prison guards" and the "prisoners" degenerated to such a level that the experiment had to be called to a halt before the first week ended. Zimbardo wrote, "The ugliest, most base, pathological side of human nature surfaced. We were horrified because we saw some boys (guards) treat others as if they were despicable animals, taking pleasure in cruelty, while other boys (prisoners) became servile, dehumanized robots who thought only of escape, of their own individual survival and of their mounting hatred for the guards."  (A Social Disorganization Theorist might have sarcastically said, "No Kidding?")

 

Scientist to Theory Review Activity

Match the theorist with their theory by dragging names into their correct placeholders.

Why were these experiments included in this module and not the module on Social Control? These experiments show how likely humans are to discard their values and sense of cultural norms based on group interactions, experiences with authority figures, and environmental characteristics.  Although these experiments created rather extreme results, they provide revelations into the nature of conformity and obedience.  We can see that, according to our own cultural norms, there are times when even obedient behavior is considered deviant. What does conformity have to do with deviance? By juxtaposing these two opposite behaviors, conformity and deviance, we get a better appreciation for both and can also determine the role of social control in limiting deviance among the populace.  As members of society, we are expected to behave according to our cultural norms. That expectation results in sanctions.  We receive positive sanctions when we exhibit behaviors that show we are conforming to societal standards. On the flip side, we receive negative sanctions when we exhibit behaviors that show we are deviating from societal standards. When we comply to, identify with or internalize cultural norms, we are conforming. When we don't, we are deviating.

The scope of deviance is vast. Some forms of deviance are considered to be harmful enough to require formal legislation against. At this point, let us investigate the notion of criminal deviance. Succinctly put, crime is the violation of laws; and laws are cultural norms that are formally defined and enforced by officials. Within the American system of law, there are civil laws and criminal laws. Civil laws regulate business interactions between private properties. Criminal laws reflect society's definition of the individual's moral responsibility and are designed to protect society as a whole. Within the description of any crime, there are two elements. There is the criminal act itself and then there is the intent (was the crime committed willfully or through negligence).  When prosecuting a crime, these elements are always considered. The level of seriousness is another topic considered during prosecution.  Essentially, the level of seriousness is based on the amount of harm that was or could be inflicted by the crime.  This level is divided into two categories, felonies and misdemeanors.  Felonies are considered to be a higher level of seriousness and, as such, require a harsher degree of punishment than misdemeanors.  

Of those crimes that fall under criminal laws, most American crime indexes report on two types of crime: Crimes against the Person and Crimes against Property. Crimes Against the Person are those acts that direct violence or the threat of violence against others. They usually result, or at least could result, in bodily harm or other actions committed against the will of another individual. They include (but are not limited to) murder, manslaughter, aggravated assault, forcible rape, kidnapping and robbery. Crimes against Property are those acts involving the taking or destruction of another person's property without the use or threat of force. They include (but, again, are not limited to) burglary, larceny-theft, auto theft, vandalism, financial fraud and arson. However, there is a third type of crime that is usually left off major crime indexes. Known as " victimless crimes," this type is so-named because they are violations of the law in which there are no obvious victims.  They include illegal drug use, prostitution, and gambling; and they are characterized by the notion that the perpetrator of these crimes is both offender and victim.

Social Control in America includes many techniques and strategies designed to deter against or punish for criminal activity. Agents of social control preside over both, ranging from families, schools, neighborhoods, and religious centers to public opinion, propaganda and press, and the government. Again, sanctions are used by these agents of social control to deter against or punish for criminal activity. Both informal and formal sanctions are committed to this cause. The reasons for deterring crime are fairly obvious, both the personal ones and the societal ones. Sociologists did create a list of rationales to explain what society gains by inflicting punishment on wrong-doers. This list is primarily concerned with those punishments that fall under the formal sanction category.

 

Social Control and Punishment Activity

Select each > to expand and learn more!

 

When socialization and social control fail to curtail deviant behavior, formal sanctions (for the reasons you just read) go into effect. Despite the wide range of punishments available for criminal activity and the justifications identified by sociologists, crime levels in the United States are much higher than in other highly-developed nations. For this reason, sociologists and criminologists compare the manner and methods used by different societies as they address crime.  One thing they have discovered is that the United States has a high rate of criminal recidivism to the point where nearly three-fourths of the people in jail have been there before and roughly two-thirds of the people in jail will commit another crime following their release.  With this data, sociologists ponder over the effectiveness of the American criminal justice system. Symbolic-Interactionists recall Sutherland's Theory of Differential Association, Hirschi's Social Control Theory, and Becker and Lemert's Labeling Theory and ask if the gathering together of people with criminal tendencies into a total institution that is separated from those factors that might bond people to society while being stigmatized with the title "criminal" might not be an explanation for high levels of criminal recidivism. Social-Conflict theorists recall Liazos's characterization of those most often called deviant as being powerless and question the statistics that show an overwhelming number of the socioeconomically disadvantaged being held within our prisons to explain criminal recidivism. Structural-Functionalists recall Merton's Strain Theory and ask how the continued failures of some to achieve cultural goals using conventional methods affects the individual roles of us all in making a stable, unified society and how this failure might lead, as Durkheim theorized, to social change.

 

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