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This chapter examines the socialization process that occurs to members of different groups of society which leads to social control or manipulation of members for the good or bad of society. Eitzen, Zinny & Smith discuss the major themes of social control and how they shape and enforce the conformity of others. The authors discuss how the pressures of social control either by law or society norms can cause great influence on members of society. However, the authors advise the reader that although people tend to conform to society influences, they do so not out of fright, but rather, because it is a choice they are willing to make. In other words members of society seem to prefer to go along with the majority because they prefer the predictability …show more content…
First, ideological control is summed up as, belief systems. This control type manipulates people’s thinking patterns so they accept the ideology without question. Eitzen, et al explains that there are several agents of social control that are involved in Ideological conformity including, family, education, religion, sports, media and government. The other type of social control is Direct social control which is the attempt to punish or neutralize groups or people who deviate from society’s norms . The authors suggest that there are specific deviant targets including, the poor, the mentally ill, criminals, and political dissidents. Also, the agents of direct social control include, social welfare, science and medicine, and the government. There are many examples of how society is controlled by a variety of methods including internet’s private eye, recent surveillance of cell phone conversations, and face recognition camera in public places. These forms of society control have been challenged by protesters who feel their individual rights may be …show more content…
The agents of direct social control are; social welfare, science and medicine, and the government. First, social welfare is to defuse unrest through direct intervention of the government . Science and medicine are there to aid people who do not follow society’s expectations. Eugenics is talked about in this section as the improvement of the human race by controlling the hereditary factors. An example of this is Nazi Germany when groups were sterilized if they did not fit the proper factors. Science has also allowed the process of human genetic engineering to be used which is the manipulation and reorganizing the genetic makeup of an individual which alters their traits. Also, government is involved to provide welfare to citizens. The government was influenced a lot by Terrorist acts on September 11, 2001. The USA Patriot Act of 2001 was established and that gave law enforcement the right to spy on the behavior of citizens and noncitizens to fight
The world is divided up into numerous things: Countries, states, cities, communities, etc. However, when looking at the big scope of things, one can group the vast amount of people into a society. This society is where the majority lie in the scheme of things - in other words, the common people. Individuals do exist in this society, but they are scarce in a world of conformism. Society’s standards demands an individual to conform, and if the individual refuses they are pushed down by society.
Imagine the world we are living in today, now imagine a world where we are told who to marry, where to work, who to hate and not to love. It is hard to imagine right, some people even today are living in the world actually have governments that are controlling their everyday life. In literature many writers have given us a view of how life may be like if our rights as citizen and our rights simply as human beings. One day the government may actually find a way to control and brainwash people into beings with no emotions like they have in the book 1984 where they express only hate, because that’s what they have been taught by the party.
This collective whole is easily controlled and manipulated. Society has always been troubled by the idea of overpowering control. In George Orwell's 1984, humanity is dominated by an extreme government whose intent is to abolish all aspects of freedom. Orwell indicates that when subjected to mass propaganda and intimidation, the ignorant majority’s memory and concept of truth are distorted, making them extremely malleable and subservient. The Party employs slogans to convince the ignorant that what they want is what they already have.
In George Orwell’s dystopian novel, the government blocks almost all forms of self-expression in order to assert its authority over the people. Those within the society who show signs of defiance against the set rules, even those who act unwillingly, are seen as a threat to the success of the regime are wiped from existence. In Orwell’s 1984, the government uses different forms of propaganda and brainwashing to achieve complete control of society for their own personal benefit.
A totalitarian government is place that no person should ever be forced to live in because this type of government controls almost every aspect of its citizens’ lives. The dictators controlling these kinds of government’s take away people’s basic human rights, brainwash kids into showing no loyalty towards their families, and imprison or execute all who might be a remote threat to their party. The government then controls the remaining population with the fear of being arrested by secret state police regardless if they have committed, or planned to commit, a crime. The leaders of these societies have no regard for the wellbeing of anybody but themselves, and once they come to power, it is usually too late to stop what happens next.
Claim: When making a decision, people are often influenced by the pressure society places on them in order to follow the social norm, or what is socially accepted.
One of the major themes in the short story ‘Harrison Bergeron’, is government control and involvement. The story revolves around equality in people, and how the government enforces this. If someone possesses a unique trait or quality, the government issues handicaps, to reduce one’s individuality and make them average. In this short story, the government controls the appearance, ideas, and thoughts of each person. Although it is not as extreme today, I personally think the government has a major part in our daily lives. We experience their control majorly through media and decision making (laws). Most of the news coverage and broadcasts we receive are altered, giving the people in charge authority over what the public knows and believes. For
Harold Shipman is known as one of Britain’s worst serial killers. Over twenty-five years it is suspected he killed 251 individuals while working as a medical doctor (“Harold Shipman”, n.d., para 1). Shipman had been injecting fatal amounts of poison into their bodies (para. 1). Shipman’s actions and why he acted in this manner can be explained from the sociological perspective and psychological perspective. The sociological perspective examines factors including social setting, level of education and positive or negative role models in a person’s life (Pozzulo, Bennell & Forth, 2015, p.338-341). The psychological perspective examines colorations between an individual’s mental process, their behaviour, their learning process and traits an individual
The World State also uses controlled groupings of people to brainwash them further into thoughtless people with no sense of individualism. Lastly, the World State uses drugs to create artificial happiness for people, leaving no room for intense emotion which causes people to revolt against the World State. Within the novel Brave New World, it is seen that the World State eliminates individuality through social restrictions, government controlled groupings and the abuse of drugs to maintain control of the population. Social restriction robs individuals of their creative personalities by preventing freedom of thought, behavior, and expression; but is vital to the World State for maintaining complete control over the society. Social restriction’s purpose is to enforce obedience, conformity and compliance out of people.
“Social conformity has been practiced in societies around the world since ancient times,” and the reason it is so effective is that humans have an inherent need to be accepted as part of a group (Sadat). Furthermore, Hossna Sadat reports that:
It is noticed that rational choice theory is a neo-classical economic plan that gives a hypothetical clarification for how people make choices when confronted with decisions. Moreover, this theory contends that an individual decides how an individual will act by adjusting the expenses and advantages of their choices. Due to its elegant clarification, the RCT has been broadly connected to the investigation of individual, social, and monetary practices in numerous settings. Knapp and Ferrante (2012) stated that adopted a rational choice viewpoint in his financial way to deal with wrongdoing and contended that a criminal augments their expected benefit from an illegal movement in excess of the anticipated expense of discipline.
Conformity, compliance and obedience are behavioural consequences of social influence (real or imagined social pressure) that occur in the presence of a group or other individuals (Elsenbroich & Xenitidou, 2012). Often these concepts are misinterpreted as being the same or even synonymous and while they do have similarities they are also very dissimilar. In social psychology conformity, compliance and obedience are distinct concepts that coincide due to their effect on behaviour in the presence of others. Pascual, Line Felonneau, Guéguen & Lafaille (2013) define conformity as an altering of behaviour and beliefs in an individual in order to reflect the behaviour and beliefs of the group that holds influence, though Myers (2014) emphasises that
Participants were not under any explicit demand to conform, as they received no physical or verbal coercion to do so. The specific hypothesis centered on the idea, “if group pressure can play influence and effect individuals perception, decision and attitudes”. The independent variable will be “Procedure”, and the dependent variable is the “level of conformity did change”.
One psychological process underlying majority influence is through direct public compliance. The dual-process dependency model which was postulated by Deutsch and Gerard, (1955 in Hogg and Vaughan 2007) proposes two important motives for conformity: normative social influence and informational social influence. Normative social influence refers to the need to be accepted and approved by society. This involves individuals to modify their behaviours and to adopt new/current ones that are associated with the particular social group so that they are not rejected (in Hogg & Vaughan 2007). An example of this situation can be reflected in Asch’s (1956 in Baron et al. 2008) study of conformity in which participants conformed to the majority group but at the same time maintained their own private opinions and disagreed. This process is known as compliance (in Bailey, J.et al. 2008).
Groups influence our everyday lives in ways that we don’t even realize. Most of what is learned from groups are societal norms that are being reinforced on a micro level in everyday life. Group influence on individuals is a clear tangible proof of societal norms by institutions. The groups we become a part of therefore can have a greater influence on our individual actions then we are aware of. As an individual we like to believe we have agency over our actions and what we decide but a lot of our own actions is more a part of a group mentality. Also, individual’s go along with a group’s influence so they feel better about themselves because then they won’t be ostracized. This paper will analyze different aspects of individual behavior and