SOCI201 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Milgram Experiment, Social Disorganization Theory, Anomie

• School: University of Delaware
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOCI201
• Professor: all

Document Summary

Social control: techniques and strategies employed for preventing deviant human behavior in any society. Experimenter instructed people to administer increasingly painful electric shocks to a subject. Two thirds of participants fell into the category of obedient subjects . People in modern industrial world accustomed to submitting to impersonal authority figures. Informal social control: used casually to enforce norms. Formal social control: carried out by authorized agents. Deviance: behavior that violates the standards of conduct or expectations of a group or society. Stigma: labels society uses to devalue members of certain social groups (goffman) Some types of deviance will stigmatize a person, while others do not. Technological innovations can redefine social interactions and the standards of behavior related to them, some are criminal. Anomie: loss of direction felt in society when social control of individual behavior has become ineffective. Punishments established within a culture help define acceptable behavior and contribute to stability.