Issues of social control Flashcards
Social
Social control has shown to be important to maintain order in society e.g. obedience to the police in society.
Understanding the causes of obedience can help educate and prevent blind obedience and help us understand historical events such as mass genocide.
In the military, positions of authority can be identified by their uniforms or badges, this allows them to use their authority to use sanctions to ensure obedience.
Social control can be positive, and research into the social conditions that cause prejudice have led to developments in reducing prejudice. The jigsaw technique (Aaronson et al 1978) is based on the Sherif et al summer camp studies (1954, 1960) where superordinate goals were used to reduce prejudice. Designing classroom and workplace environments that maximise the jigsaw technique can be used to control levels of intergroup hostility and reduce bullying and negative competition.
Cognitive
Using psychological knowledge can impact adversely on others as it is very influential in directing legal practice such as in Criminology, which is used by police interviewers and courts. For example, the belief that eyewitness testimony may not be reliable because memory is reconstructive and prone to distortion as found by Bartlett (1932), War of the ghosts which found that when repeating the story parts became shorter and rationalised to their understanding.
Biological
Knowing what causes problematic behaviours can mean that people may strive to predict which people go on to develop certain traits. If research into brain dysfunction is used to uncover biological determinants of aggressive behaviour, researcher may try to use this to scan people early in life to see who is at risk. People could be labelled as potentially violent with this knowledge, leading to unfair treatment. Knowing who may be violent may lead to controlling them to prevent the behaviour form developing therefore possible subjecting them to unnecessary monitoring or therapy.
Unethical treatments such as prefrontal lobotomies, have been used to control antisocial behaviour, based on weak evidence about the role of the prefrontal cortex in controlling behaviour.
Biological 2
There is no research suggesting that biological factors are definitive causes of aggression, this form of control and monitoring may be unfairly administrated.
Raine et al. (1997) found abnormal cortical/subcortical brain processes in murderers which could be used to screen the population.
Another way in which biological knowledge has been used to control people is through chemical castration of males, which involves giving antiandrogenic drugs. These reduce the sex drive and some US courts have sentenced male sex offenders to undergo this therapy.
Learning
It is used to treat phobias and draws on classical conditioning principles as someone learns to associate a previously feared object or situation with a relaxation response instead of a feared response.
Learning
Practical implications
The process of flooding is less gradual that systematic desensitisation as they are placed in an extreme situation straight away. The effects therefore may be more immediate making the treatment ore effective and faster.
If the participants become resistant to therapy due to distress, there will be a problem for the therapist to get the patient to carry on with the therapy after this.
Token economy programmes have been employed in prisons to manage the behaviour of prisoners, with no actual therapeutic benefit. These programmes can be viewed as a form of social control.
Learning
Ethical implications
In the Hierarchy of fears, the patient decides when to next introduce the next stage. Less distressing as it’s as more gradual introduction to the phobia.
Patient has more control as they can decide when to move on to the next step of the agreed hierarchy, making it more ethical.
Flooding forces people to confront anxiety provoking conditions situations or objects from which they cannot escape. This is based on the principles of classical conditioning and can be viewed as a distressing form of social control.
Learning
Power of therapist
In flooding, the therapist has the most control, as they determine what happens to the patient; the therapist dictates the process.
Patient can control the steps and progress up the hierarchy of fear. It is also developed by both the therapist and client. This means power is given to the client as they control progress to the next step
Learning
Aversion therapy is a treatment which uses classical conditioning principles to attempt to socially control/minimise drug use.
Little Albert’s mother withdrew him from the study so his fear of rats (or other stimuli) cannot be tested to see if it can be extinguished so negative forms of social control could be long lasting.
Clinical
he therapist has the power and is perceived by others as having
legitimate power - (therapist is agent of society to shape desired behaviour)
Expert power – (expert in the field)
Reward power (therapist has ability to reward patient)
Coercive power –should not be held by therapists as this involves punishing others. Society in form of the courts can have coercive power by “sectioning” a person under Mental Health Act
Referent Power – the client wants the therapist to ‘cure’ them –sees therapist as a having skill to do so.
Clinical 1
Drug therapies such as Prozac can be very helpful to people suffering with depression in reducing their symptoms thus allowing them to live a relatively “normal” life and reducing the cost of keeping the sufferers in institutions. However, the drugs can be considered as an “easy” option when other forms of treatments such as CBT are available and might be more effective, especially in the long term.
Some would argue that labelling behaviour as abnormal forces people to conform to the standards set by society and if they do not, then they must receive treatment that will normalize their behaviour, such as antipsychotic drugs prescribed to people with schizophrenia.
Child
Bowlby’s theory of attachment and maternal deprivation became known in public during the Second World War. This resulted in women being pressured to give up their jobs and return to their families to raise their children. This can lead to worries of financial costs, and those who leave their children in day-care often feel guilty about leaving their child in non-maternal care. In a feminist view, this seems to be placing control on a women’s freedom and ability to work in a career which requires fulltime attention, and this prevents them from placing attention on family and ‘house-wife’ duties.
