Moral panics are mainly cause by mass media which amplify and exaggerate the actual scale of some deviant groups or individual, and will develop the construction of moral panics. The word “folk devil” was first use in 1972 by Staleny Cohen. Folk devil means the individual or groups that targeted by moral panics because they are deviant in the society. These deviant people are representing the evil to the media and they could threat the social order. For example, this could be single mother, youth, asylum seekers, etc.
The labelling theory consists of the fact that external people for example higher middle class or forms of authority, labels other members in society as being criminals or being deviant. The labelling theory works like this: a form of authority or even common people instinctively have a stereotype or put certain members of society into certain categories therefore labelling people as being criminals or having deviant behaviour and therefore this makes the members of society being labelled, commit to a self fulfilling prophecy whereby they end up acting out what they have been pre-judged as. Interpretivists accept this concept is highly useful and valid as it is qualitative. However, positivists believe it is low in reliability and usefulness as data is not numerical and cannot be compared, or even that there is no data at all. Being a criminal or deviant could be seen to be a social construct and therefore this may mean that you could question what criminal activity is and whether this social construct is even right since it has been constructed by members of the society.
However, this reaction will take differing forms, depending on how the nature of the action is perceived.’’ But as well as this, labelling theorists look at the effects and reaction it causes the individual to take. Lermert distinguished between two primary and secondary deviances as most theorists believe that labelling someone causes them to become deviant. Primary deviance is when the deviant act hasn’t been publicly labelled therefore it’s pointless to seek out causes of the deviance since it happens worldwide and
But isn’t it up to the person to decide what offends them? What offends one might not offend another. So do we take away everything that offends somebody? That is unrealistic to take away someone’s freedom of expression. Larry Flynt for example stated that “it is not freedom for the thought you love but freedom for the thought you hate most”.
During the agentic state an individual may feel moral strain, moral strain is when a person may be aware that the order they're following is immoral or goes against their moral views but they feel unable to disobey and continue the behaviour anyway. When in the agentic state the individual is acting as an agent for others, they do not feel responsible for their own actions as they believe responsibility falls to the authority figure giving the order. As this gives a clear description of obedience, society can learn from and aim to avoid future events similar to Mai Lai massacre. There has been much researcher into obedience through many studies including Milgram & Hofling, both these studies were lab experiments so any findings from the data would be considered high in validity and therefore any changes made to society from the theory would likely be worthwhile. However agency theory is more of a description than an evaluation of obedience, therefore the theory is incomplete and other theories, such as social power theory it is an alternative explanation for obedience, as a result of this any changes society makes on the basis of agency theory may be invalid and useless as the theory itself may be incorrect/incomplete.
While fringe members were more inclined to recognize that they had made fools of themselves and to put it down to experience, committed members were more likely to re-interpret the evidence to show that they were right all along. When someone is forced to do something they really don't want to do, dissonance is created between their cognition and their behavior. Forced compliance occurs when an individual performs an action that is inconsistent with his or her beliefs. The behavior can't be changed, since it is already in the past, so dissonance will need to be reduced by re-evaluating their attitude to what they have done. This prediction has been tested
In this case, the cause would be social conditioning – Baroch Spinoza said that although we may think that we are free, we are not, we are merely aware of our actions. “In the mind there is no absolute or free will; but the mind is determined to will this or that by a cause, which has been determined by another cause, and this last by another cause, and so on until infinity.” This emphasizes the fact that we are contingent beings, and that although we feel that we have options in life, the choices that we make are in the end determined my one single factor, which started a chain reaction creating the world we live in today. The surrounding and environment we are brought up into and therefore the upbringing and social conditioning we receive it determined. Our actions are due to how
One way would be conformity, to surrender to the government’s wishes by reserving any criticism for trifle thoughts. The other way would be individuality, to criticize the authority and be its target. This theme, conformity versus individuality, is ubiquitous not only in today’s society but in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Distraction and pleasure seeking is the trademark of the culture in which Montag lives in. Even though these
Prejudice can be defined as being an attitude, such as dislike towards a given minority. The following essay aims to outline and evaluate research studies into prejudice. A piece of research done by Sigall and Page (1971, cited in Baron and Byrne, 2003, pg 203) looked at an approach known as the ‘bogus pipeline’. The aim of this research was to look at social pressure and whether attitudes towards minority groups are indeed affected by this. Prejudice is mostly assessed through self- report questionnaires, responses to questionnaires are influenced by social desirability Bias, which is the tendency to give socially approved answers, (Eyesnck, 2000).
From this baseline, a sociologist Robert Merton established an interest to further study this deviant behaviour to come up with the anonymous answers that stood. He carried this out within a functionalist perspective in the 1930’s. Merton believed that deviance occurs in society because of the strain