Sociology 3701: Outline-week 8

Sociology 3701: Outline--Week 8

I. Embracing deviance as an identity: labeling theory

A. Lemert: Primary and Secondary Deviance.

1. Primary deviance: rule-breaking behavior that is carried out by people who see themselves and are seen by others as basically conformist.

2. Secondary deviance: after being labeled, the deviant comes "to employ his or her deviant behavior or a role based upon it as a means of defense, attack, or adjustment to the problems created by the subsequent societal reaction." In other words, a negative label gets applied so publicly and so powerfully that it becomes part of that individual's identity?

a. How much choice is there in the way we react to a powerful negative labeling? Doesn't the very effort to fight a label make you more and more the product of other people's expectations?

b. There's usually a social aspect to this process; you don't have to do it all by yourself. e.g., Puerto Rican students in Northwest Chicago in Padilla: The Gang as an American Enterprise

B. Becker: "Becoming a Marihuana User, " 1953. It sounds like something you just do, but Becker discovers there's an important labeling process that is at least partly social. You have to learn to get high (or at least to know you're high, and to like being high)

a. Novice... doesn't know how to smoke it, may not recognize symptoms ("I've seen a guy who was high out of his mind and didn't know it."), may not like symptoms

b. Interaction with more experienced users... often eager not to seem inexperienced ("I didn't want to seem like a punk to this cat.")

[Sidetrack: For those who have studied theories of deviance, think about Sutherland's differential association theory... Sutherland very much a symbolic interactionist)

c. The likelihod of eventually defining the experience as pleasurable and continuing very much a product of the quantity, quality, and importance of the new user's associations with experienced users.

What about the issues of legality? Part of what you learn through these "differential assocations" are the rationalizations that justify breaking the law... the hip world versus the square world... we see this very clearly in this week's reading about becoming a prostitute

B. Barbara Heyl: "The Madam as Teacher: The Training of House Prostitutes"

"Observing how Ann trains turn-outs is a study in techniques to facilitate identity change."

turn-out = untrained prostitute

1. How does Ann establish her credibility?

2. What are the key features of the new identity she is trying to establish? (Pay special attention here to the terminology, which is essential to a symbolic interactionist perspective)

3. How does the new identity relate to the novice-in-training's social world (that is, who are supposed to be the important people in her new world)?

Notice the lack of moral judgments by the sociologist in both these articles? Why is that apt to be an important part of the tool kit of the symbolic interactionist?

II. Cognitive Dissonance Theory... my favorite contribution from psychological social psychology... I'm especially interested in how can we avoid applying negative labels to ourselves when we act in ways that would seem to be stupid or cruel or at least inconsistent with our values?

A. Leon Festinger: Simultaneously holding two cognitions that are psychologically inconsistent creates a pressure to reduce the dissonance.

When Prophecy Fails

B. Experiment by Elliot Aronson and Judson Mills on initiation. Is it more useful to view human beings as rational or as rationalizers?

1. What would the then-dominant behaviorist theory predict? What would cognitive dissonance predict?

2. Elliot Aronson: "When a person is involved in a situation where he might consider himself to be stupid or immoral, he engages in self-justifying behavior which involves some form of self-persuasion."

C. Notice the implications of cognitive dissonance theory for situations in which we treat other people badly.

1. David Glass experiment

2. The tobacco company CEOs testifying before congress

D. Cognitive dissonance is particularly strong when:

1. Self-concept is involved

2. Actions are voluntary or nearly so.

3. Individual feels responsible for consequences and they matter.

Sociology 3701: Outline--Week 8

I. Embracing deviance as an identity: labeling theory

A. Lemert: Primary and Secondary Deviance.

1. Primary deviance: rule-breaking behavior that is carried out by people who see themselves and are seen by others as basically conformist.

a. How much choice is there in the way we react to a powerful negative labeling? Doesn't the very effort to fight a label make you more and more the product of other people's expectations?

b. There's usually a social aspect to this process; you don't have to do it all by yourself. e.g., Puerto Rican students in Northwest Chicago in Padilla: The Gang as an American Enterprise

B. Becker: "Becoming a Marihuana User, " 1953. It sounds like something you just do, but Becker discovers there's an important labeling process that is at least partly social. You have to learn to get high (or at least to know you're high, and to like being high)

a. Novice... doesn't know how to smoke it, may not recognize symptoms ("I've seen a guy who was high out of his mind and didn't know it."), may not like symptoms

b. Interaction with more experienced users... often eager not to seem inexperienced ("I didn't want to seem like a punk to this cat.")

[Sidetrack: For those who have studied theories of deviance, think about Sutherland's differential association theory... Sutherland very much a symbolic interactionist)

c. The likelihod of eventually defining the experience as pleasurable and continuing very much a product of the quantity, quality, and importance of the new user's associations with experienced users.

What about the issues of legality? Part of what you learn through these "differential assocations" are the rationalizations that justify breaking the law... the hip world versus the square world... we see this very clearly in this week's reading about becoming a prostitute

B. Barbara Heyl: "The Madam as Teacher: The Training of House Prostitutes"

"Observing how Ann trains turn-outs is a study in techniques to facilitate identity change."

turn-out = untrained prostitute

1. How does Ann establish her credibility?

2. What are the key features of the new identity she is trying to establish? (Pay special attention here to the terminology, which is essential to a symbolic interactionist perspective)

3. How does the new identity relate to the novice-in-training's social world (that is, who are supposed to be the important people in her new world)?

Notice the lack of moral judgments by the sociologist in both these articles? Why is that apt to be an important part of the tool kit of the symbolic interactionist?

II. Cognitive Dissonance Theory... my favorite contribution from psychological social psychology... I'm especially interested in how can we avoid applying negative labels to ourselves when we act in ways that would seem to be stupid or cruel or at least inconsistent with our values?

C. Notice the implications of cognitive dissonance theory for situations in which we treat other people badly.

1. David Glass experiment

2. The tobacco company CEOs testifying before congress

D. Cognitive dissonance is particularly strong when:

1. Self-concept is involved

III Anybody's Son will Do