Premium
The Relationship Between Perceived Violation of Social Norms and Social Control: Situational Factors Influencing the Reaction to Deviance
Author(s) -
Brauer Markus,
Chekroun Peggy
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2005.tb02182.x
Subject(s) - deviance (statistics) , psychology , social psychology , situational ethics , normative , normative social influence , control (management) , social control , sociology , social science , philosophy , statistics , mathematics , management , epistemology , economics
Social control is the generic term for all reactions through which people express their disapproval to someone who engages in a counternormative behavior or who holds a counter‐normative attitude. The literature on helping behavior suggests that perceived personal implication should play an important role in the decision of whether or not to exert social control. A field study involving 5 different experimental settings was conducted in order to test this hypothesis. Confederates engaged in a variety of behaviors that violated social norms. Perceived personal implication was consistently the best predictor of social control behavior, such that the more someone felt that a deviant behavior affected him or her personally, the more he or she was likely to communicate his or her disapproval to the deviant confederate. Perceived deviance of the behavior was a less powerful predictor of social control. These findings speak to the moderating factors of social control behavior and to the circumstances under which social norms protecting public property are likely to be perpetuated.