Social Control Mechanisms To Ensure Conformity To Group Norms

Social control is defined as the means and processes used by a society to ensure conformity to the group norms. One of the most important social control mechanisms is socialization, such as family, media, education, peers, and religion. These agents of socialization use rewards and punishments, sanctions, to modify behavior. One group in which I interact on a regular daily basis is friends. My friends are able to control my behavior throughout the use of socialization. For example, when I’m at school, I am reminded that I’m expected to follow the college and professor’s code of conduct and make sure I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing even though when my friends are encouraging me to do something sketchy. My friends are able to influence my behavior, throughout the use of peer pressure. My
friends are able to control my behavior throughout the use of informal social control, which is the enforcement of norms based on informal positive and negative sanctions. For example, when I’m with my friends and I’m talking I can see how they are reacting to my comments, solely based on their face expressions.
A positive informal sanction would be this, if they seem to agree with my comments they may smile, laugh, or nod their head, encouraging me to continue talking. However, if they don’t seem to agree with me their facial expressions may change into frowns, blur at me, or look at me like if I was crazy; prompting me to stop talking about whatever I was talking. That would be consider as a negative informal sanction. Compliance occurs when people alter or change their behavior based upon direct requests from others. For example, when one or several of my friends are getting on my nerves I may ask them to stop bugging me or to simply leave me alone, but that decision is totally up to them and not me. I am making a request, but I would probably not do anything about it if they refuse my request. Obedience is obeying someone in authority such as teachers, parents, boss, and so on. For instance, when my friends and I are talking in class, the teacher may tell us to be quiet even if we really wanted to continue talking across the
classroom. The teacher has authority over us because if we don’t stop talking he/she may kick us out and not receive class credit for that day. Formal social control is based on society’s authorized agencies such as law enforcement officers and judges. Formal sanctions may use negative or positive sanctions to ensure conformity. For example, whenever I’m with my friends in the car and we get pulled over by a police officer for exceeding the speed limit in that area or for failing to comply with the use of seatbelt. The police officer issuing us a ticket will be consider as a formal negative sanction. Finally, conformity occurs when an individual changes his or her behavior in order to be consistent with norms of the group. I personally believe that this tends to happen more with young people, since they are too busy worrying about fitting in with a certain group, such as their friends. For example, whenever I’m with my family or at school I tend to act very differently than when I’m with my friends. Is almost life if I was a different person at home and school and a total different person whenever my friends are around me.