Collaborative Research on Group-Mediated Social Control: An Experimental Investigation

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This project is collaborative with SES 9022601. This research tests a theory of social control of deviance, the ways in which individuals can influence others not to commit deviant acts. How people respond to sanctions varies greatly depending on group context. For instance, community norms reinforce and support laws, preventing more cases of deviance than are prevented by the legal sanctions such as prison. Alternatively, peer pressure can contravene laws, as when college students support each others' drinking, or output norms restrict productivity. The theory under test here includes both actual and perceived strength of sanctions, the cost of individual compliance, the cost and effectiveness of trying to get others to comply or not to comply, and the perceived likelihood that deviance will be detected. Experiments constitute direct tests of most of the theory's assertions. Results will help develop this explicit theory on the operation of social control proces- ses, and will have applications in law enforcement and informal control situations.