The Relationship Between Perceived Violation of Social Norms and Social Control: Situational Factors Influencing the Reaction to Deviance

Social control is the generic term for all reactions through which people express their disapproval of someone who engages in a counternormative behavior or who holds a counternormative attitude. Sociological theorizing suggests that the likelihood of a naïve bystander exerting social control depends primarily on the degree of deviance of the counternormative behavior. The psychological 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 these hypotheses. 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. They also speak to the measures that must be taken if decision makers want to facilitate informal social control as a means to combat incivility.A