Social Control: Attachment, And Commitment

Social control “refers to the ways in which people’s thoughts, feelings, appearance, and behavior are regulated in social systems” (Crossman).The textbook describes four types of social control, belief, involvement, attachment, and commitment. Beliefs like always being kind and standing up for yourself has taught me to not fight with others but not agree to things that I do not want to do, keeping me from partaking in questionable activities. My involvement in activities like color guard in high school prevented me from deviating like some of my peers did. An example of attachment control from my own life is that I have a very strong bond with my parents and my siblings and it's important that I don’t ruin those relationships by doing something too odd. Social control like commitment is like not jeopardizing my college education and the opportunities it provides by getting in trouble with the school or …show more content…
In Stanley Milgram’s shock experiment, he placed individuals in a room with a person in a lab coat. The test subjects were instructed to shock a stranger for every wrong answer they gave to a list of questions. The intensity of the shock would increase each time. Two thirds of people continued to the highest setting with a little prodding from the person in the lab coat (Macionis). It shows that people want to obey authority, even if it goes against their beliefs. Few people think that they could actually kill someone, but Milgram’s experiment shows that under the right circumstances, almost anybody could. People think that they are independent, only they control what they do, but people have a natural tendency to conform. When the person in the lab coat asked them to conform, to go along with what they asked, the test subjects did. Author Hannah Arendt says that “the sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil” and this can be seen from those who didn’t choose to stand up to the men in the lab coats