We don’t realize that our lives and the way we do things are characterized by formal and informal social control. Informal social control is the way we treat each other or certain groups. For example bulling is a form of informal social control. Bulling has always been a norm for kids in elementary through high school. Before the term bulling meet to be physical with someone now you don’t have to be physical you can bully with words. I use to bully with word back in elementary school it was all fun and games, I didn’t mean any harm by it. It only becomes an issue when the bulling goes too far. Formal social control is the way we conduct ourselves in public for example handicap spots, you know you can’t park in a handicap spot if you don’t have a handicap tag even if it’s the only spot left in the parking lot. If you do decide to park in the handicap spot you will get punished.
Formal and informal social control are evident at my job also I do security for AT&T. Informal social control that I have noticed is this other guard lies a lot to the supervisor about things that happen on her shift and the supervisor knows that she is lying. One day he asked her what happened but he already knew he just wanted her to tell him the truth, but she didn’t and she was fired. If she finds another job and wants to keep it eventually she would stop lying to her supervisors. Another example is lady that works for AT&T like to gossip to me about things happing in the building. Every time she starts to gossip I just ignore her or fake being busy. Eventually she stopped gossiping to me and now she talks about things but no more gossip. Since I was ignoring her every time she gossiped she figured that I wasn’t interested in her gossip. A form of formal social control at my job is entrance into the building. Every AT&T and security employee knows they have to swipe their id badge to gain access into the building to be accounted for encase of an emergency. If they don’t swipe and something happens in the building while they are in it like a fire or death their family won’t be compensated because the record would show that weren’t in the building at the time.
The more effective of the two social controls will be formal social control because all of the employees would want their family to be compensated if something did happen to them. Not only at my job, formal social control is the better of the two in the real world. Back to the example of the of the handicap spot nobody want to get a fine or be the reason a real handicap person can’t find a place to park. Formal social control gives us a guideline to follow in everyday life if you choose not to follow the guidelines you will be punished by the authorities.
We have all been deviance at one point knowingly or unknowingly. Examples are talking on the cell phone while driving you know you’re not suppose to but you still do it until you see a cop; when you call out of work sick and you’re not sick; keeping the truth from someone because you know that the truth will hurt their feelings; not having the latest cell phone or not being with the best cell phone company. Deviance is not a characteristic of the individual because we all are born with common sense some more than others. When we were growing we learned the difference between rights and wrongs. When we are able to make decision for ourselves the social system plays a roll on what choices we make. For example the people that decide to sell drugs because they can’t find a job they are fully aware of the consequences by doing that. Same goes for the people that choose to smoke cigarettes. They know the consequences from smoking cigarettes but the punishment for smoking cigarettes is internal.
