The Deviance Theory
Any conduct that goes against the social norms and is so stark such that it permits disapproval from most of the society. Activities such as alcoholism, lying, stealing, purchasing the service of prostitutes, being nude in public, and excessive gambling amongst much more are considered to be deviant in the American society. The complexity deviance is as a result of the variance of norms across times, groups, and places Pyatte). It only means that one team may consider something acceptable and another considers the same thing deviant. For instance, in middle school pupils label alcohol as illegal what they really know is that alcohol is, in fact, legal and grownups are free. The paper on drug and alcohol abuse on campus while discussing the control theory and deviance.
Choices - Teen Anti-Drinking Educational Short Film
The main characters in the story were Adams, Jessica, and Tyler. Adam is Jessica’s boyfriend as well as Tyler’s friend. In the first place, all of them do not take alcohol. However, Adam considers taking alcohol, but Jessica advises him that it is not right. Later Tyler and Adam attends a party in the campus where alcohol is served to everyone irrespective of the age. It is in the party that Adam take alcohol and he becomes drunk. After the party, Tyler joins Adam in the car tells him that he looks terrible and offers to drive, but Adam insists that he is sober enough to drive. Along the way Adam causes and accident that costs both Tyler and Jessica their life.
The Control Theory
The theory states that both the internal and external controls collaborate and work against deviant behavior. However sometimes people may have a need to act in ways that are not good as per the society and are considered abnormal, but most individuals do not (Donner, Christopher, and Wesley 207). Nonetheless, they have several restraints which are in two categories the internal and external controls. Internal controls are of personal values, integrity, conscience, ethics, and the desire to be a good person while external controls are family, religious authorities, police, and friends. Both the internal and external restraints make up an individual’s self-control which restricts a person from taking part in actions that are against the norms of the society (Donner et al. 166). In can be seen that the behavior of Adam is deviant since he takes alcohol in a society that considers deviant alcoholism behavior.
From the theory, Adam loses his self-control as well as losing the battle of not taking alcohol. Jessica and Tyler are his friends who act as an external control. Jessica advises Adam against drinking alcohol. On the other hand, Adam tells Tyler he never has drunk alcohol until that day since he had too much in his brains and he wanted to let some of that go (Pyatte). He wanted to feel relaxed. By drinking the alcohol, he loses his morality and desire to be a good person. From the theory, the key to developing robust personal control is good socialization in the juvenile stage. It follows that children without self-control may grow up to act in unusual ways.
The control theory was the best to explain the story at hand since it suggests that individuals the society labels as deviants are always members of subordinate groups (Lian 651). Adam being a teenager he qualifies as a member of an auxiliary group, and more so he loses his self-control which is the basis of the theory. Also, the theory discusses the relationship between socialization, social controls, and behavior. Finally, other theories were not best suited for this cases study since other theories attempt to explore into etiologies and mostly take little effort to explain the cause if deviance.
Work Cited
Donner, Christopher M., and Wesley G. Jennings. ""Low self-control & police deviance: Applying Gottfredson & Hirschi’s general theory to officer misconduct."" Police Quarterly 17.3 (2014): 203-225.
Donner, Christopher M., et al. ""Low self-control and cybercrime: Exploring the utility of the general theory of crime beyond digital piracy."" Computers in Human Behavior 34 (2014): 165-172.
Lian, Huiwen, et al. ""Blame it on the supervisor or the subordinate? Reciprocal relations between abusive supervision and organizational deviance."" Journal of applied psychology 99.4 (2014): 651.
Pyatte, Steve. ""Choices - Teen Anti Drinking Educational Short Film"". Youtube, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Skka5B8NOk."
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