Agencies of Informal Social Control

These agencies also carry out socialisation: teaching people norms and values. Norms are expectations about behaviour, while values are beliefs about what matters or is right. When people internalise these expectations, they accept them as their own. Someone may therefore avoid stealing because they believe it is wrong, not simply because they fear being caught.

The family: learning expectations early

The family is an important early influence. Through everyday interaction, parents and carers teach children right and wrong, acceptable ways of speaking and how to treat other people. Praise for sharing or criticism for hurting someone connects particular behaviour with approval or disapproval. Grounding or removing privileges can also reinforce expectations.

Family influence can be powerful because children have close relationships with their carers and depend on them. Repeated messages may become internalised, so behaviour is regulated even when a parent is absent.

However, families do not all transmit identical values. If a family accepts behaviour that wider society regards as deviant, its influence may encourage that behaviour rather than prevent it. Family control also operates alongside other influences: friends may encourage conduct that parents oppose.

Peer groups: belonging and pressure to fit in

A peer group consists of people of a similar age or status, such as a friendship group. Members influence one another through peer pressure. Approval and inclusion encourage conformity; ridicule or exclusion can discourage behaviour that the group dislikes.

This influence can support wider social expectations. Friends who value schoolwork may encourage one another to work hard. But a group that approves of truancy or underage drinking may pressure members to break school rules or wider social norms.

The important distinction is between conformity to the group and conformity to society. A pupil who misses lessons to gain friends' approval is conforming to the peer group while behaving deviantly according to the school. Peer influence is therefore not automatically a force for preventing deviance. Its effect depends on the group's norms and how much the individual values belonging.

Education: learning more than school subjects

Schools influence behaviour through everyday relationships and the hidden curriculum. This means the unwritten lessons learnt through school routines rather than the official subjects taught. Arriving on time, waiting one's turn and responding respectfully to teachers can teach punctuality, cooperation and respect for authority.

Teachers' approval of effort and disapproval of disruption reinforce these expectations. Such learning can prepare pupils for workplaces and wider society, where similar behaviour is expected.

Education also uses formal control, including written rules and official punishments. Its informal role should not be confused with these procedures: the same institution can exercise both kinds of control.

School influence is not guaranteed to succeed. An anti-school peer group may reward disruption or reject teachers' expectations. Education and peer groups can therefore send competing messages, making conformity depend partly on whose approval a pupil values more.

Religion: moral beliefs and self-control

Religion can provide moral expectations about how people should live. Ideas about sin, guilt and rewards in an afterlife can encourage believers to follow religious teachings even when nobody else is watching. Shared beliefs and the approval of a religious community can reinforce this influence.

Functionalists see religion as helping to unite people around shared values and maintain social order. Marxists offer a different interpretation: religious teachings can help control the working class by encouraging acceptance of their position rather than challenges to inequality.

Religion's influence depends on commitment to its beliefs and community. Someone who does not accept a religious teaching may not regard it as a reason to change their behaviour. It is therefore an important influence for some people, not a universal source of control.

The media: communicating acceptable behaviour

News, advertising and entertainment communicate messages about desirable and unacceptable behaviour. Drink-driving campaigns, for example, warn about harm and consequences, encouraging people not to drink and drive. Reporting crime and court cases can also reinforce the message that particular actions are unacceptable.

Functionalists emphasise this contribution to shared values and social order. However, media influence can also be harmful. Interactionists argue that selective reporting can label groups as deviant and reinforce stereotypes. Stanley Cohen's study of the mods and rockers, published in 1972, argued that exaggerated reporting of seaside disturbances increased public alarm and intensified reactions to young people. Media attention does not necessarily reduce deviance; it can contribute to its amplification.

Marxists question whose interests media messages serve. They argue that blaming groups such as working-class young people can divert attention from inequality and the actions of the powerful.

Evaluating informal control: effective for whom?

Informal control can be effective because it operates continually through ordinary relationships and internalised beliefs. People may regulate themselves without official intervention. Its effectiveness is strongest when they accept the expectations being taught and value the approval of those teaching them.

Nevertheless, agencies can disagree. Families, schools, friends and media messages may promote different expectations. Control may also encourage conformity to a group whose behaviour conflicts with wider social norms.

Functionalists stress the benefits of shared expectations for cooperation and order. Feminists question whether these expectations benefit everyone equally. They argue that informal pressure can maintain patriarchy, for example when women are judged more harshly for behaviour that breaks expectations of femininity.

A justified conclusion is that informal agencies have a strong everyday influence, but neither their effectiveness nor their benefits are automatic. Evaluation should consider the values promoted, competing influences and whether control supports cooperation or reinforces unequal power.