1. PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL CONTROL Psychology Debates

2. The issue of social control in society When we talk about social control, we talk about using psychological understanding to control people, either for the good of society or for other reasons. This is an ethical issue, and questions such as “Who should have the power to control someone’s behaviour?” and “What are appropriate means of control?” arise, and will be tackled in this section for each of the four elements of social control you need to know about. There are also practical issues involved, which will also be discussed for each of the following areas.

3. Use of drug therapy Drug therapy may be used to help people who are depressed to control their mood disorder, or to help combat the symptoms of schizophrenia, but drugs have many widespread uses beyond this too. The use of drug therapy has been seen as very positive in some areas, but also some psychological studies show it in a negative light, such as Rosenhan (1973). Drugs may also be used to overcome drug dependency.

4. Ethical issues should drug taking be a free choice, and who has the power to control someone’s behaviour with the use of drugs against their will? This can be observed within mental institutions where patients are made to take drugs. Also, generally, adults have the right to make their own decisions, but the problem arises when they are unable to make that decision. Who should decide what is right for the patients – family, expert clinicians, etc

5. When is social control with the use of drugs appropriate? Are patients in mental health institutions given drugs to control their disorders because it is for their own good, or is it for the convenience of the staff members? Likewise, is drug therapy the most effective treatment for such conditions? For example, a GP may prescribe antidepressants to someone with depression for the GP’s own convenience, but perhaps CBT should be offered

6. Development of drugs usually involves animal testing, which raises its own ethical concerns A further ethical issue is whether a (recreational) drug addict should be allowed to continue harmful drug use, or social control should be used to force them into giving up drugs because of the harm caused – who has the right to stop people taking these drugs?

7. Practical Issues Patients may forget to take their drugs, or choose to not take them because they are concerned about the side effects, so this may not be a very effective therapy An issue in itself is that drug use often has the risk of side effects Effectiveness may wear off and patients also relapse often when released from drug therapy

8. Practical Issues An addictive person needs to attend regular meetings and agree to counselling to help them move away seamlessly from the peer group without any adverse effects – it is generally agreed that drug therapy works best when used with a different type of treatment (such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) which makes it costly and time-consuming Patients need to be prepared to make a commitment to the treatment course

9. Use Of Token Economy Based on the principles of operant conditioning, tokens in token economy are rewarded for showing desired behaviours, and undesired behaviours are ignored. The hope is that by these rules, shaping will take effect. In token economy programmes, tokens can be exchanged for rewards the individual wants. A useful study is Hobbs and Holt (1976).

10. Ethical Issues TEPs may be used in mental institutions, prisons and schools, but who are the programmes really benefitting – the individuals, or the staff? Someone is deciding what the desired behaviours are, and actively forcing participants to show those behaviours, but we have to wonder who has the right to do that

11. Ethical Issues The use of TEPs is likely to infringe on rights of the participants, as they are required to change their behaviour (to conform to someone else’s will) in order to be rewarded The programmes can be seen as ethical if the target behaviours will benefit society and if the rewards are something which is given on top of the participants’ usual requirements, but if the reward is something which the participants need (such as a meal, if in a prison) the programmes are considered unethical, as the individuals are forced to change

12. Ethical Issues Those with a mental health disorder may have very little free will over choosing to participate Also seen as controversial is the use of TEPs for profit, such as using store loyalty cards or clubcards, as although they seem to attract custom and offer advantages to customers, the companies benefit from using conditioning techniques

13. Practical Issues Often the programs do not generalise when the participants leave the controlled setting, so once the TEP stops and the individual is released from prison, school or the mental institution, the behaviours which were previously rewarded will no longer be rewarded, and so the behaviours might stop Also, many individuals will automatically stop showing the behaviours once released from the program, as their behaviours have not actually changed, but they only showed target behaviours in order to complete the program

14. Practical Issues Staff monitoring the TEP have to be trained which is costly, and the staff also must use the scheme fairly and treat each participant universally in order for it to be ethical and effective A difficulty is implementing a program which offers rewards which every participant wants – the rewards have to be something they desire, or else there is no motivation to show the desired behaviours and effectiveness is reduced

15. Use Of Classical Conditioning The use of systematic desensitisation to treat phobias (and some anxiety disorders), relies on the principles of classical conditioning. This occurs where someone learns to associate an object, which was previously feared and caused a panic response, with relaxation responses, in order to overcome the phobia. Similarly, aversion therapy can be used to associate something undesirable to exhibit an adverse response to something undesired, such as alcohol. Aversion therapy has also been used controversially in the ‘treatment’ of homosexuality.

16. Ethical Issues it is possible that you may have a lot of pressure put on you by the therapist and feel pressured into having the treatment, especially for aversion therapy where an adverse response is being paired to a stimulus (this is common in a prison, where the therapist may pressure the individual by removing their ability to say no or by making them feel they cannot refuse)

17. It could be argued that an ethical strength is that aversion therapies have been used to help many overcome undesirable habits and addictions, such as alcohol abuse and smoking addiction A weakness is that it is likely to be an unpleasant experience for the patient, especially if subjected to abuse (for example, when electrotherapy was used to try and ‘cure’ homosexuality, which in one case led to the death of a man)

18. Another strength is that the participants are given some control over the therapy – for example, with systematic desensitisation where they develop their own hierarchy of fears – so it is more ethical than flooding, for example Classical conditioning principles are also exploited in advertising, to make customers respond positively to certain products, which is controversial as it manipulates those subjected to the advertising media to benefit the companies

19. Practical Issues Participants must be willing to participate, which is one issue, but more importantly a participant must be able to learn to relax so that relaxation responses can be associated with the unpleasant stimulus: unless in times of panic the individual is able to implement relaxation techniques, the therapy is going to be ineffective It requires very little equipment, on the other hand, and the cost is low (except for time investment of the therapist)

20. Practical Issues With aversion therapy, for example used to treat alcohol addiction, the conditioned response should not be generalised to other objects (such as when aversion therapy techniques might involve associating alcohol with a substance that induces vomiting, therefore making the patient less likely to want to drink alcohol – but the therapy must be careful not to over-generalise as the individual still needs to be able to drink other liquids without feeling sick) Another issue is that generally for these treatments to be effective, a relationship with the therapist needs to be build up, and sometimes these rapports are hard to generate between the client and therapist

21. Influence of the Practitioner Evidence suggests that cognitive-behavioural therapy is effective for patients with schizophrenia, depression and anxiety disorders, and it is recommended by NICE. ( = National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence ) In general, it does not raise the same ethical and practical issues as other therapies, as it has no biochemical side effects (unlike drug therapy) and does not cause the level of distress treatments such as systematic desensitisation can.

22. However, the therapist is still able to exert control over an individual through the tasks and challenges set, although again this is not as significant as with other therapies – as like with systematic desensitisation, the therapist works with the patient, and so the patient is given a little more control.

23. False Memories Whilst psychodynamic therapies might be moderately successful for some conditions, despite a lack of theoretical underpinning, they have the potential for misuse as the therapist has such power over the patient. For example, the case study of Beth Rutherford can be used, where her therapist implanted false memories of her father sexually abusing her when she was younger, claiming she had used defence mechanisms to forget the memory, which in fact, never happened.

24. Drugs As for with drug therapy, those prescribing and administering the drugs will have power, and this includes with regard to addiction to the drug. The practitioner has some power over addicted patients, but the patients themselves can choose whether or not to attend treatment sessions. Society also has power with regard to this treatment, as a court order may specify that an individual must attend drug rehab therapy sessions

25. Drugs The practitioner also has power in choosing which drugs are appropriate and whether or not an individual is in need of drug therapy. However, since most individuals return to drug use having completed a session, it is suggested that they ultimately have the real power, not the therapist.

26. TEP Staff running and implementing token economy programmes have power over the individual, this goes without saying. They can withhold a token at any time, for example, if the programme is not properly supervised. The individuals in these programmes do not have much power, because the programme is usually run within a private, closed institution where the participants are unlikely to gain consent not to participate or to withdraw from the programme.

27. Classical Conditioning The therapist of classical conditioning therapies who conditions the desired behaviours is in a position of power, as are other therapists. They might be controlling the aversive stimulus in the case of aversion therapy, and with systematic desensitisation they control the hierarchy after it has been decided, although it should be acknowledged that in developing the hierarchy, the therapist works with the patient to develop a scheme which will work towards a desired goal.

28. Conditioning Also, the client has to agree to the therapy and has the opportunity to withdraw at any time – they cannot be pressured or forced into the therapy – and this reduces the power of the therapists for treatments using classical conditioning.

29. Different Types of Power. Expert power is given to someone who is an expert in the field, having knowledge in a specific area of study Reward power is held by the therapist because they can reward the client with praise of rewards, such as tokens Legitimate power is given to the therapist because the role of the therapist is to shape the behaviour of the participants, and society has certain expectations regarding how people should behave which meet the therapist’s targets

30. Coercive power should not be held by therapists, as this involves punishing others, although society might pass coercive power onto a therapist, for example by sectioning someone (under the Mental Health Act) or ordering somebody to have anger management training or drug rehab therapy as a condition of a court case Referent power might be endowed onto a therapist by a client because the client transfers feelings of admiration onto the therapist who is seen as having the skills and knowledge the client wants (referent power was described by French and Raven as the power given to someone because someone else would like to be like them)

31. Psychology and Cultural Issues Ethnocentrism is a bias, and is the tendency to focus on one’s own culture. Ethnocentrism is the idea that we view our world through our own frames of reference and schemas so we cannot see from another person’s viewpoint. (schemata refers to Bartlett (1932) who looked at reconstructive memory and suggested culture-based schemata, ideas from cultures which were individual interpretations of aspects of life).

32. Ethnocentrism A culture or society has a strong frame of reference involving norms, rules, customs, habits and preferences. We see other cultures through our own eyes, and think that our view is right. This is thinking we are ‘right’ about ethnocentrism.

33. Ethnocentrism Ethnocentrism introduces bias in the findings of psychological studies. It is useful to know about ethnocentrism so that we can try to understand the views of other cultures, in order to try and eliminate that bias. Bias may be in that: biased in terms of diagnosis, for example when diagnosing schizophrenia, we need to use cultural relativism, making the diagnoses more relevant to the culture biased in terms of client-centred therapies, such as cognitive-behavioural therapies or psychodynamic therapies, which rely on having non-judgemental relationships with your client – you have to accept their view of the world

34. Cross Cultural Research Research across different cultures can be useful in showing whether a characteristic is universal or unique to a particular culture. This makes cross-cultural studies useful for contributing towards another of the debates, the nature-nurture debate.

35. Ethnocentrism Researchers tend to focus on investigation phenomena related to their own ethnic group, which leads to two problems: a lack of balance in research, as much is based on westernised ideas a lack of generalisability in the findings, such as with the DSM, ideas based on research may be inappropriately applied

36. Cross Cultural Research This is because the characteristics which are found to be universal (i.e. the same across all cultures) are more likely to be down to human nature, and those which are found to be different or unique to a culture are more likely to be down to nurture and the environmental influences surrounding that culture.