Deviance In Our Society

In a society there are norms in which people are expected to follow. In our society, it is expected that one wears clothing when they are going to be seen by others. Therefore, wearing clothing in the presence of others is our social norm. If someone was walking around on the streets naked, their audience would give them a negative reaction. This is an indicator that deviance has occurred. Deviance is defined as a behavior, trait, or other characteristic that violates a norm and causes a negative reaction. Society would say that the naked man is being deviant because they are breaking the social norm of wearing clothing in the presence of others, and is receiving a negative reaction. A lot of times, these deviant acts occur because someone has the idea that that is what they should be doing. This can happen because of the Labeling Theory. The Labeling Theory is when external judgments or labels modify an individual 's self-concept. This results in changes to the way others respond to the labeled person. Many times, people are only deviant because someone told them that that was all they could be. This leads into another

This can happen because some teachers label their students and tell them to their face; or the student realizes it. The student then creates a self-fulfilling prophecy for themselves and lives up to it. This is a major reason why we see students not listening to teachers, skipping class, and getting into bad things. These deviant students are only being, and continuing to be deviant because their teacher always has that label on them. Lazy, unmotivated, behavior problem, slow learner are just some examples of what teachers label their students in the classroom. This creates a toxic environment and low self esteem for the student. Which then leads them to live up to their self-fulfilling prophecy according to their label. All of this loops around, back to the student participating in deviant