Informal Vs Informal Social Control

321 Words2 Pages
Berger argues that informal social control is more powerful than formal controls like law, police, and prisons. What makes informal social control like ridicule and gossip so much more powerful? Social control is established by encouraging individuals to conform and obey social norms, both through formal and informal means. “No society can live without social control,” stated on page 61. Asch did the same experiment with students, he conducted an experiment to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group of students could affect a person to conform. The students chose the wrong answer and the one student that was sure of their answer conformed to the wrong answer also. The social control Berger speaks about is gossip