Values, norms and social control (SACE Stage 2 Society and Culture)
“Explain how values, norms and mechanisms of social control regulate behaviour and maintain social order in Australian society.”
Values are the deep ideas a society holds about what is good and important, while norms are the specific rules for behaviour that flow from those values. Norms range from minor folkways through stronger mores to formal laws. Social control is the way a society enforces its norms so that behaviour stays predictable and order is maintained. It works informally through approval, gossip and shame, and formally through written rules, police, courts and sanctions. When someone breaks a norm they commit deviance, and the response to deviance reveals what the society treats as important.
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What this dot point is asking
You must distinguish values from norms, classify norms by strength, and explain how formal and informal social control maintain order, using Australian examples.
Values and norms are different things
A common error is to treat values and norms as the same. They are linked but distinct. A value is a broad, abstract belief about what is desirable: in Australia, common values include a fair go, equality of opportunity, freedom of speech and respect for the law. A norm is a concrete expectation about behaviour in a particular situation. The value of a fair go produces norms such as queuing in order, not pushing in, and giving everyone a turn to speak.
A value is a shared, abstract idea about what is good, right or desirable. A norm is a specific, situational rule for behaviour that puts a value into practice.
Types of norms
Sociologists rank norms by how strongly a society enforces them.
- Folkways are everyday customs and etiquette. Breaking them, such as wearing pyjamas to a formal event, attracts mild disapproval but no serious penalty.
- Mores carry stronger moral weight. Breaking them, such as cheating in an exam or abandoning a child, brings strong condemnation.
- Taboos are the most deeply held prohibitions, such as incest, that provoke disgust across almost the whole society.
- Laws are norms formally written down and enforced by the state, with official sanctions for breaking them.
The same behaviour can shift category over time. Smoking indoors moved from an accepted folkway to a regulated, sometimes illegal, act within a generation in Australia.
Formal and informal social control
Social control is how a society pressures members to follow its norms.
- Informal social control operates through everyday social reactions: a smile of approval, a raised eyebrow, praise, teasing, gossip or being left out. It is unwritten and enforced by ordinary people. Most behaviour is actually regulated this way, not by law.
- Formal social control is exercised by official agencies through written rules and sanctions. In Australia this includes police, courts, prisons, regulators and school discipline systems.
Only a tiny fraction of behaviour is governed by law and police. The vast majority of social order rests on informal control: people following norms because they have internalised them through socialisation and care about the reactions of others.
Sanctions
Social control works through sanctions, which are the rewards and punishments that follow behaviour. Positive sanctions reward conformity, such as a promotion, an award or simple praise. Negative sanctions punish deviance, such as a fine, exclusion or imprisonment. Sanctions can be formal (a court fine) or informal (being ignored by a friendship group). The pattern of sanctions teaches members which norms matter most.
Deviance and what it reveals
Deviance is any behaviour that breaks a society's norms. Importantly, deviance is not fixed; it is defined by the society and changes over time and between cultures. Tattoos, once strongly stigmatised in Australia, are now widely accepted. What counts as deviant is therefore a clue to a society's current values. Studying how a society reacts to deviance, who gets labelled deviant, and how harshly they are sanctioned shows where power and dominant values lie.
Start with a value
Take the value of safety on the roads.
Identify the norms it produces
Norms such as wearing seatbelts, not speeding and not driving under the influence.
Identify the social control enforcing them
Formal control through laws, speed cameras, demerit points and police; informal control through the disapproval of passengers and peers toward dangerous driving.
State the conclusion
The value becomes ordered behaviour only through both kinds of control working together. Showing the chain from value to norm to formal and informal control is exactly the analysis this dot point rewards.
Do not assume deviance always means crime or that it is always harmful. Deviance simply means departing from a norm. Innovators, reformers and protesters are often labelled deviant before their ideas are accepted, so deviance can drive positive social change, not only disorder.
Australian examples
Australia shows social control at every level. The norm of mateship and looking after each other is enforced informally through approval and belonging. Public health rules during the COVID-19 period combined formal control (fines, mandates, police enforcement) with intense informal control (public shaming of rule breakers online). Road rules show formal control through speed cameras and demerit points, while the informal disapproval of dangerous driving reinforces them.
Why this matters for the course
Values, norms and social control are the machinery that makes the abstract idea of culture into actual ordered behaviour. This dot point connects directly to power and social structures, because the groups who decide which norms become law and which behaviours are labelled deviant are exercising power. It also feeds into social change, because shifting norms and contested deviance are exactly where societies transform. When you analyse any contemporary issue, ask whose norms are being enforced and through what kind of control.
Assessment-style questions
Questions on this dot point, each with a worked answer, written by ExamExplained. Society and Culture has no written exam, so use them to check your understanding before your assessment tasks.
Practice8 marksSource: during the COVID-19 period, surveys found high public compliance with restrictions, sustained partly by online criticism and shaming of people who broke the rules. (a) Identify the forms of social control described in the source. (b) Using sociological concepts, explain how these worked together to maintain order. (c) Suggest one limitation of relying on shaming as a form of social control.Show worked answer →
This is a source/data analysis item marked on knowledge, analysis and evaluation.
- (a) Identify the forms (2 marks)
- The source describes both formal social control (government restrictions and fines, enforced by official agencies) and informal social control (online criticism and public shaming by ordinary people).
- (b) How they worked together (4 marks)
- Formal control set written rules with sanctions, while informal control made breaking them socially costly through disapproval and shame. Because most behaviour is regulated informally once people internalise norms, the informal shaming amplified the formal rules and raised compliance beyond what enforcement alone could achieve. Naming formal and informal control and the role of internalised norms and sanctions earns the marks.
- (c) Evaluate shaming (2 marks)
- Shaming can be disproportionate, target the wrong people, harm wellbeing, and entrench division; it lacks the due process of formal sanctions, so it can punish unfairly and undermine rather than build cohesion.
Practice12 marksExplain how values, norms and social control maintain social order, and evaluate the view that deviance is always harmful to society. Use Australian examples.Show worked answer →
This is an extended-response item marked on knowledge, analysis and communication.
- Values, norms and types
- Values are abstract ideas about what is desirable; norms are situational rules that put values into practice, ranging from folkways through mores and taboos to formal laws.
- Social control
- Order is maintained through informal control (approval, gossip, shame) and formal control (police, courts, sanctions). Most order rests on informal control and internalised norms, with sanctions teaching which norms matter most.
- Evaluate the deviance claim
- Deviance simply means departing from a norm and is socially defined and changing (for example tattoos moving from stigmatised to accepted). Reformers, innovators and protesters are often labelled deviant before their ideas are accepted, so deviance can drive positive change. A top answer concludes deviance is not always harmful: it can threaten order but can also be the engine of beneficial social change, and what counts as deviant reveals where power and dominant values lie.