About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about social control, focusing in particular on: (i) defining social control as a method of controlling behaviour to enforce conformity and compliance in accordance with social norms; (ii) French and Raven’s (1960) five types of power being legitimate, reward, expert, referent and coercive; (iii) examples of these powers in the context of drug treatments for mental illness; (iv) problematic examples of the negative outcomes of drug treatments, particularly in the context of employing coercive power; (v) the function of token economies including to make the behaviour of individuals with a mental illness more socially acceptable; (vi) some key strengths and criticisms of aversion therapy as a treatment, including its potential for abuse by society to reduce undesirable behaviours and traits.

About the lecturer

Dr Cody Porter is a senior lecturer in social psychology in the department of Health and Social Sciences at the University of the West of England. Dr Porter’s research interests are in information elicitation, lie detection and offending behaviour. Some of Dr Porter’s recent publications include ‘Implementing converged security risk management: Drivers, barriers, and facilitators’ (in press) and ‘Applying the asymmetric information management technique to insurance claims’ (2022).