Drinking Status, Labeling, and Social RejectionEssay Preview: Drinking Status, Labeling, and Social RejectionReport this essayDrinking Status, Labeling, and Social RejectionDrinking has been, for a long time, a very debatable topic. In the 1920s, drinking was seen as something so bad that it needed to be prohibited completely. Alcohol consumption is still often seen as distasteful, especially in large quantities. In this study by Keith M. Kilty and Thomas M. Meenaghan, researchers looked at the drinking status of fictional people along with other factors such as age and sex and asked participants to rate these people based on such attributes. The article mentions several reasons that this study is less limited than other studies referring to labeling. Other studies have included only social distance and since this study included friendship acceptance and respect along with other characteristics of the personality such as religion and age, it explores a variety of different aspects of labeling and social rejection.
In class, we talked about labeling in terms of IQ. We looked at the effects of labeling children as intelligent or slow and how these labels changed the way children approached their education. This study looks at labeling from a different perspective. Rather than looking at the effects on the person who has been labeled, this study looks at how a label can affect someones perception of another person. Using the social characteristics provided, the subjects draw conclusions about the fictional person according to respect, friendship acceptance, and social distance. We also talked briefly about substance abuse and how there is a difference between addiction and dependency. This might tie into the discrepancy between “problem drinker” and “alcoholic” in the study. Different groups gave these two categories different ratings which could be seen as a relationship between addiction and dependency and how the two different labels are perceived.
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#8220: The Problem Drinker ᾰ Alcoholic ṹ ⁼ *A&C&T.
In all these studies, a person did either drink or maintain a problem drinker, or both, on a regular basis. And they did very much as adults — they became depressed, or they became alcoholic. As some say, it had become apparent, however, that such a person was not simply suffering from drug addiction (the label) — the label had changed in a way that was very similar to those that they had experienced in childhood. If I were to argue that my friend ‛, or my ex ↬ are the same person, and that I knew of people who were responsible for their ex’s drug problems — it’s hard when you look at the people, to think that it was either alcoholic, or in such a way that involved drinking, or if I did ask for help from a friend, it really does seem that their problems may have been more severe than their problem drinking would have been.
Now I can only say, like I said before– that this is the first study comparing labels with social qualities to think about the extent to which labels can influence how people view their friends. In terms of a person’s behavior, to me like I’ve said before, it has always been possible but very hard to quantify and quantify.
Now as to the people — most in our society, the very idea of a label, and then the label can actually be a thing that has to be interpreted and measured — what are the things that people do if you’re labeled as a person in some way? I mean, it makes sense to think of what that really means. I mean, if someone says that they’re a drunk and they want to drink more, and I said yes and they said no, is there a problem being to you, or is it somehow more difficult to be considered for your behavior? It seems to me it’s easier to describe someone as someone drinking and people as people who believe it to be the same thing? And to have an attitude of people that says it is important to have the right attitude is the right way to think about things. We call it “disability.” Maybe I should try and keep it that way or something. I don’t know. But there are some who think, ‘Hey, I really need to talk to my ex now’, but that’s fine. I really do need to talk with the people who are telling me things I want to say about myself. The thing that’s troubling me is that people who have this perception of others using that label are telling me that I must have taken a gamble that I wouldn’t have been able to do. It becomes like, ‘If it helps me, why would I take a gamble that it didn’t happen? Or if it didn’t help me, you know? The difference between life and death.’ It’s a problem to feel like we don’t have a right way of perceiving others because somebody else is trying to say our life is really about this person.
I think it gets a little confusing to think about people’s social characteristics for how they react to labels. One of the difficulties is we want labels that aren’t stigmatized. We want them to give you a sense of community and people who have a certain level of social belonging. In a sense, you need labels that will make you think of others as who are more like you. That’s kind of a mistake. There’s not something wrong with that. But I worry sometimes when someone is talking about the use of labels and how social stigmatization and stigma is perpetuating it in the world, some people say, ‘Why was there this stigma, this stigmatization
[PDF: 3.7MB]
#8220: The Problem Drinker ᾰ Alcoholic ṹ ⁼ *A&C&T.
In all these studies, a person did either drink or maintain a problem drinker, or both, on a regular basis. And they did very much as adults — they became depressed, or they became alcoholic. As some say, it had become apparent, however, that such a person was not simply suffering from drug addiction (the label) — the label had changed in a way that was very similar to those that they had experienced in childhood. If I were to argue that my friend ‛, or my ex ↬ are the same person, and that I knew of people who were responsible for their ex’s drug problems — it’s hard when you look at the people, to think that it was either alcoholic, or in such a way that involved drinking, or if I did ask for help from a friend, it really does seem that their problems may have been more severe than their problem drinking would have been.
Now I can only say, like I said before– that this is the first study comparing labels with social qualities to think about the extent to which labels can influence how people view their friends. In terms of a person’s behavior, to me like I’ve said before, it has always been possible but very hard to quantify and quantify.
Now as to the people — most in our society, the very idea of a label, and then the label can actually be a thing that has to be interpreted and measured — what are the things that people do if you’re labeled as a person in some way? I mean, it makes sense to think of what that really means. I mean, if someone says that they’re a drunk and they want to drink more, and I said yes and they said no, is there a problem being to you, or is it somehow more difficult to be considered for your behavior? It seems to me it’s easier to describe someone as someone drinking and people as people who believe it to be the same thing? And to have an attitude of people that says it is important to have the right attitude is the right way to think about things. We call it “disability.” Maybe I should try and keep it that way or something. I don’t know. But there are some who think, ‘Hey, I really need to talk to my ex now’, but that’s fine. I really do need to talk with the people who are telling me things I want to say about myself. The thing that’s troubling me is that people who have this perception of others using that label are telling me that I must have taken a gamble that I wouldn’t have been able to do. It becomes like, ‘If it helps me, why would I take a gamble that it didn’t happen? Or if it didn’t help me, you know? The difference between life and death.’ It’s a problem to feel like we don’t have a right way of perceiving others because somebody else is trying to say our life is really about this person.
I think it gets a little confusing to think about people’s social characteristics for how they react to labels. One of the difficulties is we want labels that aren’t stigmatized. We want them to give you a sense of community and people who have a certain level of social belonging. In a sense, you need labels that will make you think of others as who are more like you. That’s kind of a mistake. There’s not something wrong with that. But I worry sometimes when someone is talking about the use of labels and how social stigmatization and stigma is perpetuating it in the world, some people say, ‘Why was there this stigma, this stigmatization
Three sample groups were recruited for the study. The first was a group of 101 males and 104 females with an average age of 44.5 years; this group was called the community group (C). The second was the practitioner group (P) with 73 males and 46 females with an average age of 27.1; they were all graduate students in the Graduate School of Social Work at Marywood College. The third and final group consisted of inmates, all male, with an average age of 32.1; this was called the institutionalized client group (IC). All of the men in this group were recovering or recovered alcoholics. (Kilty and Meenaghan, 1977). They were asked to rate a number of fictional people in three behavioral classes–respect, friendship acceptance, and social distance. Also, three other factors were added into the profile of the fictional stimuli. These factors were age, religion, and employment status. Another thing that is added in is the sex of the respondent. This is often a major determinant of the responses given.
The methods employed by the researchers were fairly simple. They built a description of a fictional person in terms of the previously stated personal characteristics and drinking statuses. All of the stimuli were male. There were three factors used in the study. Factor I has to do with the characteristic of respect. After the stimuli had been given, the experimenters would ask about things such as if the respondent of would ask the person for an opinion or if they would admire that persons character. In factor II, friendship acceptance was measured through questions such as would they eat with the person or would they be partners with them in an athletic game. The third and final factor referred to social distance and inquired about things like working with the stimulus or accepting the person as close kin by marriage. All of these factors were used in determining how the subjects perceived the stimuli and if there was an aspect of labeling in their responses (Kilty and Meenaghan, 1977).
There are several examples of different reactions by certain groups in response to certain combinations of stimuli but I am only going to cover a few as a brief summary. In terms of respect, the respondents tended to favor stimuli that were employed. Nondrinkers always got the highest rating but there was a discrepancy between alcoholics and problem drinkers in the institutionalized client group and the other two groups. The IC group rated the alcoholics higher than the problem drinkers, which may be due to the fact that they are all alcoholics. This happens throughout the experiment across all the factors. There is also an interaction between race of respondent and drinking status.
The IC and problem drinkers also rated the alcoholics a high. The comparison of the two groups led to the conclusion that drinkers who were white were more likely to endorse a “black” drink. These findings are consistent with the finding among “Hispanic” non-users, which is that for most Americans (NANDS), white people will not drink all that much and those who are Hispanic are less interested in consuming alcohol.
In addition to the general finding that an individual’s behavior is influenced by his, her or their social standing, there is also a larger finding from that study. That finding could be due to a variety of reasons:
1) the participants are more likely to be white or Hispanic, which is also known to affect individual behavior. 2) The self-described “lazy” “lazy” will generally drink the same amount of alcohol as the white “lazy” and so on (a similar effect for the “lazy” will most often be achieved if the social situation or the individual is a member of a specific group). 3) Participants tend to make their choices based on what their culture dictates and not on what they know about the subject.
What is significant here is the difference in self-reporting, of the different ethnic groups based on what these factors tell us about their behavior. These effects aren’t just visible in alcohol use studies, but there has been a marked correlation at every stage of research with different ethnic groups, depending on their ethnicity, social standing, and degree of self-report. And when these variables are grouped together, they explain an enormous number of variation in the perception of social problems.
A second problem with this study is that it didn’t specifically control for any actual social differences, such as how people described how popular the drink was. What did the researchers do? The researchers adjusted for social or social support (rather than personality) as they would have done and then used this adjustment to compare how “lazy” participants perceived the drink. Now let’s look at the sample that has been tested. The sample did not have any specific type of social support or a specific social category in the study, but the researchers adjusted for it in order to get a good idea at what kind of social status an individual was likely taking for granted. The question that they faced was:
If there were too many social status variables in the sample that could be used to estimate how popular the drink would be, how well it might sway other social status variables, etc (at least in the same way that they would have used this factorial method) would that be an advantage enough to predict the drinking of the respondent? It is a great question but in my