Labeling Theory (revised)

Labeling theory is an interesting concept to understand. It is constantly present in our lives and is always influencing us. When it comes to why we label people in our day to day life it is so we can categorize them to make life easier. It is something that we are conditioned to do in today’s fast pace society. The idea is that if I see someone or something, I will automatically use my past experiences in life to categorize them. For example, if I see a pot on the stove with the heat on, I will instantly assume that it is hot. My past experiences of touching a pot on the stove or being told as a young kid that the pot is hot has shape my understanding of the situation. The same goes for people, if I see a man wearing a suit and tie, carrying a briefcase while talking on his cell phone as he walks down the street in downtown Minneapolis, I assume that that man has a corporate job and either works in the city or has business in the city.  He probably has a nice car, house and is married. Although for the most part our brains categorizing and labeling in life helps us to make things simpler it can also cause us to make wrong assumptions about people and situations. Labeling can also be caused by what we are told.

 

http://revolutionarypaideia.com/2011/06/18/you-cannot-lead-anyone-when-you-need-to-be-led/

I believe that this idea of labeling people and categorizing them has an impact on who we perceive to be deviant and who we don’t. When we see news headlines about criminal cases, the way the article is written shapes our opinion on whether the person in guilty or innocent.  If it is written in favor of the defendant, we will most likely have the assumption that they are innocent and vise versa. This initial view on the topic will have a huge impact on how we perceive the topic from then on out. A personal example of this in my life was the idea of steroids in sports. I grew up in a house hold that viewed the use of performance enhancing drugs as completely wrong and unacceptable. I always had this idea in my mind that if you used steroids you were a cheater and didn't deserve to win (you were deviant). In recent years I have seen the movie Biggest Stronger Faster which is focused around the idea that even thought the U.S. says that it doesn't support steroids it is really everything that the country stands for which is a hard thing to grasp.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KzGfuFFSxA

The other headline news story that has a raised in the past few years that I followed very closely was the Lance Armstrong investigation. I grew up watching the Tour De France and have been a fan of Lance my whole life. When he was under investigation for using performance enhancing drugs during his 7 Tour De France victories and eventually admitted to using such substances I was torn. I new that using performance enhancing drugs was wrong and against the rules but I also knew that at that time everyone in the spot was cheating (using performance enhancing drugs) so it was an even playing field. So would the actions of Lance Armstrong be considered deviant? It was the norm at the time and he didn't do anything that others weren't doing so should he be considered deviant? I have been torn on this issue for a while and have come up with a personal conclusion. Although Lance was on a level playing field with other cyclists of that era he was still breaking the rules and therefore is somewhat deviant. For me this was a hard conclusion to come to because I had always had always labeled Lance Armstrong as someone who was good. I had the idea that Lance never broke the rules and worked hard from the bottom up to earn his success but I was wrong and I had to re-label him.

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=lance+armstrong&FORM=HDRSC2#view=detail&id=8091AB42B4E9B5BAEFFF1A5A5F4F95695A8B0BE7&selectedIndex=36

The way that we as individuals and our society as a whole label different people as deviant has a lot to do with our past. What has happened to us in the past impacts our perspective and outlook on day to day life. No two people have had all of the same experiences and come out the same way. These experiences give us all different outlooks on the world and the people around us.