Drinking Status, Labeling, and Social Rejection Essay -- essays resear

Drinking Status, Labeling, and Social Rejection   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Drinking 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.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  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 someone’s 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 â€Å"problem drinker† and â€Å"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 perc eived.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  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 avera... ... need to be in groups that have more racial and gender diversity. This would deal with a lot of the possible biases that are inherent in the study. It also might be interesting to include race or ethnicity as a description factor of the stimuli to see if that has an effect on the responses. The religions may need to be broadened in order to account for the religious diversity in our country. Although I think that the study is relevant to the topic of labeling, it might be better served in a broader context. However, too much variables would make it too difficult to decide what is causing the responses. There is a thin line between too much and not enough in this situation. I think that this study gives interesting insight into what it might be like to be labeled as an alcoholic in our society and with an updated version, I think it could be very relevant to the study of alcoholism. Reference: All the information in this paper was drawn from the article by Kilty, Keith M. and Meenaghan, Thomas M. out of the Journal of Social Psychology, 1973. The article is entitled Drinking Status, Labeling, and Social Rejection. I also pulled some of the information used from in class lectures.