Cognitive Deviance

(these ideas drawn from Goode, 2001-2008 chapter 11. See the disclaimer)

Cognition

• What one believes to be true. One's beliefs, disbelief, guesses, suspicions, and judgments.

• Holding a belief or "knowing" that a given claim is valid, despite the fact the belief is unconventional and non-normative.
• The possessor of deviant beliefs is sanctioned.

Two Ways a Belief Becomes Deviant:

•  Normatively- it violates a dominant belief system
•  Reactively- an audience- adherents are likely to be condemned or punished by mainstream society.

Social rules "not only apply to how one behaves, but in how and what one thinks!"

Deviant Beliefs v. Deviant Behavior: "Pure" cognitive deviance involves beliefs that are unlikely to translate into deviant behavior.

• Although many deviant beliefs are often viewed as strange--even comical, and they may not be associated with threats to significant groups; those who hold deviant beliefs can be stigmatized, isolated, and even destroyed.
• The "essence" of the threat is symbolic-- the belief threatens a world view, or way of thinking about reality
• A belief is deviant only because it is considered wrong and its believers are treated as socially unacceptable.
• Mental disorder and cognitive deviance are empirically related (Mental disorder usually involves thinking that is defined as problematic), but not the same--a variety of other issues surround designations of mental disorder.

The Social Functions of Belief Systems

• We regard some beliefs as conventional, because they are the dominant beliefs embedded in our social institutions and it is our social institutions which sanction deviant beliefs.
• What humans think (about) is rooted in the material and social world, so beliefs arise through our social interactions with others.

Beliefs:

• Spring from social conditions
• Serve social functions
• Have social consequences

"Human consciousness is determined by social existence." (Berger and Luckmann, in Goode). The task of sociology is understand the social context out of which beliefs emerge.

The Sociology of Knowledge

Karl Marx

• 19c. The way we  think at a particular time and place is a reflection of the economic arrangements of the society in which we live. The nature of society's ideational world i.e. art, politics, religion, science and justice system, is determined by economics relations. The most influential ideas are those possessed by the dominant social class.
• "The class which has the means of  material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production."
• Economics is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by economics.
• Dominant Ideology

Max Weber

• Ideas and beliefs may serve many functions aside from their economic interests.
• There is a two-way street between  peoples  beliefs and ideas, and the economic conditions of  their lives. Elective affinity: social conditions make it more or less likely for particular beliefs to be held by members of particular groups.
  • People don't necessarily choose beliefs, rather life conditions make certain beliefs more attractive and acceptable.
  • Great variation possible
  • Religion:
    • Protestant Ethic: Religion can generate ideas that either stimulate or inhibit a certain kinds of economic system.
    • Accept one's fate
    • Religion as a tool of social control: Ecclessiae versus cults and sects.
• Reflexive relationship
• Deviant belief systems serve functions for both the believer and those who condemn the belief.
• Focus on the social strata out of which beliefs emanate, and how believing, as well as condemning, supports the interests and perspectives of these strata.
• With cognitive deviance there is usually two sets of deviants--two sides to the controversy. The deviance is determined by power and survival.

Religious and Deviance

• Religion as deviance: cults, etc.
• Deviance accordingg to religion: normative control
• Deviance within religion: wrongdoing by the clergy (often judged from within)--sexual abuse of children, defying bureaucracy.
• Deviance within a religious body: doctrinal disputes
• Deviance between religios organizations
  
  
• Persons who hold beliefs that challenge dominant theological interpretations have been shunned, condemned and persecuted throughout history.
• " In order alleviate the insanity and terror of finding out all social systems in life have been constructed, it is the task of every religion to legitimate itself through the construction of  a "sacred canopy" and convince its followers  that any challenge is a challenge against the divine itself."

•   7c. Papal Power Play- Islam and European Kings were gaining power.
•   Priest declares, "God wants Christians to fights a war in His name, in His Land, against Muslims and Jews.

The Old Believer's v. Mainstream Russian Orthodox Church (17th Century)

• Both defined each other as deviant due to irrelevant points of faith.
• Old believers not only clung to a rigid interpretation of error-filled religious texts, they also rejected other western cultural influences, as well as the power of the Tsar.
• When the Old Believers failed to recant their faith, thousands were burned or burned themselves in an effort not to make a pact with the "Russian Orthodox Devil."
• Since the winner writes history and the orthodoxy triumphed, its definition prevailed and the "true" devils were burned.

The Persecution of Witches in Renaissance Europe

• During the 1400 - mid 1600s, there was an attempt to destroy pre-Christian faith and consolidate church authority.
• The church demonized witchcraft and defined it as unholy and anti-religious: "Witches are Satan's Puppets, they must be killed for the "good" of  all."
• Women defined as "witches" were purged for the "good" of society and burned for "consorting with the devil".
• Demonic Perspective

  Why scapegoating?

  • Threats to traditional social and moral order.
  • The absolute domination of the Catholic Church was being challenged. Reformation - the separation of the sacred from the profane.
  • These threats called for the creation of a scapegoat, witches, who could be vilified and persecuted in order to firm up the moral boundaries of the society.
  • Rule by  fear was an attempt by the Catholic Church to re-establish its former power, dominance and ascendancy.

        Why Women?

• Women, whose sexuality in a patriarchal society has been demonized for centuries, offered a convenient relatively powerless target
• Division of community.
• When the European society and the Catholic Church learned to adapt to the separation of church and state, the "witch hunt" was discredited and ended in the mid 1600s.

Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Evolution

• Mutual Deviantization
• Creationism versus intelligent design
• Biblical creationism vs God guiding 'traditional" evolution
• Fact of evolution versus the mechanism of evolution ("theory" versus explanation).
• Advocates of natural selection can accept neither, and neither can accept natural selection
• Natural selection--virtually all scientists, 9% of general public
• Struggle for dominance (supernatural versus naturalistic explanations (what can be disproved).
• Beliefs (creationasima nd evolution) correlated with
  • level of education
  • urban-rural residence
  • blue/red state (metro/"retro")
• Victory for one side is utter defeat for the other: classic "deviance.'

• A deviant belief with strong and deep religious roots that surfaced in the 1980s
• Children  are being abused for  satanic "breeding"  purposes
• Although no one has turned up evidence of satanic ritual abuse, lower class, rural, Christian fundamentalists insist this "conspiracy is covered up by the ignorance, fear and complicity of the police"
• Function:  allowed rural, uneducated, Christian fundamentalist to explain the way they seem to be robbed of their birthright, that of holding a comfortable position in society.
• Because the supposed deviants are imaginary, since the behavior never actually took place, the charge is not only false, but also deviant.

Heavens Gate (and cults in general)

• A "cult" that intertwined Christianity, gnosticism and extraterrestrial beliefs.
• In 1997, thirty-nine of  its members committed suicide in an effort to reach  the "Next Level" of existence.  The members believed the Hale-Bopp "taxi" would shed  their earthly containers and they would be reunited with the Divine.
• "The deviant status of this belief system, which is translated into a concrete form of behavior, suicide, is  affirmed by the lack of valorization it was granted in the mainstream institutions and the derision that greets its adherents."
• Cults as "outside" conventional religious traditions--otherness
• Element of "absolutism (both within cults and in the persepctive of critics)
  • "brainwashing
  • Scarifices
• Media and sensationalism

Paranormal Beliefs as Deviant

• How and where the orignate and who believes
  1. Isolated individual (crank) and limited following
  2. Beliefs with traditional religious systems (creationism): like-minded community
  3. Client-practioner: astrology, psychics (professionals and those seeking "service")
  4. Core of researchers--academic: parapsychology
  5. Grassroots: UFOs

Parapsychology

• In a 1996 Newsweek poll, 66% of the respondents defined ESP power as real.
• Worldwide, 3-4 billion people believe in some type of parapsychological powers.

• Telepathy - mind-to-mind communication
• Remote viewing- the ability to "see" or perceive objects from a distance with out the aid of technology or information
• Precognition - seeing the future
• Retrocognition - seeing the past with out the requisite information
• Psychokinesis (PK) - the ability to move physical objects solely with one's mind.
• All or some aspects of these parapsychological powers are known as "psi." In essence, mind-to-matter and mind-to-mind influence or communication.

• Parapsychology researchers conduct scientific investigations of the reality of psi, and examine psi in others.

• No less rigorous and "scientific" than conventional, mainstream psychologists
• Findings would be convincing to most social scientists.
• Form versus the content of science (reliability, disprove, and logical explanation)

• The only thing Parapsychologist can demonstrate is correlation. According to Dr. Radin something is going on in the head that is effecting something in the world.

• What about replication?
• The assumption that forces are consistent throughout the universe is the bedrock of science itself, so parapsychology may never be fully accepted by the general scientific community.

Remote Viewing -1978-87-PEAR experiment- The "percipient ", or remote viewer was asked to describe the physical or geographical state or setting in which an "agent" an individual known to the viewer was located.

So: Taken cumulatively, something is undoubtedly happening. Just what and how awaits a later generation of researchers.

Parapsychology as Deviant Science

• An excellent example because it tends to be condemned or ignored by mainstream science .
• Research in parapsychology can't be published in legitimate scientific journals and there is no professor/graduate training like that which exists for the rest of science.

UFOs Are Real: The Roswell Incident

• How?
• Why?
• The tale that aliens crashed in the desert of Roswell follows stereotypical or folklore structure.
• The themes of  malevolent monster has been embedded for thousands of years: "The cultural hero ( the ufo-ologist) who circumvents the monster and by investigative prowess releases the essential item (wisdom) for humankind" "are truly ubiquitous and geographically widespread"
• Ziegler-Roswell is a folk narrative masquerading as an expose .In addition, Roswell UFO story represents a  "vehicle for social protest against the government. An expression of "antigovernment sentiment" dramatic testimony to ongoing government conspiracies"

• Scientist's place far more emphasis on physical and forensic evidence. (Air Force page)
• So: UFOs @ Roswell is deviant because it is rejected by prestigious media and educational systems as well as other influential mainstream social institutions. Also, adherents are marginalized, depicted as kooks, and stigmatized.

Function of Urban Legends in the African American Community

• the  "Goliath effect" - the big bad guy trying to bully the little person.
• KFC-Liz Claiborne - these urban legends cannot be true literally, but seem plausible to many African Americans because of their history of exploitation and oppression.
• Urban legends assert that white oppression is alive and well and that African Americans resistance to that oppression is  "were not gonna take it".
• The deviant status of urban legends refers to the fact that they lack legitimacy in mainstream institutions

Urban Legends Reference Pages

Thus: Cognitive deviance refers to holding beliefs that relevant audiences consider unacceptable, unconventional, and discrediting.
 

Conflict Theory

Mental Disorder as Deviance

URL: http://www.umsl.edu/~keelr/200/cognitivedev.html
Owner: Robert O. Keel rok@umsl.edu
References and Credits for this Page of Notes
Last Updated: Monday, April 21, 2008 2:30 PM