A way to encourage conformity to cultural norms.

• A. Social Control
• B. Norms
• C. Informal Norms
• D. Formal Norms

Answer: (A)

Social control is the set of tools a society uses to keep people behaving in ways that fit cultural norms. It includes informal methods like praise, shaming, peer pressure, and family guidance, as well as formal methods such as laws, police, and official sanctions. Norms are the rules people are expected to follow, but they’re the expectations themselves, not the means of enforcing them. Informal norms and formal norms describe different kinds of rules, not the mechanisms that encourage conformity. By shaping behavior through rewards for compliance and penalties for deviation, social control promotes conformity more directly than the norms themselves.