Sanctions and Deviance: Evidence and Remaining Questions

The last few years have witnessed a resurgence of interest among social scientists in the possible effects of negative sanctions in producing conformity to norms. During the first half of this century deterrence ideas were often the object of debate and research. Debate, however, was usually conducted on an ideological level, and the extant research generally suggested that punishment was of minor importance as a behavioral influence (Ball, 1955; Tappan, 1960: 243-255). As a result, many social scientists came to regard the question as either theoretically uninteresting or as empirically non-problematic.