Drinking Status, Labeling, and Social Rejection

Drinking Status, Labeling, and Social Rejection

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.

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 "problem drinker" and "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 perceived.

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 average age of 32.1; this was called the institutionalized client group (IC). All of the men in this group were recovering or recovered alcoholics. (Kilty and Meenaghan, 1977). They were asked to rate a number of fictional people in three behavioral classes--respect, friendship acceptance, and social distance. Also, three other factors were added into the profile of the fictional stimuli. These factors were age, religion, and employment status. Another thing that is added in is the sex of the respondent. This is often a major determinant of the responses given.

The methods employed by the researchers were fairly simple. They built a description of a fictional person in terms of the previously stated personal characteristics and drinking statuses. All of the stimuli were male. There were three factors used in the study. Factor I has to do with the characteristic of respect. After the stimuli had been given, the experimenters would ask about things such as if the respondent of would ask the person for an opinion or if they would admire that person's character. In factor II, friendship acceptance was measured through questions such as would they eat with the person or would they be partners with them in an athletic game. The third and final factor referred to social distance and inquired about things like working with the stimulus or accepting the person as close kin by marriage. All of these factors were used in determining how the subjects perceived the stimuli and if there was an aspect of labeling in their responses (Kilty and Meenaghan, 1977).

There are several examples of different reactions by certain groups in response to certain combinations of stimuli but I am only going to cover a few as a brief summary. In terms of respect, the respondents tended to favor stimuli that were employed. Nondrinkers always got the highest rating but there was a discrepancy between alcoholics and problem drinkers in the institutionalized client group and the other two groups. The IC group rated the alcoholics higher than the problem drinkers, which may be due to the fact that they are all alcoholics. This happens throughout the experiment across all the factors. There is also an interaction between race of respondent and drinking status.