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Social control is a thing which is identified as existing in the following areas of society, the welfare state, psychiatry, the working environment, policing and the law, and the education system. Informal means of control - Internalisation of norms and values by a process known as socialization, which is defined as "the process by which an individual, born with behavioural potentialities of enormously wide range, is led to develop actual behaviour which is confined to the narrower range of what is acceptable for him by the group standards."

Formal means of social control - External sanctions enforced by government to prevent the establishment of chaos or anomie in society. Some theorists, such as Émile Durkheim, refer to this form of control as regulation.