1. Describe an occasion in which you were caught engaged in a primary deviant act and thus was labeled a deviant. When I was in 3rd grade, a long long time ago, I was trying to stop a first grader from pulling the fire alarm at the grade school I went to. Just as I was telling him to stop, a teacher came around the corner and he pulled the alarm. The teacher thought I was helping him pull the alarm.
2. What were the effects of this label? Well my parents were called and I was sent to the principal's office. No one would believe me about trying to stop the first grader.

a. How did it affect your self-identity? For a long time, I was afraid of fire alarms and fire trucks, because the fire department responded.
b. How did it affect how you were treated by others? Other students would tease me if I was too close to a fire alarm station.
c. Did this labeling increase, decrease or have no obvious effect on your deviant behavior? I never pulled an alarm on my own, and ended up becoming a firefighter as an adult for over 20 years.

3. Explain how these effects are an example of secondary deviance. Once the alarm was pulled and the teacher thought I had done it, I was immediately labeled as a deviant. Even though I was not at fault. I was chastised by teachers and teased by other students. Fortunately at that age, things do not get remembered for very long and I was not treated as such after a few weeks or months.