Term | Definition |
Structural Functionalist | __________ perspectives are based on the assumption that society is a stable, orderly system, much like a machine and each part of the social system contributes to the operation of the whole. |
Conflict Theory | According to the __________ perspective, groups in society are engaged in a continuous power struggle for control of scarce resources. |
make personal troubles public issues. | Using the Sociological Imagination allows us to: |
Altruistic, Egoistic, Anomic, Fatalistic. | Durkheim identified four types of suicide. They are: |
researcher bias. | The use of blind or double-blind investigators in a study is done to avoid: |
secondary analysis. | Sociologists utilizing the Census, the FBI statistics, or statistics from the Department of Labor would be engaged in which type of data collection method? |
deductive | The approach that begins with a theory and uses research to test the theory is called: |
Validity | The study must actually test what it was intended to test. |
median | The midway point in a series of scores or figures resulting in half of the scores being above and half being below is called the: |
material culture | ________ consists of the physical or tangible creations that members of a society make, use, and share. |
nonmaterial culture | Language, beliefs, values, rules of behavior, family patterns, and political systems are examples of: |
A dove, a heart, and a Nazi swastika are all examples of symbols. | An example of a symbol is: |
language differences lead to differences in experience and thought. | According to the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis |
Counterculture | A __________ is a group that strongly rejects dominant societal values and norms and seeks alternative lifestyles. |
relativism | Social scientists do not judge King Mswati III of Swaziland for having 14 wives because an objective research process is guided by cultural ______________. |
socialization | The process of social interaction that teaches the child the intellectual, physical, and social skills needed to function as a member of society. |
looking-glass self | The ________ by Charles Horton Cooley refers to the way in which a person's sense of self is derived from the perceptions of others. |
mass media, school, and the family | Agents of socialization include: |
hidden curriculum | The __________ is the transmission of cultural values and attitudes, such as conformity and obedience to authority through implied demands found in the rules, routines, and regulations of schools. |
preconventional, conventional, and postconventional | Kohlberg's research classified moral reasoning into three sequential levels as follows: |
socialization | The process of social interaction that teaches the child the intellectual, physical, and social skills needed to function as a member of society. |
gender socialization | Throughout childhood and adolescence, boys and girls typically are assigned different household chores and given different privileges (such as how late they may stay out at night). This illustrates __________. |
social interaction | ________ is the process by which people act toward or respond to other people |
achieved status | Being a college professor is a(n): |
role strain | Women who work for less pay, less prestige, and more career roadblocks often experience |
master status | Being a homeless person is a(n): |
ethnomethodology | Coined by Harold Garfinkel, _________ is the study of the commonsense knowledge people use to understand situations. |
Sociology | is the systematic study of human society |
Sociological Perspective | is Sociology’s special points of view that sees general patterns of society in the lives of particular people |
How behavior is shaped by group life
How group life is affected by individuals | Sociologists study societies to develop theories about: |
the sociological imagination | The ability to recognize the relationship between individual experiences and the larger society |
critical thinking skills | Think outside your life/experiences
Look at the world critically
Confront your own biases and prejudices |
industrialization | The process by which societies are transformed from dependence on agriculture and handmade products to dependence on manufacturing industries. |
Urbanization | The process by which an increasing proportion of a population lives in cities rather than rural areas. |
Paradigms | models or frameworks for questions that generate and guide research. |
Structural Functionalism
Conflict Theory
Symbolic Interactionism | The major paradigms in sociology are: |
Structural Functionalism | views society as a system of highly interrelated structures or parts that function or operate together harmoniously. |
August Comte | Considered the “founder of sociology.” |
positivism - Comte’s primary philosophy | a belief that the world can best be understood through scientific inquiry. |
Social Darwinism | The belief that human beings best adapted to their environment survive and prosper, whereas those poorly adapted die out. |
Herbert Spencer | Coined the phrase “survival of the fittest” |
Spencer | viewed society as a system made up of interdependent parts |
Social Facts | Patterned ways of acting, thinking, and feeling that exist outside any one individual but exert social control over each person. |
Anomie | A social condition in which social control becomes ineffective as a result of the loss of shared values and a sense of purpose in society. |
Emile Durkheim | Humans are a product of their social environment. |
Egoistic | suicide stemming from “weak social ties” or the lack of attachments to others. |
Altruistic | suicide stemming from an over-involvement with others or too much group solidarity. |
Anomic | suicide stemming from “feeling disconnected from society's values”, goals and the means to attain goals. |
Fatalistic | suicide stemming from oppressive group action from which there is no escape. |
egoistic, altruistic, anomic, fatalistic | Durkheim's four types of suicide |
Conflict Theory | Each individual or group struggles to attain maximum benefit. This causes society to change constantly in response to social inequality and social conflict. |
Harriet Montineau | Believed society would improve when:
women and men are treated equally
there is racial equality
cooperation exists among all social classes |
Karl Marx | Viewed history as a clash between conflicting ideas and forces.
Believed class conflict produced social change and a better society.
Combined ideas from philosophy, history, and social science into a new theory. |
Karl Marx | “Workers of the world unite!” |
Verstehen | An empathic understanding of others by placing ourselves in their perspective |
Ideal Type | A descriptive conceptual model created to identify the essential elements of features of a social phenomenon or behavior so as to make better comparisons between such elements or features. |
Max Weber | Believed sociological research should exclude personal values and economic interests. |
Symbolic Interactionism | Focuses on how individuals make sense of - or interpret - the social world in which they participate |
Jane Addams | Founded Hull House, one of the most famous settlement houses, in Chicago.
One of the authors of a methodology text used by sociologists for the next forty years.
Awarded Nobel Prize in 1931 for assistance to the underprivileged |
W.E.B. Du Bois | The first African American to receive a PhD from Harvard.
Headed the Sociology program at Atlanta University.
Pointed out that people in the U.S. espouse values of democracy, freedom, and equality while they accept racism and group discrimination |
Research | is the process of systematically collecting information for the purpose of testing an existing theory or generating a new one. |
Quantitative research | focuses on data that can be measured numerically. |
Qualitative research | focuses on interpretive description rather than statistics to analyze underlying meanings and patterns of social relationships. |
steps to the scientific method | define the problem, review previous research, develop one or more hypothesis, determine the research design, define the sample and collect the data, analyze the data and draw conclusions, prepare the research report |
Empirical Question | Can be answered by observing and analyzing the world as it is known |
Operational Definition | A definition of an abstract concept in terms of the observable features that describe the thing being investigated |
Hypothesis | a testable statement of the expected relationship between two or more variables. |
Statement of causality | Something brings about, influences, or changes something else. |
Statement of association | Changes in one thing are related to changes in another but one does not necessarily cause the other. |
Reliability | The findings of the study must be repeatable. |
Sampling | A research technique through which investigators study a manageable number of people, known as the sample, selected from a larger population or group. |
sampling error | Sample must be representative of larger population or there is possible |
Random | Subjects selected so that each individual in the population has an equal chance of being chosen. |
Stratified | Selection from groups to assure certain groups are not under- or overrepresented. |
random and stratified | types of samples |
Analysis | The process through which large and complicated collections of scientific data are organized so that comparisons can be made and conclusions drawn. |
mean, median, mode | three measures of central tendency |
Survey
Participant observation
Experiment
Secondary analysis | Four primary methods of research used by sociologists: |
Cross-sectional study | Research across a population at a given time. |
Longitudinal research | Research that investigates a population over a period of time. |
secondary analysis | The process of making use of data that has been collected by others. |
field research/participant observation | Study of social life in its natural setting.
Observing and interviewing people where they live, work, and play.
Generates observations that are best described verbally rather than numerically. |
experiment | Study the impact of certain variables on subjects’ attitudes or behavior.
Designed to create “real-life” situations.
Used to demonstrate a cause-and-effect relationship between variables. |
Research Bias | The tendency for researchers to select data that support, and to ignore data that seem to go against, their hypotheses |
culture | The knowledge, language, values, customs, and material objects that are passed from person to person and from one generation to the next in a human group or society |
Material culture | Physical or tangible creations that members of a society make, use, and share. |
Nonmaterial culture | Abstract or intangible human creations of society that influence people’s behavior. |
Beliefs | acceptance of conviction that certain things are true |
Ideology | shared beliefs that serve the interests of powerful groups |
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis | Language differences lead to differences in experience and thought |
Values | are culturally defined standards that people use to decide what is desirable, good, and beautiful and that serve as broad guidelines for social living. |
Norms | are rules and expectations by which a society guides the behavior of its members. |
folkways | Everyday customs that may be violated without serious consequences within a particular culture. |
mores | Strongly held norms with moral and ethical connotations that may not be violated without serious consequences. |
Taboos | are mores so strong that violation is considered extremely offensive and even unmentionable |
laws | Formal, standardized norms that have been enacted by legislatures and are enforced by formal sanctions. |
subculture | Category of people who share distinguishing attributes, beliefs, values, and/or norms that set them apart in some significant manner from the dominant culture |
countercultures | Groups that reject dominant societal values and norms and seeks alternative lifestyles. |
culture shock | Refers to the anxiety people experience when they encounter cultures radically different from their own. |
Cultural lag | is a gap between the technical development of a society and its moral and legal institutions |
ethnocentrism | The assumption that one’s own culture is superior to others |
cultural imperialism | The extensive infusion of one nation’s culture into other nations |
cultural relativsm | View and analyze another culture in terms of that culture’s own values and standards |
tabula-rasa | blank slate |
nature (heredity) and nurture (social environment) | each of us is a product of two forces |
George Herbert Mead | The self is divided into “I” and “Me”: |
“I” | portion of the self that wishes to have free expression, to be active & spontaneous |
“Me” | portion of the self made up of those things learned through the socialization process from family, peers, school... |
I, Me | “__” develops first. “__” is formed during three stages of self development |
role taking | Process by which we mentally place ourselves in other people’s shoes and see the world and ourselves from their perspective |
Preparatory Stage (up to age 3) | Children prepare for role-taking by imitating the people around them. |
Play Stage (3 - 5) | Begin to see themselves in relation to others – they formulate role expectations. |
Game Stage (early school years) | Children understand their social position and the positions of those around them. |
preparatory stage, play stage, game stage | Mead's three stages of self development |
Generalized Other | the sum of all cultural expectations and situations that we are asked to navigate in our daily lives |
Charles Horton Cooley | said We imagine how we look to others.
We imagine how other people judge the appearance that we think we present |
Charles Horton Cooley | came up with the idea of the looking-glass self |
Human development occurs in three states that reflect different levels of personality:
Id
Superego
Ego | Sigmund Freud's Theory of Personality |
Sensorimotor stage (birth to age 2)
Preoperational stage (age 2 to 7)
Concrete operational stage (7 to 11)
Formal operational stage (12 and up) | Jean Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development |
Sensorimotor stage (birth to age 2) | children understand the world through sensory contact and immediate action |
Preoperational stage (age 2 to 7) | children begin to use words as symbols and form mental images |
Concrete operational stage (7 to 11) | children think in terms of tangible objects and events |
Formal operational stage (12 and up) | understanding and thinking in abstract terms |
Lawrence Kohlberg | said Every society has a moral order , a shared view of right and wrong, and through socialization individuals learn the moral order particular to their society. |
Preconventional level (7 to 10) | Obedience and punishment - people abide by norms because they are told to by authority figures and because they fear punishment |
Conventional level (10 to adult) | People are concerned with how they are perceived by their peers |
Postconventional level (few adults reach this stage) | Abstract ethical principles are pondered and emphasis is placed on human rights. |
preconventional level, conventional level, postconventional level | Kholberg's Stages of Moral Reasoning |
Stage 1: A female is motivated primarily by selfish concerns.
Stage 2: She recognizes her responsibility to others.
Stage 3: She makes a decision based on a desire to do the greatest good for self and for others. | Carol Gilligan's stages of female moral development |
Gender | the psychological, social, and cultural aspect or meanings associated with maleness and femaleness |
sex | a person’s biological category |
tracking | is the practice of assigning students to specific curriculum groups and courses based on their test scores, previous grades, or other criteria |
social devaluation | a person or group is considered to have less value than other persons or groups |
Social interaction | is the process by which people act toward or respond to other people and is the foundation for all relationships and groups in society |
dramaturgical analysis | The study of social interaction that compares everyday life to a theatrical presentation |
Impression management | People’s efforts to present themselves in ways that are favorable to their own interests or image.
Face-saving behavior
Strategies to rescue our performance when we experience a potential or actual “loss of face.” |
Face-saving behavior | Strategies to rescue our performance when we experience a potential or actual “loss of face.” |
Self-fulfilling prophecy | A false belief or prediction that produces behavior that makes the original false belief come true.
Coined by Robert K. Merton (1910-2003) |
Status | A socially defined position in society characterized by certain expectations, rights, and duties. |
Status Set | all the statuses that a person occupies at a given time. |
Ascribed status | Social position based on attributes over which the individual has little or no control, such as race/ethnicity, age, and sex. |
Achieved status | Social position that a person assumes as a result of personal choice, merit, or direct effort. |
Master status | is the most important status that a person occupies. |
Status symbols | are material signs that inform others of a person’s specific status. |
roles | A set of behavioral expectations associated with a given status. |
Role Expectation | A group or society’s definition of the way a specific role ought to be played. |
Role Performance | How a person actually plays a role. |
Role Conflict | Occurs when incompatible demands are placed on a person by two or more statuses held at the same time. |
Role Strain | Occurs when incompatible demands are built into a single status that the person holds. |
Doubt
Search for alternatives - separation, leave of absence
The turning point - take an action
Creation of a new identity | stages of role exit |
personal space | The immediate area surrounding a person that the person claims as private. |