| Question | Answer |
| Status | Generally one’s position or location in a group or social structure |
| Family Status | mother, father, child, grandparent |
| Occupational Status | lawyer, physician, firefighter, computer programmer |
| Achieved Status | A status earned by the individual through his or her own efforts, achievement, or choice. (ex. occupation, education, income, -- ) |
| Ascribed Status | A status that is bestowed upon an individual, regardless of his or her efforts or wishes (Ex. race, age, gender, and ethnicity, appearance, group) |
| Status Symbol | Visible clues to an individuals status ; for example a police officers badge, wedding rings |
| Role | The sum of expectations about the behavior of people who occupy a particular status |
| Role Strain | the stress or tension that may arise from the performance of a role |
| Status inconsistency | occurs when an individual’s ascribed and achieved statuses are deemed (by others) to be inconsistent |
| Role Conflict | the demands of the many roles assigned clash |
| Master Status | the status that other deem most telling about an individual; acts as a filter through which the individual’s actions are judged |
| Group Social | two or more individuals who regularly interact with one another, share goals and a sense of identity |
| Primary Group | term coined by C. H. Cooley to refer to small, intimate group in which relationships tend to be Gemeinschaft |
| Secondary Group | Non-intimate group of people whose relationships tend to be Gesellschaft |
| Formal Organization | Group created and formally organized to achieve some specific goal or set of goals |
| Ideal Types | a methodological strategy made famous by Max Weber. An ideal type is an “analytic construct” (it exists only in the abstract) |
| Bureaucracy | a type of formal organization that is characterized by distinct lines of authority, a hierarchy of positions, record keeping, rules against nepotism, and so forth |
| Iron cage of Bureaucracy | Term used by Weber to refer to situations in which people in organizations became so wrapped up in following rules and procedures that they forget why they work so hard |
| Goal Displacement | when the process becomes more important than the outcome |
