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90 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Sociology
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The science which aims at the interpretative understanding of social behavior...in order to gain an explanation of its causes, course, and its effects.
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Sociologist's line of questioning
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1. Factual (What happened?)
2. Comparative (Did this happen everywhere?) 3. Developmental (Happened over time?) 4. Theoretical (Why does this occur?) |
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Microsociological
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Study of everyday behavior in situations of face-to-face interaction
(how people act) |
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Macrosociological
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Analysis of large-scale social systems (ex. political, economic order)
(how we got to this point) |
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Aggregates
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Individuals' stories serve understanding of the collective
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Variables
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Meaningful attributes/characteristics of persons that vary person to person
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Empirical
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Based on actual observation; must make sense
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Science
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Use of systematic methods of empirical investigation, analysis of data, theoretical thinking, and logical assessment of arguments to develop a body of knowledge about a particular subject matter
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Is sociology a science?
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1. Human behavior is remarkably difficult to predict
2. The options afforded humans > options afforded to animals 3. Explaining human action is often as difficult as predicting it |
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Reductionism
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Tendency to suggest our actions are "nothing but..." biological urges, genetic tendencies, simple desires, behaviorism (stimulus/response)
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Second-order desires
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Ability to reflect upon and evaluate our own evaluations
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Society is not based on reason
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1. Collective action/contracts are not rational
2. Marriage is hardly rational... 3. Rational people v. policies disagree |
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Collective action
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What's the most rational strategy? (AKA freeloading)
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Common errors in scientific inquiry
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1. Inaccurate observations (solution: make observation deliberate)
2. Selective observation (solution: wider, random sample) 3. Overgeneralization (solution: larger, random sample, replication) |
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Traditional scientific method
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1. Theory: how we believe some process works
2. Operationalization: specifying how one intends to carry out research 3. Observation and analysis |
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Research questions
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Specific questions we ask mentally about relationships among concepts
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Hypothesis
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Specified testable expectation about empirical reality...that follows from a more general proposition or research question
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Survey
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+: Useful in describing the characteristics of a large population, flexible (many questions/topics), very good reliability
-: Mediocre validity, standardization, superficial in coverage of complex topics, cannot measure action (only recall), opinions seldom take survey form |
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Types of qualitative research
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1. Interview
2. Focus group 3. Ethnography |
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Interview
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Setting for purposeful interaction...in which the interviewer has a general plan of inquiry...and intends to discuss topics in depth
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Focus group
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Group of subjects interviewed together, prompting a discussion
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Ethnography
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Study that focuses on detailed and accurate description rather than explanation
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Values
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Principles or ideals concerning what is intrinsically desirable
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Norms
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Expectations or rules of behavior that develop from a group's values
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Sanctions
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Reactions to adhering to or breaking norms
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Culture
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Languages, beliefs, values, norms, behaviors, and material objects passed from one generation to the next (AKA operating system) ..... NOT STATIC: norms/values change, do not evolve b/c values do not evolve, languages develop
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Identity cues
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Cultural cues given off on purpose that say "this is what I'm about...I'm cool"
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Scripts
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Powerful nonmaterial part of culture: help shape our actions/words
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Subculture
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World/culture w/in larger world of dominant culture
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Countercultures
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Where a group's values and norms place it at distinct odds with the dominant culture
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Changing other people is difficult because...
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...because of structured nature of social relations
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Social structures
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Enduring patterns of norms, cognitive frameworks, behaviors, and relationships w/in social systems...such that these constrain the behavior of actors w/in these social systems (firm but flexible, semi-permeable, not rigid)
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Macrostructure
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A "second level" structure, a pattern of relations between objects that have their own structure (ex. patterned social class expectations)
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Microstructure
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Pattern of relations between the most basic elements of social life (ex. human interaction)
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Socialization
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Process of learning norms, values, and behavior patterns transmitted by social groups
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Cognitive structures
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Conceptual dimensions on which we scale our experience...allow comparison of one experience to another...render events/occurrences meaningful, organize experience, and guide action
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Eastern mind
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1. Eastern/Hebrew origin
2. Oral tradition 3. Action, experience, story 4. Past and future 5. Ascribed status / kin 6. The group |
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Western mind
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1. Western/Greek origin
2. Written tradition 3. Reason and argument 4. The present 5. Achieved status 6. The individual |
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Resocialization
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Learning new norms, values, attitudes, and behaviors to match a new situation in life...discarding former behavior patterns and accepting new ones as part of a transition in one's life
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Cognitive restructuring
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When presented with a problem that requires organizing principles at a higher level of conceptual complexity, a new organization of cognitive structures are needed
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Assimilation (Piaget)
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Fitting new experiences into existing cognitive structures
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Accomodation (Piaget)
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Changing existing cognitive structures to fit new experiences
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Developmental socialization
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Process of learning behavior in a social institution or developing your social skills (ex. Kindergarten, college, TAs)
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Anticipatory socialization
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Process of socialization in which a person "rehearses" for future positions, occupations, and social relationships
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Cognitive development
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Involves change in how a person knows, thinks, and believes
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Stages of development (Piaget)
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1. Sensorimotor (to age 2): direct contact w/environment
2. Preoperational (2-7): ability to use symbols; lack size, speed, causation 3. Concrete operational (7-12): take on the role of the other 4. Formal operational (12+): development of abstract thinking ability |
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Feral children and socialization
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The longer the isolation, the more difficult it is to overcome its effects...there seems to be a period prior to 13 in which language and human bonding must occur for humans to develop higher intelligence and the ability to be sociable and follow norms
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Moral socialization
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All children are born with some capacity to care about others, but the trait takes time to mature
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Socialization of emotions
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1. Gendered emotions
2. Class-based emotions 3. Risk |
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Social construction of reality
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1. If people define situations as real, then they are real in their consequences.
2. Behavior often hinges on our socialized subjective interpretations of situations, not on some objective "reality" 3. From our primary groups, we learn specific ways of looking at life 4. There is no strong "foundationalism" |
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Dark side of socialization
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Harmful social behavior, gross wrongdoing, is seldom the product of psychopathic people...but rather ordinary people
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"The Good German"
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People who observe reprehensible things take place but remain silent
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"The Banality of Evil"
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Banal: commonplace, lacking originality or novelty
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Milgram experiment
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A series of seminal social psychology experiments conducted by Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience
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Moral hazard
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A party insulated from risk behaves differently from the way it would behave if it were fully exposed to the risk...leaving another party to bear responsibility for the consequences
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Conformity
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Process by which people's beliefs or behaviors are influenced by others w/in a group (factors: group size, unanimity, cohesion, public opinion)
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Looking-glass self
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We need something outside ourselves to tell us who we are:
1. We imagine how we appear to those around us. 2. We interpret others' reactions. 3. We develop a self-concept. 4. We live in consonance with the self-concept. |
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Dissociation from the bottom up
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Influence tends to flow from "above" to "below"
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George Mead
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The internalization of the perspective of others forms only one part of our personality; we also have the ability to reflect upon and react to these expectations, to attempt to defy/accept them (second-order desires)
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Social desirability
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Tendency to want to make oneself appear better than one actually is (self-deception: inaccurate but honest held descriptions of self, and other-deception: tendency to give more favorable self-descriptions to a researcher)
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Impression management
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Our socialized stage performance
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Front stage v. back stage behavior
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1. Faking it?
2. Face-saving behavior 3. Widely tolerated distinction Protecting: an image, self-esteem, the truth about ourselves, vulnerability, etc. |
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Narrative
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Form of communications that arranges human actions/events into organized wholes...in a way that bestows meaning by specifying their interactive or cause-and-effect relations to the whole (sets of characters, plots, points)
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Moral
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Orientation toward what is right/wrong, good/bad, un/worthy, un/just...that is not established by our decisions or preferences but exists apart from them...providing standards by which our decisions and preferences can be judged
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Order
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Prevailing course or arrangement of things; established system
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Key motivator of human action
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To act out and sustain moral order, which helps make life significant
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Anti-reductionism
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In order to make sense of life, meaning, the world, suffering, happiness, etc., we look outside these things for a framework of understanding
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Roles
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Expectations attached to a script
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Role inconsistency
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Occurs when expectations contradict each other, often the result of competing scripts and moral orders
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Hierarchy of salience
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When roles (and scripts) are incompatible, which role is more important?
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History
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Story of struggle with the moral orders people inhabit and enact
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Plausibility structures
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Group or community which provides the social and psychological support for the belief...directly related to degree to which a dis/belief seems convincing
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Legitimization
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Process by which an act, process, or ideology becomes legitimate (authorized) by its attachment to norms and values shared by a given social group...the process of making something acceptable and normative to a group
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Law
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Codified norms that we collectively agree to abide by
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"Horizons of Significance"
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Value systems of the community of origin...even rejected stories play a prominent role in life
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Institutions
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Structured mechanisms of social order governing social behavior...defined with a purpose and permanence...transcending the individual (emerge from formal organizations)
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Institutional frameworks
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Lenses through which institutions see the world and make sense of it, to act as guides to action...suggests "how to do something"
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Institutionalization
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Process of making something (ex. concept, social role, particular values and norms, or ways of behaving) become embedded w/in a social system as an established custom or norm w/in that system...subsumed under social control
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Social constructions
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Artifacts of a particular time, culture, and society, produced by collective human choice (though not directly by individual intention)
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Organizations
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Planned, coordinated, and purposeful actions of human beings to construct or compile common in/tangible products or services...framed by formal membership and form (rules)
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Iron law of oligarchy
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Organizations come to be dominated by a self-perpetuating elite:
1. Membership is passive 2. Power circulates among a few 3. Evolution from original purpose to survival |
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Bureaucracy
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1. Clear levels of authority
2. Divisions of labor 3. Written rules 4. Written communication and records 5. Impersonality: the position is what matters Max Weber: "Obliteration by incorporation" |
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Pros and cons of bureaucracy
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1. Brings efficiency, but heightens rule dependency
2. Brings standardization, but diminishes interest in unique experiences 3. Fosters alienation from our product, but contributes to resistance by the formation of primary groups |
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Out-groups
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Groups you define yourself against
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Reference groups
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Groups used as standards by which we evaluate ourselves
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Homophily
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Tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others
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Social network theory
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The attributes of individuals are less important than their relationships and ties with other actors w/in the network
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Dyad
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1. Smallest possible group
2. Most intense and intimate 3. Most unstable |
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Triad
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1. Interaction between nodes decreases
2. Strength and stability increase 3. Can witness coalitions, produce mediators |
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Groupthink
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Collective tunnel vision that group members sometimes develop: unity of thought and attitude, criticism or alternatives = disloyalty to the group (+: marketing, product sales; -: can be dangerous)
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