1: General
The systematic or scientific study of human society and social behavior, from large-scale institutions and mass culture to small groups and individual interactions.
What is Sociology?
A procedure for acquiring knowledge that emphasizes collecting concrete data through observation and experimentation.
The entire way of life of a group of people (including both material and nonmaterial elements) that acts as a lens through which one views the world and that is passed from one generation to the next.
What is Culture?
The ongoing discussion of the respective roles of genetics and socialization in determining individual behaviors and traits.
What is the Nature vs. Nurture Debate?
Groups composed of the people who are most important to our sense of self; members' relationships are typically characterized by face-to-face interaction, high levels of cooperation, and intense feelings of belonging.
What are Primary Groups?
A French scientists who was the first credited with applying scientific research to society. Developed the line of thinking of Positivism and coined the term "Sociology".
Who is Auguste Comte?
A way of approaching the world without preconceptions in order to see things in a new way.
What is the Beginner's Mind?
A relationship between variables in which they change together and may or may not be causal.
What is Correlation?
A sense of disorientation that occurs when entering a radically new social or cultural environment.
What is Culture Shock?
The process of learning and internalizing the values, beliefs, and norms of our social group, by which we become functioning members of society.
What is Socialization?
Connections between individuals.
What are Social Ties?
A German political economists who was the inspiration for Conflict Theory and focused on the social inequality between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
Who is Karl Marx?
A quality of the mind that allows us to understand the relationship between our individual circumstances and larger social forces.
What is the sociological imagination?
An inductive method of generating theory from data by creating categories in which to place data and then looking for relationships among categories.
Loosely enforced norms involving common customs, practices, or procedures that ensure smooth social interaction and acceptance.
What are Folkways?
An approach pioneered by Erving Goffman in which social life is analyzed in terms of its similarities to theatrical performance.
What is Dramaturgy?
Social groups whose interactions are mediated through information technologies, particularly the internet.
What are Virtual Communities?
Sociologists from the United States that developed the concept of the sociological imagination.
A denial of the truth on the part of the oppressed when they fail to recognize that the interests of the ruling class are embedded in the dominant ideology.
What is false consciousness?
The accuracy of a question or measurement tool; the degree to which a researcher is measuring what they think they are measuring.
What is Validity?
The idea that language structures thought and that ways of looking at the world are embedded in language.
What is the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis?
Face-to-face interaction or being in the presence of others.
What is Copresence?
A group that provides a standard of comparison against which we evaluate ourselves.
What is a Reference Group?
A sociologist from the United States that was the first African American to earn a PhD from Harvard. Involved in research and social activism relating to race relations, the slave trade, urban ghetto life, and the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement.
Who is WEB Du Bois?
Max Weber's pessimistic description of modern life, in which we are caught in bureaucratic structures that control our lives through rigid rules and rationalization.
What is the Iron Cage?
A specific example of reactivity, in which the desired effect is the result not of the independent variable but of the research itself.
What is the Hawthorne Effect?
Term developed by Antonio Gramsci to describe the cultural aspects of social control, whereby the ideas of the dominant group are accepted by all.
What is Hegemony?
Emotions such as sympathy, embarrassment, or shame that require that we assume the perspective of another person or group and respond accordingly.
What is Role-Taking Emotions?
Leadership concerned with maintaining emotional and relational harmony within the group.
What is Expressive Leadership?
US Sociologist who developed a theory of the self through three stages in childhood: preparatory stage, play stage, and game stage. He also recognized the dialectical or dual nature of the self - meaning the self is both subject and object.
Who is George Herbert Mead?
A set of assumptions, theories, and perspectives that makes up a way of understanding social reality.
What is a Paradigm?
Research methods that rely on existing sources and whereby the researcher does not intrude upon or disturb the social setting or its subjects.
What are Unobtrusive Measures?
Norms that carry great moral significance, are closely related to the core values of a cultural group, and often involve sever repercussions for violators.
What are Mores?
The ability of the individual to act freely and independently.
What is Agency?
Collections of people who share a physical location but do not have lasting social relations.
What are Aggregates?
Amazing Environmental Sociologist that focuses on water scarcity and inequality along with many environmental justice issues.
Who is Joshua Cafferty?