Sociology Exam #1 Vocabulary Flashcards

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering all core definitions, theoretical perspectives, founding sociologists, norms, and research methods from Exam #1 review material.

Sociology

The scientific study of society and of how people shape—and are shaped by—social life.

Micro Sociology

The branch of sociology that studies individuals and small-group interaction.

Macro Sociology

The branch of sociology that studies institutions, large groups, and society-wide patterns.

Sociological Imagination

C. Wright Mills's ability to connect biography with history and social structure: seeing how private troubles may reflect public issues.

Human Agency

People's capacity to make choices and to create, maintain, or change society, even though culture and structure influence their options.

Social Structure

Society's organized framework of institutions, statuses, roles, groups, and patterned relationships; it enables cooperation but also limits choices.

Culture

A group's shared way of life: beliefs, values, norms, symbols, language, traditions, and material objects.

Institution

An enduring set of statuses and roles organized around a basic social need, such as family, religion, economy, education, government, health care, or media.

Impression Management

Goffman's term for controlling physical, verbal, visual, and gestural cues to influence how other people judge us.

Socialization

The lifelong process through which people learn and transmit their society's culture, roles, norms, and values and develop a social self.

Manifest Functions

Intended and recognized consequences of a social pattern or institution, such as a school teaching knowledge and skills.

Latent Functions

Unintended or less visible consequences of a social pattern or institution, such as a school creating friendships and networks.

False Consciousness

In Marxist conflict theory, workers' failure to recognize their shared interests and exploitation, often accepting ideas that favor owners.

Class Consciousness

Workers' awareness of their common class position, interests, and exploitation, which can support collective action and change.

Objectivity

Evaluating evidence as fairly as possible in sociological research.

Value Neutrality

Keeping personal moral or political commitments from controlling data collection, analysis, and reporting.

Sampling

Selecting a smaller group from a population to study, through methods such as random, stratified, cluster, or purposive sampling.

Anomie

Durkheim's term for weakened or unclear social norms, often during rapid change, that can produce disorganization and disconnection.

Primary Group

A small, intimate, and emotionally close group, such as a family.

Secondary Group

A larger, more impersonal group organized around a task or goal, such as a class or workplace.

Ethnocentrism

Judging another culture by the standards of one's own culture and assuming one's own way is normal or superior.

Multiculturalism

Recognition, inclusion, and respect for multiple cultural groups and their contributions within the same society.

Ascribed Status

A social position assigned at birth or received involuntarily, such as age, race, or family background.

Achieved Status

A social position gained through choice, effort, or action, such as graduate, athlete, parent, or employee.

Master Status

A status that becomes especially important and strongly shapes how others identify and respond to a person.

Labeling Theory

The interactionist idea that labels applied by others can shape identity, treatment, opportunities, and later behavior.

Dramaturgy

Goffman's view of social interaction as theater, where people perform roles before audiences using scripts, props, and front-stage/back-stage settings.

Roles

Expected behaviors, duties, and rights attached to a status.

Beliefs

Ideas people accept as true about how the world works.

Values

Shared judgments about what is good or bad, right or wrong, and desirable or undesirable.

Norms

Rules and expectations for behavior, categorized into types such as folkways, laws, mores, and taboos.

Symbols

Words, gestures, images, numbers, or objects that carry meanings shared by members of a culture.

Sanctions

Positive or negative social responses that reward conformity to norms or punish violations.

Looking-Glass Self

Cooley's idea that the self develops as we imagine how we appear to others, interpret their reactions, and form self-judgments from those imagined evaluations.

Auguste Comte

Sociologist who named sociology and argued that scientific knowledge could guide society through change.

W. E. B. Du Bois

Sociologist who used rigorous empirical research to challenge racism, joined scholarship with civil-rights action, and helped found the NAACP.

Jane Addams

Sociologist who used community research and settlement work to promote reform and helped found the NAACP and ACLU.

C. Wright Mills

Sociologist who developed the sociological imagination and connected biography, history, and social structure.

Émile Durkheim

Major functionalist who studied solidarity, social order, institutions, and anomie.

Talcott Parsons

Functionalist who described society as an overarching system of interdependent parts.

Robert Merton

Sociologist who distinguished manifest functions, latent functions, and dysfunctions.

Karl Marx

Founder of the conflict perspective who analyzed capitalism, class struggle, the bourgeoisie and proletariat, and class consciousness.

Max Weber

Sociologist who helped develop conflict sociology by broadening the study of power and inequality beyond ownership alone.

George H. Mead

Founder of symbolic interactionism who emphasized socialization and development of the social self.

Charles H. Cooley

Interactionist who developed the concept of the looking-glass self.

Erving Goffman

Sociologist who developed dramaturgy and impression management.

Albion Small

Sociologist who founded the first accredited U.S. sociology department at the University of Chicago and linked knowledge with action.

Folkways

Everyday customs with mild sanctions, such as facing forward in an elevator or using table manners.

Laws

Formally written norms enforced by the state, such as stopping at a red light.

Mores

Norms with strong moral importance and serious disapproval for violations, such as prohibitions against cheating or deliberate harm.

Taboos

The strongest prohibitions—acts a society considers deeply offensive or unthinkable.

Independent Variable

In sociological research, the variable that is considered the presumed cause.

Dependent Variable

In sociological research, the variable that is considered the measured outcome.

Validity

A measure of research quality that asks whether a metric captures what it claims to capture.

Reliability

A measure of research quality that asks whether a metric gives consistent results.

Experiments

A research source/method designed to test relationships under controlled conditions.

Field Studies

Observing people in natural settings through detached observation, participant observation, or ethnography.

Interviews

Gathering detailed responses directly from participants.

Surveys

Collecting standardized answers from a sample, sometimes using a Likert scale.

Secondary Analysis

Analyzing existing sources, including statistics, historical records, documents, and media content.

Number Laundering

The process through which a number of uncertain origin gains authority simply because it is repeated and its origin is forgotten.

Structural Functionalism

A macro-level sociological theory that views society as a system of interdependent parts promoting order, solidarity, stability, and equilibrium.

Conflict Theory

A macro-level sociological theory that views groups as competing over power and scarce rewards, where inequality benefits some and disadvantages others.

Symbolic Interactionism

A micro-level sociological theory focusing on how people create meanings, identities, norms, and culture through interaction and symbols.