Intro to Soci Quiz 1

Sociology

Scientific and systematic study of groups and group interactions, societies, and social interactions, from small groups to large groups. A group of people who live in a defined geographic area, who interact with each other and share common culture is a society. 

Culture

Culture- the values beliefs, norms, language, and practices of a group 

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**The Sociological Imaginatio**n

Sociology is the scientific study of the connection between the individual and social structure

3 levels of study

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* Micro (individual), Meso (organizational), and Macro (societal)

Positivism

The study of different social cultures

Looking-Glass Self

that individuals compare themselves to others in order to check themselves against social standards and remain part of the group.

Social Solidarity

the social ties that bind a group of people together such as kinship, shared location, and religion

Grand Theories

attempt to explain large-scale relationships and answer fundamental questions such as why societies form and why they change. Sociological

Structural Functionalism

The way each part of society functions together to contribute to the functioning of the whole.

Conflict Theory

a theory that looks at society as a competition for limited resources

symbolic interactionism

a theoretical perspective through which scholars examine the relationship of individuals within their society by studying their communication (language and symbols)

Manifest Functions

the consequences of a social process that are sought or anticipated

Latent Functions

are the unsought consequences of a social process.

Constructivism

an extension of symbolic interaction theory which proposes that reality is what humans cognitively construct it to be. We develop social constructs based on interactions with others, and those constructs that last over time are those that have meanings which are widely agreed-upon or generally accepted by most within the society. This

Doll Test

Kenneth and Mamie Clark, as evidence that segregation generates in minority students a feeling of inferiority. In the ‘**doll test**,’ for example, the Clarks showed children four dolls, two with white skin and yellow hair and two with brown skin and black hair. When asked which **doll** they preferred, the majority of Black children chose the **doll** with the light skin **doll**, and they assigned positive characteristics to it. Most of the Black children discarded the **doll** with the brown skin—the one that had a closer resemblance to themselves.

When asked to choose the doll that looked like them, many children left the room, started to cry, and/or became depressed. The Clarks’ research contributed to the Supreme Court’s conclusion that separate but equal was damaging to students, and that separate facilities are unequal.

Emile Durkheim

* __Functionalist Paradigm__
* Social cohesion or trust 
* Compared ancient and modern societies to study change 
* From solidarity based on similarity. Solidarity based on difference and interdependence. His objective was to demonstrate the moral foundations of modern society. He wanted to look at morals of past society and seeing how it affects modern society. 
* Helped establish sociology as a discipline. Contrasted sociology with economists and philosophers. Rebutting the idea of the “social contract”. 
* people are born in families, they live in communities as part of larger entities, not the state of nature. Humans are social beings, not isolated individuals in a hypothetical state of nature. 
* Claims an economic contract exists. Where someone agrees to work for a day and another agrees to pay them for that work. Needs two agreements, the agreement to work/pay and the agreement to uphold the agreement. 

Must have pre-contractual solidarity or trust in the other

Max Weber

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* Conflict Paradigm 
* How conflict in the radical protestants and roman catholic church led to change. 
* Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Focuses on religion(not economics) and how it shapes social change. Focuses on conflict and symbolic interactionist paradigms. 
* __**Weber Thesis**__- Did religion, in the form of ascetic protestantism, play a strategic role in the emergence of modern Western capitalism. 
* Evidence- correlation between areas of economic growth and protestantism. Key cities that shown this: Genoa, Antwerp (then amsterdam), and (later) London. 
* Weber visits US in 1904 and he reads Ben Franklin’s books hints to those that would be right and advice to a young tradesman. Franklin’s ethic: individual pursuit of walth is moral which was similar to Calvinism. 
* Said drive for economic gain: insufficient to explaining modern capitalism. Wants to focus on methodical attitude (radical protestants) 
* Asceticism shows that accruing wealth was pleasing to God. This led to modern capitalism as an unintended consequence of said teachings. 
* Capitalism was a consequence of religion but capitalism didn’t need religion to continue 

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W.E.B DuBois

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* Draws on both functionalism and social conflict approaches to Religion
* Key writing: “ __The Black Church”__. Focuses on the church the building as a worship space, community center, club house, and meeting space. Focuses on the church congregation where the pastor is central to the life of the church and the community
* __Emotion in religious experience  is central__
* __Music in Religious Services__. The triadic structure of black relgion: world, music, and the encounter with the spirit.  
* Inherent Dignity of a Human Being
* Would God or the Spirit visit a body that wasn’t worthy? The black church affirms the dignity of Black Americans in body and soul
* Functionalism: The black church was a refuge during slavery and maintained solidarity post-emancipation. 
* Conflict: The black church was a product of slavery. Opposition to slavery. Crucial to liberation and later the Civil rights movements. 

Surveys

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* Set of questions subjects respond to 
* Strengths: Relatively quick and cheap, can be done online or by phone or in person or by mail. Can get lots of data from many people 
* Weaknesses: May be hard to get people to respond. Wording issues. 

Participant Observation

, in which researchers join people and participate in a group’s routine activities for the purpose of observing them within that context. This method lets researchers experience a specific aspect of social life. A researcher might go to great lengths to get a firsthand look into a trend, institution, or behavior.

* Strengths: Get detailed information about how people act in certain contexts. Personal understanding of what it feels like to take part in that social world.
* Weaknesses: Can be time-consuming and expensive. Can only study small numbers of people. Objectivity vs. subjectivity.

Historical Analysis

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* Use existing sources
* Strengths- Can look for patterns or themes that might not be evident otherwise. Show how a topic is presented in the media. Study issues in the past through historical records
* Weakness: can’t control the quality of the data

Content Analysis

* Starts with a question. 
* Does religious competition increase or decrease religious belief and participation?
* A study done from 1855 to 1865, found that religious pluralism is positively correlated with religious participation. Unregulated religious competition results in higher rates of participation.  
* A scholar analyzed the same data and demonstrated Finke et al. Switched a sign. The positive correlation reported was in fact a negative correlation. 

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* Cause and Effects 
* Probability: 
* Likelihood of an event or outcome 
* Exceptions exist

Confirmation Bias

While prejudice is based in beliefs outside of experience, experience can lead people to feel that their prejudice is confirmed or justified.For example, if someone is taught to believe that a certain ethnic group has negative attributes, every negative act committed someone in that group can be seen as confirming the prejudice. Even a minor social offense committed by a member of the ethnic group, like crossing the street outside the crosswalk or talking too loudly on a bus, could confirm the prejudice.

Nuremberg Code

is a set of ethical research principles for human experimentation created by the court in *U.S. v Brandt*, one of the Subsequent Nuremberg trials that were held after the Second World War.

Though it was articulated as part of the court's verdict in the trial, the Code would later become significant beyond its original context; in a review written on the 50th anniversary of the *Brandt* verdict, Jay Katz writes that "a careful reading of the judgment suggests that \[the authors\] wrote the Code for the practice of human experimentation whenever it is being conducted."\[1\]

Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment 

This study was conducted 1932 in Macon County, Alabama, and included 600 African American men, including 399 diagnosed with **syphilis**. The participants were told they were diagnosed with a disease of “bad blood.” Penicillin was distributed in the 1940s as the cure for the disease, but unfortunately, the African American men were not given the treatment because the objective of the study was to see “how untreated **syphilis** would affect the African American male” (Caplan, 2007)

Informed Consent

They must first and foremost guarantee the safety of their participants. Whenever possible, they must ensure that participants have been fully **informed** of any and all possibilities before treatment.

Quantitative Data

Numerical information collected in a study that can be measured and analyzed. Examples include age, height, weight, and test scores.

Qualitative Data

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Data that is non-numerical in nature, such as words, images, or observations. It provides a deeper understanding of people's experiences, attitudes, and behaviors.

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co-variation

attribution theory in which people make causal inferences to explain why other people and ourselves behave in a certain way. It is concerned with both social perception and self-perception

Population

a defined group serving as the subject of a study

Hypothesis

a testable educated guess about predicted outcomes between two or more variables

Operationalization

he process of turning abstract concepts or ideas into observable and measurable phenomena. This process is often used in the social sciences to quantify vague or intangible concepts and study them more effectively.

Unit of Analysis

individuals, groups, social interactions, organizations and institutions, and social and cultural artifacts

sampling

the process by which a researcher takes a smaller group from the target population she/he is interested in studying. 

Nonresponse Bias

 occurs when survey participants are unwilling or unable to respond to a survey question or an entire survey. Reasons for nonresponse vary from person to person. To be considered a form of bias a source of error must be systematic in nature.

Social Desirability Bias

a type of response bias that occurs when survey respondents provide answers according to society's expectations, rather than their own beliefs or experiences

Cultural Universals

Shared beliefs, values, and practices found in all societies, regardless of their cultural differences. They include concepts like family, language, religion, art, music, and social institutions. Cultural universals help to understand the commonalities among diverse cultures and highlight the fundamental aspects of human societies.

Ethnocentrism

The belief that one's own cultural group is superior to others, leading to the evaluation of other cultures based on one's own cultural standards.

Xenocentrism

The belief that foreign cultures are superior to one's own

Culture Shock

The disorientation and discomfort experienced when encountering a new culture, customs, and social norms different from one's own. It includes feelings of confusion, frustration, and homesickness.

Cultural Relativism

The belief that all cultural practices and beliefs should be understood and evaluated within their own cultural context, without imposing one's own values or judgments.

Social Control

a way to encourage conformity to cultural norms

Breaching Experiment

in which the researcher behaves in a socially awkward manner in order to test the sociological concepts of social norms and conformity. The participants are not aware an **experiment** is in progress, but their response is recorded. For example, if the experimenter is, say, a man in a business suit, and he skips down the sidewalk or hops on one foot, a passersby is likely to stare at him with surprised expressions. But the experimenter does not simply “act weird” in public. Rather, the point is to deviate from a specific social norm in a small way, to subtly break some form of social etiquette, and see what happens.

mores

are norms that embody the moral views and principles of a group. They often have a religious foundation. Violating them can have serious consequences.

Folkways

are norms without any moral underpinnings. direct appropriate behavior in the day-to-day practices and expressions of a culture. We can think of them as ‘traditions’—things we do because we ‘always have.’

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

It is based on the idea that people experience their world through their language, and therefore understand their world through the cultural meanings embedded in their language. The **hypothesis** suggests that language shapes thought and thus behavior (Swoyer, 2003). For example, words have attached meanings beyond their definition that can influence thought and behavior. In the U.S. where the number thirteen is associated with bad luck, many high-rise buildings do not have a 13th floor. In Japan, however, the number four is considered unlucky, since it is pronounced similarly to the Japanese word for “death.”

culture lag

refers to the time that passes between the introduction of a new item of material **culture** and its social acceptance.