Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Flashcards covering key vocabulary and concepts from the lecture notes.

Social Adaptation

People have to adjust to many different types of events, traumas, situations, or changes in their life.

Resilience

Patterns of positive adaptation during or following significant adversity or risk.

Developmental standards

May vary across cultures but these broad tasks depend on human capabilities and societal goals that are widely shared across cultures

Normative age-graded influences

Predictable changes that are tied to a person’s age.

Normative history-graded influences

Predictable changes that are tied to a particular historical era or period of time; also called cohort effects or period effects

Cohort

Individuals who have birth years in the same generation; different norms for developmental tasks compared to individuals from other generations

Age norms

Societal expectations for a person’s behavior at a specific age or phase of development.

Non-normative events

Things that do not happen to everyone and are not predictable; can be classified as either risk or protective factors.

Risk Factors

Well-established threats to human developmental and behavioral outcomes.

Culmulative-risk hypothesis

Very few single-risk factors are associated with negative development, rather, the “pile-up” over time of risk factors which are likely to co-occur are what increase the likelihood of negative developmental outcomes; 4+ risk factors increases the chances of a negative outcome exponentially

Protective Factors

Help explain and predict good forms of adaptation in the face of adversity; enhances physical and social functioning

Social functioning

Ability to accomplish the tasks necessary for daily living (e.g., obtaining food, shelter, and transportation) and to fulfill his or her major social roles, as defined by the client’s community or subculture.

Ethnocentrism

The tendency to deem the practices of others as immoral, inappropriate, or inferior based on the values and standard of one’s own community.

Cultural Competence

Professionals needs to be able to work effectively within the context of the cultural beliefs, behaviors, and needs presented by diverse consumers and their communities, including individuals from groups that are marginalized because of religious beliefs, physical disabilities, social class, or sexual orientation.

Globalization

A process by which cultures influence one another and become more alike through trade, immigration, and the exchange of information and ideas.

Temperament

Individual differences in reactivity and self- regulation, influenced over time by heredity and experience

Possibilism

The physical environment offers people a variety of possibilities from which to select ways of using their habitat. The social environment can also limit behavior

Ecological Systems Theory

Recognizes that human beings, like all other living beings, can be understood only in the context of the systems in which they live; includes a holistic view of people

Microsystems

The face-to-face or direct contact among system participants

Mesosystems

The network of personal settings in which we spend our social lives

Exosystems

Any of the systems in which an individual is not directly involved

Macrosystems

The larger subcultural and cultural contexts in which microsystems, meso-systems, and exosystems are located; includes culture, which is a system of meanings and values shared by a population and transmitted to future generations

Crisis Theory

Provides social workers with useful concepts for practice that assist them in understanding how people cope with demands caused by stressful events, extremely stressful events (traumas) and other life circumstances.

Trajectory

A specific path or line of development followed by a person to a specific life outcome, regardless of whether the outcome is positive or negative