philosophers

Erving Goffman

Goffman applies theatre concepts to analyze everyday social interactions.

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

A book by Goffman showing how people perform roles and manage impressions in daily life.

Dramaturgical Analysis

The study of social life using theatrical terms (actors

Impression Management

The process of controlling how others perceive you.

Roles and Status

Status = a position you occupy (student

Role = the script or behavior expected for that status.

Sincere Performance

Genuine

Insincere Performance

Pretending or lying to create a false impression.

Cynical Performance

Actor knows the role is fake and distances themselves emotionally.

Sign Equipment/ Sign Vehicles

Anything used to express identity (clothes

Expression Given

What you intentionally present (what you say about yourself).

Expression Given-Off

Unintended clues others pick up (body language

Front Stage

Where the performance happens

behavior meant for the audience (waiter in dining room).

Back Stage

Where performers can relax

Maintaining Face

Keeping up a believable and appropriate performance.

Losing Face

Falling out of character

your performance loses credibility.

Good Team Players

Help teammates maintain their performances and credibility.

Bad Team Players

Disrupt or expose flaws in others performances.

Informers

Reveal backstage secrets in front of the audience (breaks the illusion).

Shills

Secretly assist the performance

Meaning Negotiation

The ongoing process of defining and redefining situations through interaction.

Harold Garfinkel

Garfinkel developed ethnomethodology

Ethnomethodology

The study of the methods people use to understand and produce the social order they live in.

Key Concept of Ethnomethodology

People approach situations with pre-existing expectations that influence how they interpret events and others actions.

Breaching Experiments

A method used by Garfinkel to study social norms by deliberately breaking or ignoring social rules to see how others react.

The Elementary School Teachers Experiment

An experiment where teachers were observed when students or researchers violated normal classroom expectations to see how they responded and tried to restore order.

Peter Berger

A sociologist known for the idea that reality is not fixed but socially constructed.

Social Construction of Reality

The concept that people give meaning to the world through shared social processes

Subjective Reality

The idea that reality is experienced and interpreted differently by each person.

Cultural Beliefs and Values

Shared interpretations of symbols

Ascribed Statuses

Social positions individuals are born into

Social Facts of Culture

Norms

Personal Relationships and Experiences

The influence of personal connections on how we interpret and assign meaning to experiences.

Pre-Held Expectations

Prior beliefs or biases that shape how we interpret new experiences.

Intrinsic Meaning

The concept that phenomena do not have built-in meaning

we assign meaning based on our social environment and personal experiences.

Symbolic Interpretation

The process of assigning meaning to objects

Social Interaction

The process through which individuals give meaning to their experiences and the world around them.

Norms

The unwritten rules that govern social behavior within a culture.

Reality

The state of things as they actually exist

Meaning

The significance or interpretation that individuals assign to experiences or objects based on social context.

Cultural Symbols

Objects or actions that carry specific meanings within a culture.

Social Environment

The surrounding context

Interpretation

The act of explaining or assigning meaning to an experience or phenomenon.

Experience

The personal involvement or encounter with events that shape an individual's understanding of reality.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

A belief or expectation that influences behavior

Looking-Glass Self Theory

Cooley believed that our sense of self is formed through social interaction.

The Looking-Glass Self

Cooley said the development of the self happens in three steps: We imagine how we appear to others

Other-Directed Individuals

Very aware of others' opinions and influenced by social approval

their self-image depends heavily on external feedback.

Inner-Directed Individuals

Guided more by internal values and personal beliefs than others' opinions

less affected by outside judgements.

The Social Self

Mead believed the self develops through social interaction.

The I

The spontaneous

The Me

The reflective

Preverbal Stage

Before language

this is the foundation for later social understanding.

Play Stage

Children begin to take the role of significant others (like parents or teachers).

Game Stage

Children learn to take the role of multiple others at once and understand rules.

The Generalized Other

The awareness of the shared expectations

Sigmund Freud

The Father of Psychology

Id

The instinctual part of the mind that seeks immediate gratification of basic desires and drives.

Ego

The rational part of the psyche that balances the demands of the id and the superego.

Superego

The moral part of the psyche that represents society's norms

Eros

The life instinct - the desire to reproduce

Sublimation

Redirecting instinctual or erotic energy into productive

Social Structure

A stable pattern of interactions and relationships that organize society.

Functional

Contributing to balance

Dysfunctional

Diminishing or detracting from balance

Manifest Functions

Overt

Latent Functions

Obscure