SOCY230 Exam 3 Review

Power (Weber)

A person’s ability to exercise his or her will even against the resistance of others

Status

The social evaluation or ranking assigned to a position in a group indicating its prestige, importance, or value

Status Characteristic

Any property of a person around which expectations and beliefs about the person come to be organized

Status Characteristic Theory

Observable status characteristics → Expectation states (expectations for the performances of self and others) → Behavioral inequalities

Status Characteristics Theory’s Self Fulfilling Prophecy

High status members are evaluated as more competent simply because they are high status

Salience Assumption

A characteristic is salient if it differentiates among group members

Specific Status Characteristics

Socially valued skills or expertise that imply a specific and limited range of competencies

Diffuse Status Characteristics

General Attributes that group members believe to be relevant to ability and performance; they carry expectations that are unbounded in range

Burden of Proof Assumption

All salient status characteristics will be treated as relevant unless they are specifically disassociated from the task

Principle of Aggregated Expectations

When more than one characteristic is relevant, the effects of different characteristics will be aggregated together

Basic Expectation Assumption

A group member’s rank in the status hierarchy relative to another’s will be a direct function of that member’s expectation advantage over that other in the situation

“The Distribution of Power in Exchange Networks,” Cook et al. 1983

Determined that power rests in the ability to exclude others from resources they desire

Richard Emerson on the Power-Dependence Theory

Power lies in the relationships between people, not within people themselves

Attribution

The process through which an observer infers the cause of some behavior

Dispositional Attributions

Internal attributions; Attributing a behavior to the internal states of the person who performed it

Situational Attributions

External attributions; Attributing a behavior to factors in the person’s environment

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to overestimate the importance of personal (dispositional) factors and to underestimate situational influences in the causes of behavior

Actor-Observer Difference

Observers tend to attribute the behavior of others to internal characteristics but their own behavior as due to characteristics of the external situation

Self-Serving Bias

The tendency for people to take personal credit for acts that yield positive outcomes and to deflect blame for bad outcomes, attributing them to external causes

Naïve Scientist

Attempts people make to understand human behavior

Self-Schema

Also known as self-concept; the organized structure of information that people have about themselves

Self-Awareness

A state in which we take the self as the object of our attention and focus on our own appearance, actions, and thoughts

Self-Esteem

The evaluative component of the self-concept; The positive and negative evaluations people have of themselves

Self-Handicapping

Individuals selecting actions that they know might harm their future performances so that they can later use the actions as excuses

Significant Symbols

Gestures that have a shared meaning

Mind

The capacity to use other’s gestures to select appropriate behaviors; ___ is a behavior

Taking the Role of the Other

Being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and imagine their perspective

Social Behaviorism

Humans don’t only react to stimuli, they interpret them

The Looking Glass Self

Other people represent a mirror in which we see ourselves

Self

The capacity to see ourselves as we would any social object

Unified Self

A stable self-image based on other’s reactions over time

The Me

Self as object; ReactiveT

The I

Self as subject; Creative

Generalized Other

Widespread cultural norms and values that we use to evaluate ourselves

Society

Ongoing, organized activity between individuals

Self Presentation

Conscious and unconscious attempts to control the images we project in social interaction

Impression Management

Intentional manipulation tactics used to manipulate the images others form of us

Frame

Creating a definition of a social situation that consists of a set of widely known rules of conduct

Front Regions

Settings where people carry out interaction performances and take effort to maintain appropriate appearances

Back Regions

Settings inaccessible to outsiders in which people knowingly violate the lines they present in front regions

Ingratiation

The deliberate use of deception to increase a person’s liking for us

Aligning Actions

Attempts to define atypical conduct as in line with cultural norms

Disclaimers

Verbally stating before the potentially disruptive act to ward off negative consequences

Accounts

Explanations given after the atypical act that would potentially threaten social indentity

Altercasting

Tactics to impose roles and identities on others that will produce outcomes to our advantage

Embarrassment

Feeling when interaction is disrupted because the identity they have claimed in an encounter is discredited

Cooling Out

Response to repeated failures that gently persuades an offender into a less desirable alternative identity; in private and quietly

Identity Degradation

Response to repeated failures that destroys the offender’s current identity and forces them into a lower social type; in public and loudly

Attractiveness stereotype

Belief that what is beautiful is good

Stigma

Personal characteristics that others view as insurmountable barriers preventing competent and moral behaviors

Stigma Contests

Social conflicts over societal definitions of deviance where the moral status of various identities is contested

Identities

Internalized sets of expectations attached to our various identities

Commitment

The degree to which an individual’s relationships with others are dependent on being a given kind of person

Salience

The likelihood that a certain identity would be invoked in a certain situation