LL

SOC100 Lecture 1: Intro to Sociology

  • Sociology: 

    • To search for social and structural explanations for the topics we study instead of relying on biological or individual explanations 

  • Disciplines associated with sociology: 

    • Economics, political science, medicine, psychology, criminology, anthropology, history, natural sciences, etc

  • Cognitive Dissonance: 

    • When someone is confronted by a situation or realization that conflicts with their values/beliefs

  • Sociological Imagination:

    • The ability to connect personal challenges to alter social issues

  • See the general in the particular:

    • Principle in sociological imagination; to look at seemingly individual issues as social/societal issues (i.e. university student anxiety)

  • See the strange in the familiar:

    • Principle in sociological imagination; to challenge the rationale behind social conditions (i.e. shaking hands)

  • Decline bias:

    • Believing that change leads to worsening conditions compared to the past

  • Bias:

    • Unconscious and unavoidable; people don’t understand others’ experiences because they hold their belief that their own experience is the truth 

  • Objectiveness:

    • Basing conclusions on empirically verifiable facts collected with scientific principles rather than personal opinions, feelings, preferences, or experiences

  • Social location bias:

    • The combination of factors including gender, race, social class, age, religion, sexual orientation, and geographic location affects all individuals’ decisions and perceptions; it is never the same for everyone

  • Anecdotal evidence:

    • Evidence in the form of stories that people tell about what happened to them 

  • Confirmation bias:

    • The tendency to process information by looking for evidence that agrees/confirms what we already believe

  • Fundamental attribution error:

    • To attribute the observed failings of others to internal factors like their disposition, personality, intelligence, etc 

  • Self-serving bias:

    • To attribute one’s success to personal factors, and failures to external, situational factors

  • Optimism bias: 

    • Viewing things positively because you’re in a good mood

  • Pessimism bias:

    • Viewing things negatively because you're in a bad mood

  • Cultural bias:

    • Perceiving one’s own culture as being normal and seeing other cultures as abnormal