Intro To Sociology (SOC 101) Exam 1 Study Guide

Introduction To Sociology Exam 1 Study Guide

Ohio University

Intro To Sociology (SOC 101)

Sociology Exam 1 Study Guide
 Definitions
o Sociology: the study of human society and social behavior
o Social Behavior: human behavior done in reaction to, in relationship
to, or in reference to one or more other people
o Status: a position we occupy that defines our relationship to
someone else
 Master Status: most important status as perceived by others,
usually based on occupation
 Achieved Status: you did something to get there, not always
positive
 Ascribed Status: you find yourself there, by birth or involuntary
later in life
o Roles: behavior that you do in relationship to a status. PLAY a role.
 Role Conflict: having two roles that demand expectations to be
met – mother/student
 Role Strain: competing demands coming from within the same
role
o Groups: people who regularly and consciously interact, share a
common culture, involves status and role changes over a long time
o Aggregates: bunch of folks in the same place at the same time
o Social Institutions – large pieces of interaction that serve a purpose
for society
o Society – a population that occupies the same territory, is subject to
the same political authority and participates in a common culture
o Culture: all the shared products of society
 Material Elements: desks, buildings, cars
 Non-material Elements: norms, values, sanctions,
symbols/language (give us an identity)
 Norms: rules
o Shape and direct behavior
o Become aware of them if we’re breaking them
o Others response indicates seriousness of the
infraction
o Norms are contextual – they are dependent on
the time and place
 Folkways: informal rules
o Minor infractions or sanctions
 Mores: more formal/serious
o More severe negative sanctions
 Taboos: the most serious
 Values: general notions/feelings of what’s good/bad,
right/wrong
o Sanctions
 Positive – rewards to conformity
 Negative – punishments for non-conformity
o Ethnocentrism – the universal tendency to depreciate the ways of
people from other societies as wrong, old fashioned, or immoral and
think of the ways of one’s own group as superior (as the only right
way)
o Cultural Relativism – looking at the practices and beliefs of another
culture relative to that culture
 Sociological Imagination – C. Wright Mills
o Making a connection between the “big picture” and the individual
o “How does society shape our individual experiences (and our
perceptions of those experiences?)
o Self NOT autonomous, independent, unique
o We need to pay attention to the larger social forces that make us
who we are
 Personal Troubles = private matter
 Public Issues = public matter
 Theoretical Perspectives
o Macro: the big picture – understanding behavior at the structural
level
 Society
 Culture
 Institutions
o Micro: a small picture – understanding behavior at the individual
level

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