Social Groups Flashcards
A social category that is used to identify people
Status
A status that a person works to attain.
Achieved status
- high school senior is as much an achieved status as a physician
Statuses that come form outside of ourselves, that we don’t attain based on our actions, but rather just have involuntarily.
Ascribed status
Ex. Race, gender, ethnicity
A certain status that play such a dominant role in someone’s life that it crowds out other statuses that apply to them
Master status
When people experience difficulty handling he multiple responsibilities associate with a certain role
Role strain
Experiencing difficulties balancing multiple roles
Role conflict
The process that one goes through when disengaging from a role. The details are different for each role and even for different individuals
Role exit
Occurs when a role expands to dominate someone’s life. This is closely related to what someone does with their time or energy.
Role engulfment
Ex. Cancer patient- can expand to fill up someone’s life because of psychological impact and complex treatment regimen
Groups that are long-lasting, with deep bonds formed among members
*Do NOT always have to be positive.
Primary groups
Ex. Family and religious organizations
Defined by superficial, more transient relationships
Secondary groups
Made up of people who are often similar in terms of age, status, background, interests, and so on, and w usually think of those groups as being self-selected.
Peer groups *high school class is not a peer group. Extracurricular organizations are a better example as they’re defined by a shared interest.
This group can be more tight-knit than are peer groups, but they also involve people of very different ages, and may span different cultural backgrounds as well, all of which can lead to some degree of tension
Family groups
Categories that someone identifies as a member of, or feels that he or she belongs to.
In-groups
Ex. School, workplace, race, gender, sexual orientation, culture, and religion
In-group vs Out-group mindset
In-group vs our-groups become relevant for phenomena like stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination
Groups that we compare ourselves to
Reference groups
T or F. Reference groups are limited to in-groups
False. We can compare ourselves to members of an out-group
*MCAT: clear indication of reference group is when someone evaluates him/herself in reference to a group
Dryads vs Triads
Dyads- group of 2
Triads- group of 3
*Dyads are thought to be less stable than triads
Network technicalities
Circle/ node- person
Connecting line- relationship
Researchers can apply various mathematical techniques to analyze the connections among people in networks, allowing them to identify the most central nodes, to predict how info might move through networks to characterize ow spread-out or centralized a certain group is, and so on
Social network analysis
This organization is strictly defined. It has defined rules for entering and exiting the organization, and the organization will continue to exist even when all of its current members are long gone
Formal organization
This organization is one that you don’t choose to be a part of, but have to anyway
Ex. Prison
Coercive organization
Organization that people join because of some shared idea or ethical goal
Ex. Volunteer organizations
Normative organization
Organization where people join to make Money or be compensated for in some direct way.
Ex. Employees of a company
Utilitarian organization
Researchers have argued that they are the most representative type of modern political and commercial organization.
Bureaucracy
A rational, well-organized, impersonal, and typically large administrative system .
Ex. Governments, hospitals, schools, corporations, and courts
Bureaucracy
Who famously studied bureaucracy?
Max Weber
According to Weber, an ideal bureaucracy has the following major characteristics
- Hierarchical structure with well-defined roles, repsonsibilities, and chains of command
- It is organized by specialization, with each role corresponding to a clearly defined skill
- Run impersonally
- Recruitment and employment are grounded in technical, merit-based qualifications
- A predictable career path
- Political Neutrality
*Ideal does not mean good (it means it fits the definition as closely as possible)
Iron cage of bureaucracy is coined by Max Weber to describe what?
The sense of stagnation in the bureaucratic system
Posits that any organizations that starts off with democratic decision-making will ultimately wind up being dominated by a smaller group of decision makers, or an oligarchy
Iron law of oligarchy
An organizational approach that focuses on efficiency, calculability, uniformity, and technological control
McDonaldization
- while profitable, it makes the experience much less personal
- can be related to the state of our healthcare system today
