Social Studies: People of a Feather Flashcards
Power Structure
Systems that are used to exert power and control over a government, organization, or resource (e.g. authority, governance). The hierarchical interrelationships existing within a controlling group.
Role
The position or purpose that someone or something has in a situation,organization, society, or relationship (e.g. manager, boss).
Communication Structures
Communication structures are practical guidelines and frameworks that help individuals and groups hold productive discussions, manage conflict, and reach decisions (e.g. partners might use a specific process for having open dialogue about difficult topics).
Similarity
The state or fact of being similar (having a resemblance in appearance, character, or quantity, without being identical).
Interdependence
The dependence of two or more people or things on each other (e.g. children depend on their parents to give them food and money).
Norm
Something that is considered as normal by society.
Injunctive Norms
Behaviors which are perceived as being approved of by other people (e.g. lower your voice in a library).
Proscriptive Norm
Something you’re expected not to do by society (e.g. never speak with food in your mouth).
Cultural Identity Groups
The identity or feeling of belonging to a group. It is part of a person’s self-conception and self-perception and is related to nationality, ethnicity, religion, social class, generation, locality or any kind of social group that has its own distinct culture (e.g. millennials, Christians).
Crowds vs Mobs
A crowd is a group of people whose members consist of individual thoughts; a mob is a group of people with one common thought usually of criminal consequence. A mob is a disorderly or riotous crowd of people or a crowd bent on or engaged in lawless violence. A crowd is a large number of persons gathered closely together or any large number of persons.
The Tuckman Model
The Tuckman Model is a 5 step process that Bruce Tuckman (psychologist in 1965), said that all teams go through them to develop. These five stages of development are forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning.
Seceder Model
The seceder model is an extremely simple individual based model which shows how the local tendency to be different gives rise to the formation of hierarchically structured groups, called the seceder effect.
Homans’ Theory
Homans’ theory of group formation is based on three elements, namely, activities, interaction and sentiments. According to Homan, these three elements are directly related to each other. The required activities are the assigned tasks to people to work.
Social Exchange Theory
Social exchange theory proposes that social behavior is the result of an exchange process. The purpose of this exchange is to maximize benefits and minimize costs. According to this theory, developed by sociologist George Homans, people weigh the potential benefits and risks of social relationships. When the risks outweigh the rewards, people will terminate or abandon that relationship.
Swarm Behavior
Swarm behaviour, or swarming, is a collective behaviour exhibited by entities, particularly animals, of similar size which aggregate together, perhaps milling about the same spot or perhaps moving en masse or migrating in some direction. From a more abstract point of view, swarm behaviour is the collective motion of a large number of self-propelled entities. From the perspective of the mathematical modeller, it is an emergent behaviour arising from simple rules that are followed by individuals and does not involve any central coordination.
Herd Mentality
Herd mentality, mob mentality and pack mentality, also lesser known as gang mentality, describes how people can be influenced by their peers to adopt certain behaviors on a largely emotional, rather than rational, basis.
Conformity
Social conformity is a type of social influence that results in a change of behavior or belief in order to fit in with a group. Normative conformity is conformity that occurs because of the desire to be liked and accepted (e.g. Peer Pressure). Informational conformity is conformity that occurs because of the desire to be correct. Referencial conformity is conformity that is based on a set of societal expectations of an individual based on his or her background, ethnicity, or statistics.
Social Identity Theory
Henri Tajfel’s greatest contribution to psychology was social identity theory. Social identity is a person’s sense of who they are based on their group membership(s). Tajfel (1979) proposed that the groups (e.g. social class, family, football team etc.) which people belonged to were an important source of pride and self-esteem. Groups give us a sense of social identity: a sense of belonging to the social world. In order to increase our self-image we enhance the status of the group to which we belong. The central hypothesis of social identity theory is that group members of an in-group will seek to find negative aspects of an out-group, thus enhancing their self-image (e.g. stereotypes).
Self categorization
As a conceptual extension of social identity theory, John Turner and his colleagues developed self-categorization theory. Self-categorization theory seeks to understand and explain the processes by which people form cognitive representations of themselves and others in relation to different social groups. The underlying premise behind this theory is that people place themselves and others into social categories on the basis of the underlying attributes that are particularly salient, and this process of social categorization shapes a range of attitudes, emotions, and behaviors.
Dominant Culture
A dominant culture is a cultural practice that is dominant within a particular political, social or economic entity, in which multiple cultures are present. It may refer to a language, religion/ritual, social value and/or social custom. These features are often a norm for an entire society.
Counterculture
A counterculture (also written counter-culture) is a subculture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, often in opposition to mainstream cultural mores.
High-brow
Something/someone that is considered highly cultured and sophisticated (e.g. book by a professor).
Low-brow
Something/someone that is considered vulgar and less sophisticated (e.g. book by a reality TV star).
Asch Paradigm
This scenario is actually part of a famous experiment conducted by Solomon Asch in 1951. The purpose was to study social conformity, which is a type of social influence that results in a change of behavior or belief in order to fit in with a group. Asch wanted to see how often people conform and why. In his experiment, the person at the end of the row was actually the only participant; the other people in the room were actually confederates, or actors, and were purposefully giving the incorrect answer to some of the questions. Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the obviously incorrect answer. Approximately 25% of the participants conformed most of the time, and an additional 50% of the participants conformed at least once. That means that only 25% never conformed.