Chapter 5, Social Interaction and The Social Construction of Reality

1. Chapter 5, Social Interaction and The Social Construction of Reality Key Terms

2. solidarityThe ties that bind people to one another in society. • mechanical solidaritySocial order and cohesion based on a common conscience or uniform thinking and behavior.

3. organic solidaritySocial order based on interdependence and cooperation among people performing a wide range of diverse and specialized tasks. • social statusA position in a social structure.

4. social structureTwo or more people interacting and interrelating in specific expected ways, regardless of the unique personalities involved. • roleThe behavior expected of a status in a relationship to another status.

5. role setAn array of roles. • rightsThe behaviors that a person assuming a role can demand or expect from others.

6. obligationsThe relationship and behavior that the person enacting a role must assume toward others in a particular status. • role strainA predicament in which contradictory or conflicting expectations are associated with a person’s role.

7. role conflictA predicament in which the expectations associated with two or more roles in a set contradict one another. • dramaturgical modelA model in which interaction is viewed as though it were theater, people as though they were actors, and roles as though they were performances presented before an audience in a particular setting.

8. impression managementThe process by which people in social situations manage the setting and their dress, words, and gestures to correspond to the impressions they are trying to make or the image they are trying to project. • front stageThe region where people take care to create and maintain expected images and behavior.

9. back stageThe region out of sight where individuals can do things that would be inappropriate or unexpected on the front stage. • dispositional traitsPersonal or group traits, such as motivation level, mood, and inherent ability.

10. situational factorsForces outside an individual’s control, such as environmental conditions or bad luck. • scapegoatA person or a group that is assigned blame for conditions that cannot be controlled, threaten a community’s sense of well-being or shake the foundations of a trusted institution.