Sociology

1. Sociology Chapter 5 Lecture Questions Section 1 (98-106) Revised September 2015

2. 1. What is the relationship between personality traits and personality? List some personality traits. • Personality is the sum total of behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, and values that are characteristic of an individual. • Personality is the sum total of our personality traits. • Shyness, selfishness, stubbornness, and humor are a few of the thousands of personality traits which make up our own individual personality. • No two individuals have exactly the same personality. • Some traits seem to remain basically constant throughout a person’s life, while others undergo dramatic changes.

3. 2. Explain what “nature vs nurture” means. • For many years, social scientists have heatedly debated what determines personality and social behavior. • This debate is usually referred to in terms of nature versus nurture. • Inherited genetic characteristics versus environment and social learning.

4. 3. What is heredity? • The transmission of genetic characteristics from parents to children. • Nature

5. 4. What is the social environment? • Surrounding environmental forces that make us who we are. • Family, culture, media, & friends • Nurture

6. 5. What is an instinct? Give an example. • The nature viewpoint that held sway throughout the 1800s states that much of human behavior is instinctual in origin. • At the height of the debate in the early 1900s, social scientists claimed to have identified more than 10,000 human instincts. • An instinct is an unchanging, biologically inherited behavior plan. • Instincts are most often applied to animal behavior. • Bird migration is an example of an instinct.

7. 6. Describe Ivan Pavlov’s experiments. What did they supposedly prove? • From the nurture point of view a person’s behavior and personality are the result of his or her social environment and learning. • The work of Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov helped this viewpoint gain acceptance. • Pavlov found that supposedly instinctual behavior could be taught. • Pavlov conducted experiments with dogs. • He ultimately taught dogs to “salivate” at the sound of a ringing bell.

8. The Office

9. Big Bang Theory

10. 7. What do sociobiologists argue? The emergence of sociobiology in the 1970s reemphasized the nature viewpoint. Sociobiologists argue that such varied cultural characteristics and behavioral traits as religion, cooperation, competition, and envy are rooted in the genetic makeup of humans. In general most of human social life is determined by biological factors.

11. 8. What do most social scientists believe? • Most social scientists assume that personality and social behavior result from a blending of hereditary and social environmental influences. • They believe that environmental factors have the greatest influence. • Heredity, birth order, parents, and the cultural environment are among the principal factors that influence personality and behavior.

12. 9. What is an aptitude? Are they learned or inherited or both? Explain. • An aptitude is a capacity to learn a particular skill or acquire a particular body of knowledge. • For example, a natural talent for music or art would be considered an aptitude. • Most social scientists do not limit aptitudes to inherited capabilities. • Instead, they believe that some aptitudes can be learned as well as inherited. • For example, if a child shows athletic ability in a sport, parents often respond by praising his or her ability. • These actions may encourage the development of the child’s innate talent. • Ability may be enhanced by practice.

13. 10. How does heredity set limits on individuals? • If you have little aptitude for music, you will probably not become a great musician. • If your biological inheritance endowed you with a five-foot-tall frame, you are not likely to become a professional basketball player. • Inherited characteristics place limits on what is possible, but they do not determine what a person will do. • No one factor alone determines what kind of personality someone will have.

14. 11. How does birth order impact personality? • Our personalities are also influenced by whether we have brothers, sisters, both, or neither. • Children with siblings have a different view of the world than do children who do not. • The order in which we are born into our families also influences our personalities. • People born first or last in a family have a different perspective than people born in the middle.

15. 12. Give examples of behaviors associated with birth orders. • Research has indicated that first-born children are more likely to be achievement-oriented and responsible than are later-born children. • Later-born children, on the other hand, tend to be better in social relationships and to be more affectionate and friendly. • Other studies suggest that first-borns are conservative in their thinking. • Later-borns, in contrast, are often risk-takers and social and intellectual rebels.

16. 13. What are the best/worst matches according to the book Birth Order and Marriage? • In his book The Birth Order Connection, Dr. Kevin Leman states that spouses’ birth orders can affect the success of their marriage. • According to Leman, the best couple combinations are only-children and last borns, first borns and last borns, and middle children and last borns. • The worst combinations are only-children married to only-children, and female last borns with no brothers married to male last borns with no sisters.

17. 14. What characteristics do only/first born children have? • Confident • Perfectionistic • Organized • Scholarly • Conservative • Famous examples: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Bill Clinton, J.K. Rowling, Tiger Woods

18. 15. What characteristics do middle born children have? • Flexible • Diplomatic • Independent • Balanced • Generous • Famous examples: John F. Kennedy, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Princess Diana

19. 16. What characteristics do last born children have? • Willing to take risks • Outgoing • Creative • Rebellious • Persistent • Famous examples: Ronald Reagan, Jim Carrey, Cameron Diaz, Stephen Colbert

20. 17. What impact do the characteristics of parents have on personality. Give examples. • The age of parents can have a bearing on their children’s development. • Parents who are in their early twenties when their children are born are likely to relate differently to their offspring than parents who are in their mid- to late thirties. • Other factors are: level of education, religious orientation, economic status, cultural heritage, and occupational background.

21. 18. How does the culture influence personality development? • Culture has a strong influence on personality development. • Generally, the cultural environment determines the basic types of personalities that will be found in a society. • Each culture gives rise to a series of personality traits—model personalities—that are typical of members of that society. • For example, in the U.S., competitiveness, assertiveness, and individualism are common personality traits.

22. 19. Briefly summarize the life of an Ik child. • The Ik (eek) of northern Uganda provide a powerful example of the effects of cultural environment on personality development. • Prior to WWII, the Ik were hunters and gatherers who lived in a mountainous region of northern Uganda. • Ik villagers were like one large family. • Children viewed every adult in the village as a parent and all other children as brothers and sisters. • However, after WWII the Ugandan government turned much of the Ik’s land into a national park. • The government then resettled the Ik on barren land. • Faced with insufficient food sources, the Ik’s social structure soon collapsed, and the Ik turned on each other. • Today Ik children are generally thrown out of their homes at the age of three. • They survive by forming age bands—groups of children of the same age. • By the time a child reaches the age of 12 or 13, he or she has formed and broken several protective alliances. • Most of the time they set out on their own. • Parents do not help their children. • Only the strongest and most clever Ik survive.

23. 20. How does culture and gender influence our personality? • Boys and girls are treated differently almost from the moment of birth. • As they grow, male and female children are often nudged in different directions. • Areas of difference include fields of interest, clothing, types of activities, speech habits, and ideas. • All of these cultural differences in attitudes, expectations, and behavior affect the personalities of male and female adults.

24. 21. What is a feral child? • Wild or untamed children usually found living with animals or in most cases socially isolated by their caretakers. • Regardless of the circumstances, these children have few human characteristics other than appearance.

25. 22. What human characteristics did these feral children lack? • They lack reasoning ability, manners, ability to control their bodily functions, language deficits and/or do not move about like other human beings.

26. 23. Why might a monkey believe that adoll is its mother? • Because the doll is soft and has similar facial characteristics to the monkey’s true mother. • Henry Harlow’s experiments in the 50s and 60s showed that rhesus monkey babies preferred a substitute mother made of soft materials over a mother made of wire with a bottle to feed the babies. • These experiments also showed that monkeys raised in social isolation produced a form of psychosis, which involved fear, hostility, and unsociability.

27. 24. Briefly summarize the story of Anna. • Anna was born to an unmarried woman, a fact that enraged the woman’s father. • Because of the grandfather’s hostility, Anna was confined to an attic room where she was given only a minimum of care. • She was undernourished and emaciated and received almost no human contact. • She was not spoken to, held, bathed, or loved. • Anna was finally discovered by a social worker in 1938. • At six years of age, Anna was little more than a skeleton. • She could not walk, talk, or feed herself. • Her face was expressionless and she showed not interest in other people. • Over time, though, Anna made some progress. • She learned to walk, feed herself, and brush her teeth. • She could also talk in phrases and follow simple directions. • However, Anna died at the age of 10, probably as a result of her earlier isolation.

28. 25. Briefly summarize the story of Isabelle. • Isabelle was found at about the same time as Anna and was born to an unmarried mother. • The child’s grandfather kept her and her deaf mother confined to a dark room. • Although deprived of a normal cultural environment, Isabelle did have the advantage of her mother’s company. • But because she and her mother communicated only through gestures, Isabelle did not learn to speak. • When she was found at the age of six, Isabelle crawled around on her hands and knees and made grunting, animal-like sounds. • She ate with her hands and behaved in many ways like an infant. • Isabelle was at first thought to be mentally disabled and incapable of speech. • However, after several months of intensive training she began to speak. • She eventually developed a considerable vocabulary. • Isabelle reached a level of social and mental development consistent with her age group in two years. • Kingsley Davis’s study concludes that Isabelle’s constant contact with her mother and training by specialists allowed her to overcome her early social deprivation.

29. 26. Briefly summarize the story of Genie. • Discovered in 1970, when she was 13. • Confined to a small bedroom from the age of 20 months until she was discovered. • Punished if she made any noise by her father. • Genie did not learn to talk, nor did she have social and psychological skills of a normal 13-year-old. Her social/psychological skills were of a one-year-old. • After eight years of training, Genie had not progressed past the level of a third-grade student. • She had mastered some language and had learned to conform to basic social norms. • Genie was unable to truly function as a social being. • At the age of 21, she was placed in a facility for people with developmental disabilities. She is now in her early 50s.

30. 27. According to research by Rene Spitz, what effect does the lack of close human contact have on institutionalized children? • It may lead to death in some cases. • It slows normal development.

31. Sociology Chapter 5 Lecture Questions Section 2 & 3 (pages 107-115)

32. 1. Describe socialization and self. • Socialization is the interactive process through which people learn the basic skills, values, beliefs, and behavior patterns of a society. • Your self is your conscious awareness of possessing a distinct identity that separates you and your environment from other members of society.

33. 2. Briefly describe John Locke’s Tabula Rasa theory. • English philosopher from the 1600s. • Locke insisted that each newly born human being is a tabula rasa, or clean slate, on which just about anything can be written. • Locke further claimed that each of us is born without a personality. • We acquire our personalities as a result of our social experiences. • Locke believed that human beings could be molded into any type of character. • Locke further believed that, if given a newborn infant, he could shape that child’s personality, giving the child whatever characteristic he chose.

34. 3. Briefly describe Charles Horton Cooley’s Looking Glass Self theory. • Cooley was a social psychologist who was one of the founders of the interactionist perspective in sociology. • The looking-glass self refers to the interactive process by which we develop an image of ourselves based on how we imagine we appear to others. • Other people act as a mirror, reflecting back the image we project through their reactions to our behavior. • This three-step process involves: • First, we imagine how we appear to others. • Second, based on their reactions to us, we attempt to determine whether others view us as we view ourselves. • Finally, we use our perceptions of how others judge us to develop feelings about ourselves.

35. 4. Briefly describe George Herbert Mead’s Role-taking theory. • Mead, a philosopher and another founder of the interactionist perspective, developed ideas related to Cooley’s theories. • According to Mead, seeing ourselves as others see us is only the beginning. • Eventually we not only see ourselves as others see us but actually take on or pretend to take the roles of others. • This is done in a three-step process. • Imitation (under the age of 3) is the process of mimicking gestures or the speechof others. • Play (ages 3 to 6) is recognizing specific roles we need to act out. • Dressing up, pretending to be a doctor or playing a princess. • Organized Games (over the age of 6 or 7) allows school age kids to take part in organized games and requires children to take on their own roles.

36. 5. Briefly describe Erving Goffman’s Impression Management theory. • Social interaction is like performing for an audience. • We change our personalities based on what impression we want to convey. • Dramaturgy is like a drama being performed on stage. • As a result, most people make an effort to play roles well and manage the impressions that the audience receives.

37. 6. What are the primary agents of socialization in the United States? • Family • Peer group • School • Mass media

38. 7. How does the family socialize the individual? • The family is the most important agent of socialization in almost every society. • Its primary importance rests in its role as the principal socializer of young children. • Children first interact with others and first learn the values, norms, and beliefs of society through their families. • Socialization in a family setting can be both deliberate and unintended.

39. 8. How does a peer group socialize the individual? When does this occur? • As children grow older, forces outside of the family increasingly influence them. • Infants and very young children are particularly likely to spend almost all of their time in a family setting. • As they get older, children begin to relate more and more to their peer groups. • A peer group is a primary group composed of individuals of roughly equal age and similar social characteristics. • Peer groups are particularly influential during the pre-teenage and early teenage years. • Winning peer acceptance is a powerful force in the lives of young people. • Peer-group goals are sometimes at odds with the goals of the larger society. • Parents in particular become alarmed if they come to believe that the norms and values of the peer group are more important to their children than those of society as a whole.

40. 9. How does a school socialize the individual? • For most young people, school occupies large amounts of time and attention. • Between the ages of 5 and 18, young people spend some 30 weeks a year in school. • Thus the school plays a major role in socializing the individual. • Much of this socialization is deliberate. • Extracurricular activities, such as school dances, clubs, and athletic events, are intended to prepare the student for life in the larger society.

41. 10. How does the mass media socialize the individual? Why is this controversial? • The mass media are instruments of communication that reach large audiences with no personal contact between those sending the information and those receiving it. • The major forms of mass media are books, social media, films, magazines, newspapers, radio, and television. • Television probably has the most influence on children. • Almost every home in America has a TV. • The effect of television on children is an ongoing debate. • Violence/poor behavior vs educational

42. 11. Give examples of a total institution. • A total institution involves a setting in which people are isolated from the rest of society for a set period of time and are subject to tight control. • Prisons, military boot camps, monasteries, and psychiatric hospitals are examples of total institutions.

43. 12. How is resocialization established? • Resocialization involves a break with past experiences and the learning of new values and norms. • In the case of most total institutions, resocialization is directed toward changing an individual’s personality and social behavior. • Voluntary resocialization-going to college, studying abroad • Involuntary resocialization-military, prison • These modifications are accomplished by stripping away all semblance of individual identity and replacing it with an institutional identity. • Uniforms and standard haircuts accomplish this.