STANBRIDGE UNIVERSITY

S O C I OL O G Y 1

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Introduction to Sociology

Week 9: Chapter 13-14 Review

CHAPTER 13Effects of parents social class-• Children are very likely to end up in the same

social class as their parents.Income-• Earnings from work or investments.Wealth-• The total value of money and other assets,

minus outstanding debts.Oscar Lewis’ “culture of poverty”-• Idea poor parents passed values to their

children.

CHAPTER 13Matthew effect-• The notion that people who have wealth, fame,

or other scarce social goods find it easier to accumulate more of these compared to those with no no wealth, fame, or other scarce social goods.

Cultural explanations of inequality-• People of different social classes have different

patterns of values, beliefs and behavioral norms, which is passed on to their children.  People who are poor usually are poor because their degree to which these values, beliefs and behavioral norms are out of whack with those of mainstream society.

CHAPTER 13Structural explanations of inequality-• Differences in values, beliefs, and behavioral

norms that seem to exist are better explained as the consequences of poverty rather than as the cause.    It’s not the culture but rather the opportunities open to the poor that holds them back.

“Blaming the victim”-• Unjustly stating or believing that the cause of a

problem resides in the individuals or groups who experience the problem, when the real source or cause of the problem in the social environment.

Structural mobility-• Mobility that results from such social facts as

changes in the occupational structure, immigrations and birth rates.

CHAPTER 13Gini Coefficient-• A way of measuring how much inequality exists.  The

higher to coefficient, the more inequality.Tracking, in schools-• The process whereby students are divided into

categories sothat they can be assigned in groups to various kinds of classes.  Usually placed in a category on how fast the children are able to learn.

Pygmalion effect-• Effect of teacher’s expectations on student’s

performance.

CHAPTER 14Prejudice-• A biased attitude toward a group of people or

an individual member of a group based on unfair generalizations about what members of that group are like.

Stereotypes-• Oversimplified generalized images of members

of a particular group.Discrimination-• Unequal treatment of various categories of

people. Prejudice refers to attitudes, but discrimination is a matter of action. 

CHAPTER 14Robert Merton-• Deviance is a socially created behavior, not only

'momentary pathological impulses'.Typology of prejudice and discrimination-• Not all people who are prejudiced practice discrimination, not all people who practice discrimination are prejudice.

CHAPTER 14Gordon Allport- Types of discriminatory behavior-

• People tend to hold onto their prejudices even in the face of contradictory information. Prejudice is sustained by stereotypes, which deny the existence of individual differences among the members of a specific social category. Different types of discriminatory behaviors include: Verbal rejections, Avoidance, Active discrimination, physical attacks, and extermination.

Individual discrimination-• Discrimination that individuals practice in their

daily lives, usually because they are prejudiced but sometimes even if they are not prejudiced.

Institutional discrimination- • Discrimination that pervades the practices of

whole institutions, such as housing, medical care, law enforcement, employment, and education.

CHAPTER 14Louis Wirth-

Minority group-• Minority group of people because of their physical and cultural characteristics, are signed out from the others in the society in which they live for differential and unequal treatment. 

Dominant group-• The Dominant group membership is that one enjoys greater privilege.

CHAPTER 14“isms”, distinguished from other types of discrimination-• Generally applied to acts of discrimination that occur at the

institutional level or, when they occur at the individual level, are consistent with institutional patterns of discriminations.

Pyramiding effect of discrimination-• Cumulative impact of encounters with racist behavior. 

Blatant acts of avoidance, verbal harassment, and physical attack combine with subtle and covert slights and these accumulate over months, years or lifetime affect people.

Race as a social construct-• Race is a subjective, social, political, and cultural construct.Ethnicity-• Socially identified and set apart by others and by itself on

the basis of unique cultural or nationally characteristics.Sex-• The physical and biological differences between males and

females.

CHAPTER 14Margaret Mead-

Studies of three New Guinea societies-• Studied the degree to which differences in male and female personalities were a result of socialization rather than biological factors. Found a standardized male and female personality in each culture.