Social Science Perspectives Flashcards
CAH - Critical Thinking - Historiographical Meta-Disciplines
The study of how something is studied in history.
CAH - Critical Thinking - Historiographical Meta-Disciplines - Traditionalism
Traditionalist interpretations of history tend to point toward historical events as inevitable and usually due to deep and longstanding trends and motivations. Alexis de Tocqueville is considered a traditionalist historian of the French Revolution, while Edward Gibbon is considered a traditionalist historian of the Roman Empire.
CAH - Critical Thinking - Historiographical Meta-Disciplines - Revisionism
Revisionists often reject that history inexorably marched toward modernity and instead tried to explain events in terms of localized conditions and actions.
CAH - Critical Thinking - Historiographical Meta-Disciplines - Post-Revisionism
Post-revisionists split the difference between Traditionalisms and Revisionism. Post-revisionists, for example, will likely concede that an immediate event or person touched off a major turning point in history, but also note that the conditions that allowed that person to touch off the major turning point were likely the result of longer-term trends and movements of people and ideas through history. Post-Revisionists have also begun interpreting history in numerous exciting ways, often explaining history through stories concerning individual people, ideas, or even things.
CAH - Critical Thinking - Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior.
CAH - Critical Thinking - Social Psychology
Social psychology examines how social influences can change our thoughts or behavior. It is specific in its focus, using empirical science, or science composed of hypotheses that can be tested to produce quantifiable data. Social psychologists are careful to design their experiments and conduct their research in the most non-biased way possible, very often using statistics to analyze the data for major trends.
CAH - Critical Thinking - Social Psychology - Intrapersonal Analysis
The first aspect of social psychology is the way that an individual forms their own behavior in response to social situations, or intrapersonal analysis. Social psychologists use intrapersonal analysis to examine things like your attitude, your likes and dislikes, your ability to talk yourself into a certain position and your self-awareness. Each of these is greatly influenced by your awareness of other people and the social pressures you may feel.
CAH - Critical Thinking - Social Psychology - Interpersonal Analysis
interpersonal analysis is the way that people influence each other. In this area of study, researchers may examine things like social influences, conformity, obedience, group dynamics, attraction and the relationships between people. For the most part, this field of research is defined by the direct ways that people interact with each other. ‘Inter,’ as in ‘interpersonal,’ means ‘to be in between.’ So, interpersonal relationships are the relationships between people.
CAH - Critical Thinking - Social Psychology - Structural-Functional Theory
Structural-functional theory is based on the idea that society is a large system that is dependent on its individual parts working together.
CAH - Critical Thinking - Social Psychology - Social Conflict Theory
Social conflict theory implies that society is based on small groups that have conflicts that help society to evolve or change.
CAH - Critical Thinking - Social Psychology - Feminism
Feminism is based on the idea that there are inequalities based on gender and the practice of trying to fix those inequalities.
CAH - Critical Thinking - Social Psychology - Symbolic Interactionism
Symbolic interactionism theory implies that society is really about the smaller groups within it and the symbols that these small groups use to communicate.
CAH - Critical Thinking - Social Psychology - Attribution Theory
Attribution theory is concerned with how we interpret and understand events and how this can influence the way we think and behave. According to Bernard Weiner, we tend to attribute our successes and failures to luck, effort, task difficulty, and abilities. We can view the causes of our successes and failures as internal or external, stable or unstable, and controllable or uncontrollable.
CAH - Critical Thinking - Social Psychology - Internal and External Attribution
An internal attribution is when a behavior is attributed to internal or personal factors. It’s also known as a dispositional attribution, because it is when we assume that a person’s disposition is the reason for their behavior. An external attribution is when a behavior is attributed to external factors. It’s also known as a situational attribution, because we assume that the situation the person is in is affecting his or her behavior.
CAH - Critical Thinking - Social Psychology - Individualistic Cultures
individualistic cultures value independence and define individuals in terms of their unique attributes. They tend to judge people based on internal attribution, in other words, internal personal factors.
