Transcript THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY

SOCIOLOGICAL FINDINGS
VERSUS COMMON SENSE
TRUE/FALSE
• The earnings of U.S. women have just about
caught up with those of U.S. men.
• When faced with a natural disaster such as floods
and earthquakes, people panic and social
organization disintergrates.
• Revolutions are more likely to occur when
conditions remain bad than when they are
improving.
• Most people on welfare are lazy and looking for
a handout. They could work if they wanted to.
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Compared to men, women touch each other more
while they are talking to one another
Compared to women, men maintain more eye
contact while they are conversing.
The more available alcohol is, the more alcoholrelated injuries and fatalities occur in the U.S.
highways.
Couples who live together before they marry
usually report higher satisfaction with their
marriages than couples who do not live together
before they marry.
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The reason that people discriminate
against minorities is prejudice;
unprejudiced people don’t discriminate.
Students in Japan are under such intense
pressure to do well in school that their
suicide rate is about double that of U.S.
students.
THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY
• Most of us see the world in terms of the
familiar features of our lives.
Sociology
• Takes a much broader view of why we are
as we are, and why we act as we do.
• Teaches us that what we regard as natural,
inevitable, good or true may not be such.
• Helps understand the complex ways in
which our individual lives reflect the
contexts of our social experience.
• A sociologists is someone who is able to
break free from the immediacy of personal
circumstances and put things in a wider
context.
SOCIOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVE
Sociological perspective:
• opens a window onto unfamiliar worlds and
offers a fresh look at familiar worlds.
• gain a new vision of social life.
• asks, how are people influenced by their
society- a group of people who share a
culture and a territory.
• Seeing the general in the particular
• Seeing the strange in the familiar
• seeing individuality in social context