Key Concepts

• Status - level of importance or social standing within society. e.g occupation, wealth
• Values - the beliefs that society sees as important, values provide guidelines for behaviour
• Identity - how a person views themselves and how others see them. e.g social class, gender, sexuality
• Gender - socially constructed or cultural differences between men and women that are associated with masculinity and femininity
• Primary socialisation - the process of learning the norms and values of society e.g language and behaviour from family. Parents are role models and use sanctions to ensure children learn these norms and values
• Nurture view of human behaviour - behaviour is learned from their environment and experiences.
• Achieved status - social position that is earned or merited
• Cultural diversity - differences in culture e.g norms, values, beliefs. Can be between countries, different subcultures, or over time
• Role conflict - two different roles a person does that has competing expectations e.g student wants to work hard/friend that wants to joke around in class
• Formal social control - use of written laws and rules that regulates and controls our behaviour. e.g police, law courts
• Social class - a way of dividing people into groups based on economic factors like income and occupation. There is working class, middle class and upper class
• Role model - a person whose behaviours can be copied by others especially children. e.g children imitate parents behaviour
• Socialisation - the process where individuals learn culture, norms and values of the society they were born into. Our values and beliefs are influenced by agents of socialisation.
• Sanctions - rewards and punishments in response to an action.
• Ethnicity - the cultural group a person belongs to. It might come from their nationality, religion, language.
• Agents of socialisation - the social groups or institution that pass on the culture of a society to its members through socialisation. e.g family, education, media, religion.
• Nature view on human behaviour - argues that behaviour is mostly determined by people's genetics and inherited from their parents.
• Ascribed status - a social position your born into, that is fixed and unchanging over time e.g king or queen
• Norms - unwritten informal rules that define expected behaviour in different social settings. e.g customers are expected to queue in supermarkets.
• Informal social control - the influence on people's behaviour based on norms and social pressure such as the approval or disapproval of others.
• Culture - a shared way of life of a particular society or social group. e.g language, customs, norms, values, beliefs
• Secondary socialisation - the process through which individuals learn society's norms and values. It begins during later childhood and continues throughout adult life. e.g schools, peer groups, workplace, media
• Feral (wild) child - a human child that has lived isolated from human contact from a young age and has no experience of human care, behaviour or languages. e.g Oxana Malaya, raised by dogs and learnt to walk on all fours and bark
• Roles - the part played by people who have status or social position. Influences the behaviour expected from them. e.g students are expected to be respectful to teachers
• Subculture - a social group that differs from the main culture that has different norms, values and beliefs. e.g goths commonly dress in black
• Canalisation - the way parents channel their children's interests into toys and games that are seen as gender appropriate. e.g girls are given barbies
• Social control - the means by which order is kept in society.
• Society - group of people that share a common territory and culture