Notes:
Social interaction: interpersonal relationships between two or more persons
Social context: the environment of the interaction
Definition of the situation: an individuals interpretation of the social setting
Social construction of reality: an individual’s perceptions of one’s social world as determined or influenced by social interactions
Social attribution: an explanation of how others appear, behave or are motivated
Fundamental attribution error: the bias of attributing our behavior to our circumstances and other’s behavior to their character
Ethnomethodology: the study of people’s methods as it relates to the formation of society
Breaching: purposely violating social norms to examine and individuals reactions
Erving Goffman: developed his study of symbolic interaction in the form of dramaturgical analysis termed dramaturgy
Dramaturgy: the theory that we area all actors on stage of life and we divide our world based on what we let others see or not see of us
Face work: the efforts exerted by both actors during an interaction to get through unanticipated events without casting an undesirable light or disrupting the relationship of the participants
Social exchange: the process by which social decisions are base on perceived costs and benefits
Social status: an individual’s position or rank within a social system
Status set: the collection of statuses held at one time
Ascribed status: assigned social status based on characteristics such as sex, race and age
Achieved status: earned social status based on merit
Master status: the social position central to your identity
Status symbols: material signs that are mean to to convey a message to others about an individual’s social position
Conspicuous consumption: the public display of lavish and wasteful spending to enchanted one’s social status
Social roles: expected patterns of behaviors for specific statuses and positions
Role set: the complement of role-relationship within a single status
Role strain: incompatible demands and expectations within a single role
Role conflict: competing demands resulting from two or more statuses
Role exit: the process of disengaging from significant roles
Role attachment: emotional intensity associated with role
Social institutions: organizational systems that link individuals to the larger society
Social groups; two or more individuals connected by common bonds and shared social relations
Primary groups: small-scale, intimate face to face long lasting associations
Secondary groups: large-scale, impersonal, task forced and time limited associations
Social networks: groups of individuals and organizations that are connected to one another
Feeling rules: norms about which emotions are appropriate to display in a given situation
Emotion labor: a worker’s regulation of personal feelings in an effort to set an emotional tone for customers in a business setting
Technology: tools created by science to address and solve the problems of humankind
Thomas theorem: the idea that if we think something is real, then it is indeed feral to us