Social category

9 Social Stratification in the United States • Introduction • 9.1 What Is Social Stratification? • 9.2 Social Stratification and Mobility in the United States • 9.3 Global Stratification and Inequality • 9.4 Theoretical Perspectives on Social Stratification • Key Terms • Section Summary • Section Quiz • Short Answer • Further Research • References • 11 Race and Ethnicity • Introduction • 11.1 Racial, Ethnic, and Minority Groups • 11.2 Theoretical Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity • 11.3 Prejudice, Discrimination, and Racism • 11.4 Intergroup Relationships • 11.5 Race and Ethnicity in the United States • Key Terms • Section Summary • Section Quiz • Short Answer • Further Research • References • 19 Health and Medicine • Introduction • 19.1 The Social Construction of Health • 19.2 Global Health • 19.3 Health in the United States • 19.4 Comparative Health and Medicine • 19.5 Theoretical Perspectives on Health and Medicine • Key Terms • Section Summary • Section Quiz • Short Answer • Further Research • References • Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you should be able to: • Understand the difference between race and ethnicity • Define a majority group (dominant group) • Define a minority group (subordinate group) While many students first entering a sociology classroom are accustomed to conflating the terms “race,” “ethnicity,” and “minority group,” these three terms have distinct meanings for sociologists. The idea of race refers to superficial physic...

social group, any set of human beings who either are, recently have been, or anticipate being in some kind of interrelation. The term group, or social group, has been used to designate many kinds of aggregations of humans. Aggregations of two members and aggregations that include the total population of a large nation-state have been called groups. One of the earliest and best-known classifications of groups was the American sociologist primary and secondary groups, set forth in his Human Nature and the Social Order (1902). “Primary group” refers to those personal relations that are direct, face-to-face, relatively permanent, and social psychology: Small social groups Historically, many other pairs of terms have been used to classify groups. The German sociologist Still other sets of terms are used, not as bases for distinguishing types of groups but as bases for describing the individual’s relationship to different groups. Thus, the terms we-group and they-group, as well as the terms in-group and out-group, are used in order to contrast a group of which the referent, or focal person, is a member (often, a primary-type group) and some other group—not necessarily different in kind—of which the focal person (and other members of his in-group, or we-group) is not a member and toward which he feels some degree of Another set of distinctions based on the individual’s relationship to the group is expressed by the terms reference group has been used in two ways, to mean either a ...

Figure 9.2 In the upper echelons of the working world, people with the most power reach the top. These people make the decisions and earn the most money. The majority of Americans will never see the view from the top. (Credit: Alex Proimos/flickr) Sociologists use the term social stratification to describe the system of social standing. Social stratification refers to a society’s categorization of its people into rankings based on factors like wealth, income, education, family background, and power. Geologists also use the word “stratification” to describe the distinct vertical layers found in rock. Typically, society’s layers, made of people, represent the uneven distribution of society’s resources. Society views the people with more resources as the top layer of the social structure of stratification. Other groups of people, with fewer and fewer resources, represent the lower layers. An individual’s place within this stratification is called socioeconomic status (SES). Figure 9.3 Strata in rock illustrate social stratification. People are sorted, or layered, into social categories. Many factors determine a person’s social standing, such as wealth, income, education, family background, and power. (Credit: Just a Prairie Boy/flickr) Most people and institutions in the United States indicate that they value equality, a belief that everyone has an equal chance at success. In other words, hard work and talent—not inherited wealth, prejudicial treatment, instit...

Children grow up learning about these divisions in different ways. For example, children are exposed to language that describes members of different social groups as a coherent unit (e.g., “girls are pretty”), or they are simply exposed to, and observe, the unequal mapping of power, resources, and opportunities to members of distinct social categories. Thus, children essentialize social categories. But to what extent do they essentialize different social categories which are familiar to them? And how does the strength of their social essentialist bias differ based on their cultural environment? Are there, for example, some social categories that are especially susceptible to essentialist reasoning independent of cultural input? In a research study conducted with my colleagues, we investigated some of these questions. Specifically, we presented both children (5 to 10 years old) and adults from two different countries, the U.S. and Turkey, with characters who represented members of different groups of a social category. For example, children and adults saw two characters, with one introduced as a Muslim and the other introduced as a Christian. This primed the social category of religious affiliation for participants. In addition to this category, we also presented participants with characters from different groups of the categories of gender (e.g., boy, girl), nationality (e.g., American, British), socioeconomic status (e.g., rich, poor), and sports-team affiliation (e.g., R...

April Hess April Hess has taught high school math for 6 years in The School District of Philadelphia where she taught Algebra, Geometry, and Algebra II courses. In addition to teaching at high school level, April has 17 years of experience teaching adult education catered to the PA GED and PA HiiSet exams. She also has 20 years experience in one-on-one tutoring in at every math level from elementary to college. April has a Bachelor's Degree in Mathematics Secondary Education (grades 8-12) from Holy Family University. • Instructor What is a Social Category? A social category is a group of people who share common traits or characteristics but do not interact with one another. Commonalities can range from age, gender, race, income level, education level, favorite color, leisure activities, religion, etc. Sharing interests or features puts people in the same social category. Still, it is important to note that a large portion of the definition of a social category is that these people do not interact. Social media is a largely utilized tool for socialization, entertainment, and marketing. People who use Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. are all part of a social category. It is when actual interaction takes place, as in your friends or followers on those platforms, that this social category now becomes a social group. Social Category Examples Many people attend high school, exercise, have blonde hair, and are right-handed, but the chances are these people do not interact with ...

Learning Objectives • Describe the fundamental process of social categorization and its influence on thoughts, feelings, and behavior. • Define stereotypes and describe the ways that stereotypes are measured. • Review the ways that stereotypes influence our behavior. Thinking about others in terms of their group memberships is known as the natural cognitive process by which we place individuals into social groups. Social categorization occurs when we think of someone as a man (versus a woman), an old person (versus a young person), a Black person (versus an Asian or White person), and so on (Allport, 1954/1979). Just as we categorize objects into different types, so we categorize people according to their social group memberships. Once we do so, we begin to respond to those people more as members of a social group than as individuals. Imagine for a moment that two college students, John and Sarah, are talking at a table in the student union at your college or university. At this point, we would probably not consider them to be acting as group members, but rather as two individuals. John is expressing his opinions, and Sarah is expressing hers. Imagine, however, that as the conversation continues, Sarah brings up an assignment that she is completing for her women’s studies class. It turns out that John does not think there should be a women’s studies program at the college, and he tells Sarah so. He argues that if there is a women’s studies program, then there should be a m...

Adjective She has poor social skills. The vacation resort held a lot of social events. I joined the club to improve my social life. Her sister is much more social than she is. social institutions like marriage and family Health care is a major social issue. Child abuse has become a serious social problem. Martin Luther King, Jr., fought for social change. Most humans are social beings. Noun The club has socials every month. He's living on the social now. See More Adjective The show specializes in ratcheting mildly tricky social situations up to unbearable levels of cringe. — Sam Anderson, New York Times, 3 June 2023 The legislation, which includes spending caps and some changes to energy permitting and social programs, passed both houses of Congress overwhelmingly. — Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu, Los Angeles Times, 2 June 2023 Job gains occurred in professional and business services, government, health care, construction, transportation and warehousing, and social assistance. — Alicia Wallace, CNN, 2 June 2023 People will typically come in around a specific pain point: maybe anxiety or social anxiety, or agoraphobia, or depression, PTSD, chronic illness — the list goes on. — Matt Thompson, SPIN, 2 June 2023 Founded in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, UIGISC is a social group formed by like-minded individuals on a quest for financial freedom. — Jon Stojan, USA TODAY, 2 June 2023 The IMDb VIPs are joined by activists like Amanda Nguyen and Diandra Marizet Esparza, and—because thi...

social group, any set of human beings who either are, recently have been, or anticipate being in some kind of interrelation. The term group, or social group, has been used to designate many kinds of aggregations of humans. Aggregations of two members and aggregations that include the total population of a large nation-state have been called groups. One of the earliest and best-known classifications of groups was the American sociologist primary and secondary groups, set forth in his Human Nature and the Social Order (1902). “Primary group” refers to those personal relations that are direct, face-to-face, relatively permanent, and social psychology: Small social groups Historically, many other pairs of terms have been used to classify groups. The German sociologist Still other sets of terms are used, not as bases for distinguishing types of groups but as bases for describing the individual’s relationship to different groups. Thus, the terms we-group and they-group, as well as the terms in-group and out-group, are used in order to contrast a group of which the referent, or focal person, is a member (often, a primary-type group) and some other group—not necessarily different in kind—of which the focal person (and other members of his in-group, or we-group) is not a member and toward which he feels some degree of Another set of distinctions based on the individual’s relationship to the group is expressed by the terms reference group has been used in two ways, to mean either a ...

April Hess April Hess has taught high school math for 6 years in The School District of Philadelphia where she taught Algebra, Geometry, and Algebra II courses. In addition to teaching at high school level, April has 17 years of experience teaching adult education catered to the PA GED and PA HiiSet exams. She also has 20 years experience in one-on-one tutoring in at every math level from elementary to college. April has a Bachelor's Degree in Mathematics Secondary Education (grades 8-12) from Holy Family University. • Instructor What is a Social Category? A social category is a group of people who share common traits or characteristics but do not interact with one another. Commonalities can range from age, gender, race, income level, education level, favorite color, leisure activities, religion, etc. Sharing interests or features puts people in the same social category. Still, it is important to note that a large portion of the definition of a social category is that these people do not interact. Social media is a largely utilized tool for socialization, entertainment, and marketing. People who use Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. are all part of a social category. It is when actual interaction takes place, as in your friends or followers on those platforms, that this social category now becomes a social group. Social Category Examples Many people attend high school, exercise, have blonde hair, and are right-handed, but the chances are these people do not interact with ...

Children grow up learning about these divisions in different ways. For example, children are exposed to language that describes members of different social groups as a coherent unit (e.g., “girls are pretty”), or they are simply exposed to, and observe, the unequal mapping of power, resources, and opportunities to members of distinct social categories. Thus, children essentialize social categories. But to what extent do they essentialize different social categories which are familiar to them? And how does the strength of their social essentialist bias differ based on their cultural environment? Are there, for example, some social categories that are especially susceptible to essentialist reasoning independent of cultural input? In a research study conducted with my colleagues, we investigated some of these questions. Specifically, we presented both children (5 to 10 years old) and adults from two different countries, the U.S. and Turkey, with characters who represented members of different groups of a social category. For example, children and adults saw two characters, with one introduced as a Muslim and the other introduced as a Christian. This primed the social category of religious affiliation for participants. In addition to this category, we also presented participants with characters from different groups of the categories of gender (e.g., boy, girl), nationality (e.g., American, British), socioeconomic status (e.g., rich, poor), and sports-team affiliation (e.g., R...