LEARNING GOALS:
1.Explain how culture and heredity affect social behavior.
2.What are the criticisms of sociobiology?
3. Where do norms come from and how to they affect our
behavior? List 3 types of norms.
4. Why does culture change? Is cultural change good?
5. Does ethnocentrism help or hurt a society?
6. Identify similarities in cultures around the world. Why
are there similarities in cultures around the world?
CULTURE
Knowledge, values, customs and physical objects that are shared by
members of a society.
Society: specific territory inhabited by people who share a common
culture
DOES CULTURE OR BIOLOGY AFFECT
BEHAVIOR?
Both!
Why is culture more important than biology? We are not
controlled by our instincts because we don’t need
them to survive anymore. Ex: Eating when you are not
hungry.
HEREDITY AND BEHAVIOR
About ½ of our personality traits come from genes.
REFLEXES AND DRIVES
Eat, drink, associate with others, react to pain.
BUT expression of our reflexes and drives can be dif based on
culture. Ex: Be a MAN! Don’t cry!
SOCIOBIOLOGY
The study of the biological basis for human behavior.
Assumes that the behaviors that best help people are biologically
based and transmitted through the genetic code.
CRITICISMS OF SOCIOBIOLOGY
1.Can be used as justification for racial
inferiority
2.Too much variation in societies around
the world for behavior to be explained
with biology
Main lesson: genes work WITH culture.
Men and women prefer different things in
romantic partners. Is this biological?
HOW ARE LANGUAGE AND CULTURE RELATED
Language is a way to create and spread culture.
Easy way to transmit culture.
Exposure to another language or new words can alter
perception.
CULTURAL RELATIVISM
Story of girl who wanted to build a well in Africa…..
NORMS AND VALUES
Norms: the rules we live by. May not even think about them unless
violated. Ex: cutting in line.
3 TYPES OF NORMS
Folkways, mores, and laws.
Folkways: norms that lack moral significance ex: sleep in
bed not floor
Mores: norms that have morals that should be followed:
if you can work you SHOULD work.
Taboo: most serious mores: violation calls for strong
punishment
Laws: norm that is FORMALLY defined and enforced by
officials. Consciously created while mores emerge
slowly and are often created unconsciously
ENFORCING THE RULES
Rules must be learned and accepted.
How? Sanctions! Rewards and punishments used to
encourage people to follow norms.
Informal Sanctions: can be applied by most members of
a group (ex stare at someone who talks during a
movie
Formal Sanctions: only applied by officially designated
people like judges or teachers.
As we age, we start to conform w/our sanctions because
we want to avoid guilt or social disapproval.
VALUES: BASIS FOR NORMS
Shared broad ideas about what is good or desirable.
Note: people can have similar values with dif norms. Ex: US and
Soviet Union had value of freedom but they had very dif norms in
their society.
WHY ARE VALUES IMPORTANT?
They form the basis for norms.
Involved in most aspects of daily life.
Ideal of freedom in Americas affects family relationships, how people are treated in
the legal systems, worship, and running of organizations.
BASIC VALUES OF THE US
Achievement and success
Activity and work
Efficiency and practicality
Equality
Democracy
Group superiority (place greater value on people of own race)
Some think honesty, optimism and friendliness should be added to
this list.
BELIEFS AND MATERIAL CULTURE
Behavior based on beliefs.
Material culture: the concrete tangible objects of a culture: cars,
books, chairs….. No meaning unless people give it to them
Non-material culture: cultural meaning not determined by physical
characteristics of objects. Based on beliefs, norms and values
people hold w/regards to them. Newspaper and Pepper story (p93)
IDEAL AND REAL CULTURE
Ideal: cultural guidelines that group members claim to accept.
(honesty)
Real: actual behavior patterns (tax evasion)
CULTURAL DIVERSITY AND SIMILARITY
Why does culture change?
1. Discovery: women can play sports!
2. Invention: creation of something new (cell phones, i-pods ,
facebook have big effect on life)
3. Diffusion: borrowing aspects of culture from other cultures. Ex:
pizza hut, KFC all over the world
FACEBOOK DEBATE!
Read articles together:
http://www.sociology.org/featured/friend
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/itslideshow/5916773.cms
Discuss!
CULTURAL DIVERSITY
Some is result of social categories: grouping of persons
that share a social characteristic: age, gender,
religion……….
SUBCULTURES AND COUNTERCULTURE
Subculture: part of dominant culture but differs in some important respects.
Ex: China town in San Francisco
Counterculture: subculture deliberately and consciously opposed to certain
cultural beliefs or attitudes of dominant culture. Ex: white
supremacists.
ETHNOCENTRISM
When people learn their culture and tend to be strongly committed
to it and cannot imagine any other way of life.
Olympics!
DOES ETHNOCENTRISM HELP OR HURT
SOCIETY?
Both! People feel good about themselves in a group- leads to
stability, traditions…
BUT if a society is too rigid, it can prevent change for the better.
CULTURAL UNIVERSALS
Traits that exist in all cultures (over 70!) p 107 sports, cooking,
division of labor….
How are they expressed? Different for dif cultures. EX: caring for
kids: U.S.: mostly done by women. New Guinea: men
WHY DO CULTURAL UNIVERSALS EXIST?
1. Biological similarity shared by all humans. Ex: childcare
necessary for survival of species.
2. Physical Environment: All people need to protect themselves from
environment with things like shelter, armies etc…
3. Social Problems: Goods must be produced and distributed, tasks
must be assigned, work must be accomplished and dif cultures
develop similar methods of solving these problems.
REVIEW:
1.Explain how culture and heredity affect social behavior.
2.What are the criticisms of sociobiology?
3. Where do norms come from and how to they affect our
behavior? List 3 types of norms.
4. Why does culture change? Is cultural change good?
5. Does ethnocentrism help or hurt a society?
6. Identify similarities in cultures around the world. Why
are there similarities in cultures around the world?
SOCIAL NORMS EXPERIMENT
I Learning Objective(s)
Learning to understand what social norms are and how
they affect us.
II Rationale for Objectives
Hands-on experience with social norms.
III Materials
IV Procedures
(1) Introduction
(2) Activity
(1) Break a social norm of dress/attire. (Caution: do not
wear anything illegal, dangerous, or extremely
disruptive.) Try dressing in female clothes if you are
male. Wear formal attire to a casual get together. Wear
a winter jacket in the summer. Wear sandals in the
snow. Wear stripes with polka dots. Wear an unstylish
or outdated outfit.
(2) Next, interact with others and observe their
responses while wearing your norm-breaking outfit.
(3) Discussion
Did you experience sanctions? Were there subtle
punishments for breaking social norms? How does
conforming to and violating social norms fit into the
lifelong process of socialization?
(4) Summary
Takes 30 minutes in class, about an hour outside of class.
V Evaluation/Assignment
Write a short summary of your experiences and
interpretations.
VI SupplementaryReadings
Your textbook will have relevant readings on social norms,
deviance and labeling.