Understanding Society: Key Concepts and Definitions
Key Concepts of Social Structures and Human Behavior
Power and Institutions
Power: Physical or material ability. Power compels others to obey and brings an end to resistance.
Institutions: Ordered systems with common interests that perform social functions.
Organizations: A set of people with a common objective.
Groups: Entities with differentiated parts: primary, secondary, and reference groups.
Ideology, Utopia, and Norms
Ideology: Values and beliefs that give rise to feelings and objectives, aiming to meet societal needs. Their duration of change depends on how many people desire that change.
Utopia: A desire to transform an absurd reality into a better one (e.g., the desire for peace).
Rules: Regulations to maintain order in society.
Values, Beliefs and Social Customs
Value: Chosen preferences within a group. Ethics are principles that help us distinguish between good and bad. Morality tells us what we should and should not do (stages of moral development: fear of punishment, selfishness, desire to please, autonomous morality).
Beliefs: Opinions based on representation, often related to religion.
Traditions: Social and political events that unite a group.
Customs: Habitual actions of a group throughout their life.
Socialization and Personal Development
Socialization: The process by which a person is introduced to the knowledge of a group and society. We learn what is needed to enter social relationships and live with others.
Resocialization: Re-teaching after desocialization.
Education: When someone helps a person to bring out their best qualities.
Experience: Events that happen to us, through which we acquire roles and develop.
Knowledge: All ideas, encompassing cerebral and psychic aspects.
Learning and Personality
Learning: A personal process that improves our knowledge. It involves modifying what we know or trying to add to it. Not everything accumulated is learning.
Personality: Formed by physical, psychological, cultural, and social factors. It is the individual difference that distinguishes each person.
Character: Anatomic or functional features. It is inherited, not acquired.
Temperament: Character, or how individuals react.
Subjectivity and Personality Pathology
Subjectivity: Joining together to achieve objectives based on one’s own reasons, regardless of others (existential, positional, historical).
Personality Pathology: Pathological features, including:
- Hysteria: Defense in situations one cannot resolve.
- Phobias/Neurosis: Not accepting reality (e.g., being fired).
- Psychosis: Without conscience, creating an alternate reality.
- Paranoia: Crazy, invented ideas that are believed to be real (e.g., jealousy).
Emotions, Intelligence, and Attitudes
Feelings: Learned, quick responses to life situations.
Emotions: Feelings and thoughts; altered, intense, and transient moods that lead to impulsive actions.
Intelligence: Ability to understand and solve problems; skill and experience.
Desire, Passion and Attitudes
Emotional Building: Requires cognitive, evaluative, and appetitive parts. For example, a person who does not hear a noise, believes it is a thief, takes a gun, shoots a shadow, and it turns out to be his daughter.
Desire: Affective movement towards something that appears in the unconscious and is, therefore, repressed.
Passion: Uncontrollable desire.
Attitude: State of mind manifested in some way, involving knowledge, feelings, intentions, and beliefs (cognitive, affective, behavioral).
Values, Stereotypes, and Social Roles
Value: The degree of fitness of things to meet needs or provide comfort. Values enhance our decisions and help us know what is good or bad.
Stereotypes: Commonly accepted images or ideas of a group or society; shared thoughts.
Prejudice: One’s own thinking, transmitted by parents.
Status: The position a person occupies in society or within a group, implying acceptance and prestige.
Role: A function or activity that one fulfills.