End Of The Spiral Model

Chapter 3 of Essential of Sociology: A Down-to-Earth Approach by James M. Henslin discusses the topic of socialization, which is the process by which people learn the characteristics of their group—the knowledge, attitudes, skills, norms, values, and actions thought appropriate for them. Sociologists try to determine how much of a person’s characteristics comes from “nature” (heredity) and how much from “nurture” (social environment). Studying feral, isolated, and institutionalized children, such as The Skeels/Dye Experiment, have helped them understand how “society makes us human.” The theories and research of Charles Horton Cooley, George Herbert Mead, and Piaget to explain socialization into the self and mind. Cooley’s looking-glass self theory focuses on how we believe others perceive us.

This is modeled by the fact that people being in groups, causes them to act and think differently than they would have if they had been alone. In her essay, Tavris uses many examples of this: In the case of Kitty Genovese or the late Rodney King who was beat to death by police officers. People have a tendency to act differently in groups, others suffer due to people not wanting to “rock the boat” or they do not want to “embarrass themselves or others if they are wrong” (19). Tavris offers a solution to the way people act in groups, “By understanding the impulse to diffuse responsibility, perhaps as individuals we will be more likely to act. By understanding the social pressures that reward group-think, loyalty and obedience, we can foster those that reward whistle blowing and moral courage. And, as a society, we can reinforce the belief that they also sing who stand and watch” (19). If civilization can solve the dilemma of people acting differently when they are in groups with others, the world could be a much improved place.

Critics of Smith's and Friedman's theories contend that they neglect the need for cooperation and teamwork in society, and that chaos can be avoided only with heavy policing of self-interested behavior. Proponents of the invisible hand counter that individuals will usually pursue cooperation and self-regulation because it is in their own interest.

Social influences shape every person's practices, judgments, and beliefs. (Asch 306) In "Opinions and Social Pressure", Solomon Asch examines how individuals tend to conform to a group or majority. He does this by explaining the results of his experiment that he devised to observe to what extent conformity occurs. In her essay titled "Group Minds", Doris Lessing claims that as a society we have enough knowledge about conformity to do something about it, yet we choose not to. Although Doris Lessing and Solomon Asch both suggest that people desire independence yet yield to conformity, Asch's experiment adds specificity to Lessing's claims. Lessing speaks generally about groups and the effect they have on conformity, whereas Asch's experiment

1. After the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese, John Darley and Bibb Latane were in shock as the rest of the city/world that a 28 year old lady could be stabbed in a neighborhood with about 38 by standers or more and say or do nothing. Why didn’t anyone try and help her? How could people stand by and watch this go on? People speculated that the failure of people to get involved might be due more to the influence (socially) that bystanders have on each other. To test this theory, Darley and Latane, two psychologists, decided to conduct a study. “Diffusion of Responsibility” Everyone hopes that someone else will be the first to step up

The assumption with this theory is that those neighborhoods that are disorganized and messy will have higher crime rates than neighborhoods that are clean and orderly. In neighborhoods that are messy and disorganized, it starts to become the norm, and there starts to become less control that leads to disorder and crime.

Sutherland’s theory piggyback on Social Disorganization theory by answering some of the critic’s questions about why only some people in crime-prone neighbors commit crime while many others do not. While Aker’s theory pick up where Sutherland

When analyzing social patterns and behaviors, is there a significant difference between the psychology of an individual and groups? Collective and individual behavior is surprisingly similar, and depending on the circumstances, identical. In Charles Siebert essay “An Elephant Crackup,” he validates to readers, through social elephant narratives and herd mentality theory, that similarly to an individual elephant all elephants behave in similar ways. Furthermore, Sherry Turkle in selections from her work Alone Together accounts

In other words, this theory is based on how the external factors of society affect individuals and their behavior.

The social disorganization theory is directed towards social conditions. This theory argues that crime is due to social conflicts, change, and lack of consensus in the group.

As human beings, each person on earth possesses a desire to belong. In order to meet this need, one must find a way to fit in with a group. Yet somehow, once a group has been joined, humans tend to take on the ideas and opinions of the group without analyzing the situation for themselves. Doris Lessing, in her essay, “Group Minds”, proposes the idea that humans spend their whole life going along with the group because they fail to analyze the reasons behind their actions. While Lessing’s idea is valid, no one has yet successfully implemented her plan.

For this paper, I will be examining Peter Hedstrom and Richard Swedberg’s contribution to the literature on Social Mechanisms, and review the more salient

One of the facets of living within civilized society is that there are certain norms and social conventions that people must follow. Frequently, there is a large effort on the part of government, financial, and social institutions to keep people doing most of the same thing as others going to work, driving cars, buying homes, etc. Despite the fact that people engage in these efforts individually, the simple fact that they are all attempting to do the same thing, in much the same way, is indicative of the fact that they are engaged in collective behavior. THESIS: Those who are able to overcome collective behavior and allow for their individuality to determine their own outcomes exemplify the best of human nature.

2) Which drives people to withdraw into a small, enclosed world consisting of their family and a few select friends, leaving the rest of society to its own devices.

This theory is defined on how members within a community feel about themselves as well as their behavior