CLEP Introductory Sociology cheat sheet

Sociology studies human society and social behavior using systematic observation rather than intuition or common sense.

C. Wright Mills's sociological imagination links personal troubles to public issues shaped by larger social structure.

Auguste Comte coined the term sociology and proposed positivism, applying scientific method to social study.

Emile Durkheim distinguished social facts, external and coercive patterns, and used suicide rates to demonstrate them.

Max Weber introduced verstehen (interpretive understanding) and described ideal types as analytical models.

Karl Marx analyzed class conflict rooted in control of the means of production and the resulting alienation of labor.

Functionalist theory treats society as interdependent parts serving stability; conflict theory emphasizes inequality and power; symbolic interactionism focuses on meaning created in face-to-face interaction.

Correlation does not establish causation; valid causal claims require temporal order, association, and ruling out spurious variables.

Independent variables are manipulated or hypothesized causes; dependent variables are the outcomes measured.

Norms are shared expectations for behavior; folkways are mild customs, mores are strongly held, and laws are formalized and enforced.

Status is a social position; ascribed status is assigned at birth or without choice, achieved status is earned, and master status overrides others.

A role is the set of expectations attached to a status; role conflict occurs between roles, role strain within a single role.

A primary group is small, intimate, and enduring (family, close friends); a secondary group is larger, impersonal, and goal-oriented.

Gemeinschaft describes community ties based on kinship and shared tradition; Gesellschaft describes impersonal, contractual urban ties.

Deviance is behavior violating significant norms; it is socially defined and varies across cultures and time.

Durkheim argued deviance is functional by clarifying norms, uniting conformists, and prompting social change.

Merton's strain theory: deviance results when culturally valued goals exceed legitimate means; adaptations include conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion.

Labeling theory holds that deviance is a status conferred by social reaction; primary deviance precedes labeling, secondary deviance follows it.

Socialization is the lifelong process of learning culture and acquiring a self; primary socialization occurs in childhood, secondary later in life.

Mead's stages: imitation, play (taking the role of specific others), and game (internalizing the generalized other).

Cooley's looking-glass self: we imagine how we appear, imagine others' judgments, and develop self-feeling from that.

Freud's model divides personality into id (instinct), ego (reality mediator), and superego (internalized norms).

Agents of socialization include family, school, peers, and mass media; family is typically the earliest and most influential.

Resocialization involves replacing prior norms, often in total institutions such as prisons or the military.

Assimilation is minority adoption of dominant-group culture; multiculturalism or pluralism preserves distinct identities.

Collective behavior (crowds, fads, panics) is relatively spontaneous and unstructured; social movements are organized and sustained efforts at change.

Social change is driven by technology, population shifts, social movements, and cultural diffusion.

Stratification is hierarchical ranking of groups with unequal access to valued resources; it is a structural, not merely individual, arrangement.

Caste systems assign rank at birth with little mobility; class systems permit movement based on achievement and allow intergenerational mobility.

Socioeconomic status combines income, occupational prestige, and educational attainment.

Functionalist theory (Davis and Moore) argues stratification motivates filling important roles; conflict theory argues it preserves elite advantage.

Marx defined class by relationship to the means of production (bourgeoisie and proletariat); Weber added status and party to class.

Absolute poverty is falling below a fixed subsistence threshold; relative poverty is falling below the standard of one's society.

Race is a social construct based on perceived physical traits; ethnicity is shared cultural heritage and identity.

Racism operates at individual, institutional, and structural levels; institutional discrimination persists within rules and practices.

Gender stratification refers to unequal distribution of power, wealth, and opportunity between men and women.

Institutions are enduring clusters of norms and roles organized around basic social needs such as family, education, religion, economy, and government.

Nuclear family is parents and children; extended family includes additional kin; endogamy requires marriage within a group, exogamy outside it.

Matrilineal descent traces lineage through the mother, patrilineal through the father, bilateral through both.

Monogamy is one spouse at a time; polygamy includes polygyny (multiple wives) and polyandry (multiple husbands).

Functionalist views of education stress socialization and skill transmission; conflict views stress reproduction of inequality through tracking and hidden curriculum.

Sacred and profane are Durkheim's categories of religious life; religion functions to create social cohesion and shared meaning.

Weber's Protestant ethic thesis linked ascetic religious values to the rise of capitalist economic behavior.

Power is the capacity to influence; authority is legitimate power, classified by Weber as traditional, charismatic, and rational-legal.

Medicine functions as a social institution; the sick role (Parsons) grants exemptions from duties in exchange for seeking help and wanting to recover.

Social mobility types: vertical (up or down), horizontal (lateral), intergenerational (across generations), intragenerational (within a lifetime).

Open systems permit achieved status and mobility; closed systems rely on ascribed status and restrict movement.

The Gini coefficient measures income inequality from 0 (perfect equality) to 1 (perfect inequality).

Quintile income shares compare the income of each fifth of households to reveal distribution and inequality trends.

The poverty line is an absolute income threshold; the poverty rate is the share of the population below it.

Cultural capital (Bourdieu) is knowledge, tastes, and credentials that confer advantage; social capital is value from networks and connections.

Status attainment research links parental status, education, and occupation across generations.

Intersectionality holds that race, class, and gender interact to produce distinct experiences of advantage and disadvantage.

Economy types: subsistence, market, and planned; division of labor increases productivity but can produce alienation (Marx) and anomie (Durkheim).

Bureaucracy (Weber) features division of labor, hierarchy, written rules, impersonal relations, and merit-based employment; its dysfunctions include ritualism and oligarchy.

Political systems distribute power; democracy rests on participation and accountability, authoritarian systems concentrate power.

Social institutions are interdependent: change in the economy (e.g., industrialization) typically alters family structure and education.

Health disparities follow socioeconomic gradients; higher SES is associated with better health outcomes.

Medicalization is the process by which previously nonmedical conditions come to be defined and treated as medical problems.

Symbolic interaction: meaning arises in interaction; the definition of the situation shapes behavior.

Goffman's dramaturgy: presentation of self involves front stage and back stage, impression management, and face-work.

Exchange theory treats interaction as cost-benefit exchange; rational choice extends this to social decisions.

Ethnomethodology studies the methods people use to produce and interpret everyday social order.

Diffusion is the spread of cultural traits; invention creates new traits; discovery finds previously unknown phenomena.

Social movements advance through stages: emergence, coalescence, bureaucratization, and decline.

Modernization involves industrialization, urbanization, and rationalization; dependency theory attributes global inequality to core-periphery exploitation.

Demographic transition: high birth and death rates shift to low birth and death rates as societies industrialize.