SOC 001 Final Quiz Study Guide CHAPTER 13 Asking questions about social class violates a myth in America that all Americans are equal Income the amount of money that an individual or family group receives in wages salaries investments and so on Wealth the total value of the assets owned by an individual or family group minus the amount of debt they have o It is significant because it tends to be more enduring and provides more access to what Weber called life chances o The command over financial resources that a family has accumulated over its lifetime along with those resources that have been accumulated across generations o These resources when combined with income can create the opportunity to secure a good life o Wealth money is not used for life necessities rather to create opportunity secure desired stature and standard of living or pass along class status to one s children Effects of parents social class on children s life chances o Health Mortality death rates and morbidity sickness rates are negatively related to social class EXAMPLE Poverty is related to delays in children s physical development Physically underdeveloped and ill children might become less healthy and hence less employable as adults Poor children are more likely to suffer from psychological distress o Education Parental income has a result on whether children finish high school and attend and graduate from college Kids who didn t attend pre school are disadvantaged compared to kids that did o Working Life Men who grew up in poor families tend to work fewer hours per year and earn less per hour than those who grew up in middle class homes Growing up in poor families reduces men s annual earning ny more than 40 o Crime and Justice Poor people are more likely to be victims of any crime People from lower classes who break the law are more likely to be arrested less likely to be released on bail and more likely to go to prison Cultural Explanations of reproduction o The class structure People in different social classes have different beliefs values and behavioral norms which they pass on to their children Social class patterning of the child s learning as exerted through the family extends from the control of the type of food he eats and the way he eats it to the kinds of sexual aggressive and educational training he receives Lower classes beliefs values and behavioral norms are not very compatible with success in society o Culture of Poverty Turns poverty into a vicious cycle Poverty tends to perpetuate itself from generation to generation Its not so much that the values beliefs and behavioral norms of poor people are bad more to the point is the degree to which these values beliefs and norms are out of whack with those of mainstream society o Structural Explanation of reproduction of class systems Focus on limited access to opportunities that poor people have compared to the more affluent Differences in values beliefs and norms are better explained as the consequences of poverty rather than its causes Not their culture but the lack of opportunities open to the poor that holds them back you can take them out of the environment but you can t take the environment out of them the cultural theories of poverty themselves may be contributing to the problem major cause of poverty is lack of opportunity o Tracking is the process whereby students are divided into categories so that they can be assigned in groups to various kinds of classes o The categories fast average or slow classes based on their scores on o Educators believe that students learn better in groups with each achievement or ability tests others like themselves Tracking and ability grouping has a negative effect on the achievement of lower track or ability grouping students It has a negligible effect on students in the middle groups and a weak to modest positive effect on high track and ability group students Disadvantages to tracking and ability grouping for students in the lower groups in terms of development of negative attitudes and behaviors related to learning Tracking Advantages for future course selection and placement for educational aspirations for high track students The Pygmalion Effect performance o Hypothesized that teachers expectations influenced children s o Gave students a test and the teachers were told that the results of this test could predict how students would do in school during the coming academic year o Teachers were told that 20 of their class were sputters bloomers o The special test was actually just an intelligence test and it could not predict future achievement o One of every 5 children were assignment to the spurter bloomer group o The researchers created an impression in the teachers minds that great things could be expected of some of their students in the coming year o Gave the test again at the end of the year and the children who were expected to spurt made larger gains than nonspurters TABLE 13 2 CHAPTER 14 Dollar is not a Dollar who you are Table 14 1 o The idea is that the dollar is misleading o In reality some peoples dollars cost more and buy less o Even if you have money in hand it will buy more or less depending on o The payoff of a college degree is greater for whites then for Asians blacks or Hispanics and higher for men and women o White males make more money across the charts Asians only make more money than whites if they come out with some college degree o White women are different than white men Asian women make more money with a bachelors degree than Being a female depresses women s income throughout their them careers Figure 14 2 o Blacks are more likely to be denied a mortgage o This is evidence for why a dollar is not a dollar Prejudice vs Discrimination Prejudice involves a prejudgment or a judgment of some thing person or situation on the basis of prior experience with similar things persons or situations o Learning by experience o Difference between Prejudice and Prejudgment o Prejudice Prejudice is based on inaccurate info and or illogical arguments It is an unjustified prejudgment Prejudice involves prejudgment and misjudgment Prejudices have a way of slithering around the fact in order to find ways of justifying ill feelings toward members of another group Sustained by stereotypes They deny the existence of individual differences among the members of a specific social category o Discrimination Behaviors Merton suggests that just as not all people who are prejudice practice discrimination