SOCIOL 1 Study Guide - Final Guide: The Sociological Imagination, Nuclear Family, Human Behavior
Document Summary
September 28: the sociological perspective, sociology as science, sociology is not experimental, can"t be done in labs by using experiments, humans are in context of social groups and institutions. Most actions are not by instinct but by culture. Some even resist instinct, e. g. , starving and suicide: the problem of human variability: sociologists use the scienti c method like other scientists, but the phenomena that we study - human beings - pose special challenges to the researcher. Human behavior is not as predictable as atoms, comets, owers, or rats. Hence, there are no laws of human behavior, as there are laws of physics, because human social patterns change and vary. Conducting controlled experiments in sociology is complicated by the complexity of human social behavior. There are ways of controlling bias, but no sociologist can be completely objective about their subject matter.
