Sociology Chapter 15

Front 1

social change

Back 1

the alteration of society over time

Front 2

collective behavior

Back 2

a relatively unorganized and unpredictable social behavior; panics, crowds, fashions, rumors, public opinion, social movements

Front 3

institutionalized behavior

Back 3

well-organized and rather predictable; everyone gets up and goes to work every day, etc

Front 4

Neil Smelser

Back 4

sociologist who theorized the six factors necessary to produce collective behavior

Front 5

Six factors that produce collective behavior (according to Neil Smelser)

Back 5

1. Structural conduciveness(be organized)
2. Social strain
3. Growth and spread of a generalized belief about the social strain
4. A precipitating factor
5. Movilization of participants for action (leaders emerge)
6. Inadequate social control (agents of control like the police fail to prevent the collective action)

Front 6

panic

Back 6

type of collective behavior characterized by a maladaptive, fruitless response to a serious threat; involves irrational and uncooperative flight and loss of self-control (people leaving a burning theater stampeding instead of filing out in an orderly way)

Front 7

mass hysteria

Back 7

numerous people engage in frenzied activity without bothering to check the source of the fear (radio show)

Front 8

crowd

Back 8

a collection of people temporarily doing something while in proximity to one another

Front 9

collective mind

Back 9

all the people in a crowd think, feel, and act alike

Front 10

social contagion

Back 10

the spreading of a certain emotion and action from one member of the crowd to another (affected by crowd size and noise); the reason people become a part of the collective mind