1. Building Reality: The Social Construction of Knowledge
Chapter 3
Building Reality: The Social Construction of Knowledge

2. What Makes Truth? What is a healthy level of cholesterol?
What is Pluto?
What’s a bug?
What is your currency worth?
These ideas are social constructions.

3. Social Construction of Reality
The process through which the members of a society discover, make known, reaffirm, and alter a collective version of facts, knowledge, and “truth”
Which is maintained and changed through
Culture
Language

4. Culture and Language Culture Language Material Non-material Vocabulary
Jargon
Euphemisms

5. Shaping Reality Self-fulfilling prophecy Incorrigible propositions
Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968)
Placebo effect
Nocebo effect
Stereotype threat
Incorrigible propositions

6. Thinking Sociologically
How does what is considered to be “true” or “reality” change from one culture to the next, and from one historical period to the next?
What examples can you think of that show how culture and reality have changed over time?

7. Who Controls Reality? History Conflict and power Social institutions
Economy
Politics
Religion
The media
Moral entrepreneurs

8. Conflict Perspective
Certain groups or people are more influential in defining reality than others
Reality is often based on the interests of powerful people, groups, organizations, and institutions
Moral entrepreneurs seek to shape their morality into law

9. Media News is a constructed reality Economics: Who owns access?
By 2009 six companies owned over half of all media outlets
Time: What gets left out?
Spin: Whose perspective is represented?

10. Moral Entrepreneurs
Individual (and small-group) efforts to control the construction of reality
Not necessarily wealthy or influential
Good at using publicity and public relations

11. Thinking Sociologically
Conflict perspective and the media
Whose voice is not heard?
Whose perspective is not represented?
How does this shape reality?

12. Doing Sociological Research
Casual research vs. empirical research
Probabilistic research
Looks at the likelihood of an event occurring (probability)
Rarely makes absolute predictions
Tries to take into account exceptions and variations

13. Casual vs. Empirical Casual research Empirical research
What we do every day as we observe our surroundings and draw conclusions about what we see
Empirical research
Seeks generalizability (representative sample)
Systematic, controlled observation
Theoretical basis for method of study

14. Approaches to Sociological Research
Qualitative
Research based on non-numerical information that describes social life (text, written words, phrases, symbols, observations)
Quantitative
Research based on the collection of numerical data that utilizes precise statistical analysis

15. Key Terms in Social Research
Theory
Hypothesis
Variables
Independent: the one that may cause the change
Dependent: the one you are looking at to see what happens
Indicators
Spurious relationships

16. Kinds of Research Experimental Field research Unobtrusive research
Non-participant observation, participant observation
Unobtrusive research

17. Experiment
A research situation designed to elicit some sort of behavior under closely controlled laboratory circumstances
Advantages
Able to study causal relationships
Easy to replicate
Disadvantages
Not a natural environment
Hard to measure many sociological concepts in a lab

18. Field Research Direct observation of people in their natural settings
Advantages:
Provides detailed and descriptive understandings of people’s everyday lives
Generally inexpensive to conduct
Disadvantages:
Time consuming
Difficult to replicate
Difficult to generalize to other groups
Reactivity: the Hawthorne effect
Particularly susceptible to ethical issues

19. Unobtrusive Research
Researcher does not have direct contact with subjects
Analysis of existing data
Content analysis
Historical analysis
Visual sociology

20. Research Tools
Surveys
Existing data
Representative samples

21. Surveys Data collected through questionnaires or interviews Advantages
Large population can be studied
Random, representative samples
Results can be generalized
Disadvantages
Little in-depth information about people’s behavior or experiences
Questions need to be correctly worded

22. Trustworthiness of Social Research
Samples
Indicators
Type of research
Values, interests, and ethics