After reading and studying Chapter Five, the student should be able to:
- Define group and distinguish among group, aggregate, category
- Distinguish between and describe characteristics of primary and secondary groups and in-groups and out-groups and the implications each holds for human behavior.
- Describe the functions served by voluntary organizations and understand why they frequently become oligarchies.
- Define reference groups and discuss how they can influence behavior.
- Define social networks and how networks can develop into cliques.
- Discuss the electronic community and its potential impact on social relationships.
- Define the bureaucracy and the five essential characteristics of bureaucracies as identified by Max Weber.
- Discuss how bureaucracies perpetuate themselves and become more and more dominant in social life through a process Weber called the rationalization of society.
- Discuss the McDonaldization of Society, its primary features, and apply it to university life.
- Discuss how U.S. and Japanese corporations are alike and different in theory and how they are alike and different in reality.
- Understand group dynamics and distinguish between dyads and triads and describe how group size affects group behavior.
- Explain the difference between the two types of group leaders and the three styles of leadership.
- Discuss the characteristics of people who become leaders and how leadership type is influenced by the situation.
- Discuss the findings of the Asch and Milgram experiments and the ethical questions these experiments raise.
- Define groupthink and apply it to national and international activities such as the two space shuttle disasters and the second Gulf War. Provide reasons why the second Gulf War is a better example of groupthink than the first Gulf War of 1991.
- Discuss how groupthink can be avoided.
- Understand how our own social networks perpetuate social inequality.
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