Chapter 3

Building Reality: The Social Construction of Knowledge

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.

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

Culture and Language

• Culture – Material– Non-material

• Language – Vocabulary– Jargon– Euphemisms

Shaping Reality

• Self-fulfilling prophecy– Rosenthal and Jacobson

(1968)– Placebo effect– Nocebo effect– Stereotype threat

• Incorrigible propositions

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?

Who Controls Reality?

• History• Conflict and power• Social institutions– Economy– Politics– Religion– The media

• Moral entrepreneurs

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

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?

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

Thinking Sociologically

• Conflict perspective and the media– Whose voice is not

heard?– Whose perspective is

not represented?– How does this shape

reality?

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

Casual vs. Empirical • Casual 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

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

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

Kinds of Research

• Experimental

• Field research– Non-participant

observation, participant observation

• Unobtrusive research

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

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

Unobtrusive Research

• Researcher does not have direct contact with subjects

• Analysis of existing data

• Content analysis

• Historical analysis

• Visual sociology

Research Tools

• Surveys

• Existing data

• Representative samples

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

Trustworthiness of Social Research

• Samples

• Indicators

• Type of research

• Values, interests, and ethics