Society, Human Behaviour and Communities
What it is
Unit II supplies the social-science base of practice: how society is organised and explained, how people develop and behave across the life span, how attitudes and crowds form, and how Indian communities, castes, classes and vulnerable groups are structured. Most items test attribution: which theorist, which stage, which scale.
Core concepts
Social structure, institutions and groups. Radcliffe-Brown saw social structure as the network of actually existing social relations. Linton (1936) split status into ascribed and achieved and called role its dynamic aspect; Merton added the role-set. Institutions are established norm clusters around basic needs. Cooley's primary group is face-to-face, intimate and cooperative. Sumner gave in-group and out-group; Hyman coined reference group, which Merton developed; Tönnies contrasted Gemeinschaft (community) with Gesellschaft (association).
Socialisation, social control and social change. Cooley's looking-glass self and Mead's "I" and "me", play and game stages and generalised other explain how the self forms. Primary socialisation happens in the family, secondary beyond it; anticipatory socialisation (Merton) rehearses a future role; resocialisation occurs in total institutions (Goffman, Asylums, 1961). E.A. Ross coined "social control" (1901); it is informal (folkways, mores) or formal (law, courts). Change theories are evolutionary (Comte's theological, metaphysical and positive stages; Spencer), cyclical (Spengler, Toynbee, Sorokin), conflict-based (Marx), and Ogburn's cultural lag, where material culture outpaces non-material culture.
Approaches: functionalist and conflict. Functionalism (Durkheim, Parsons, Merton) sees interdependent parts tending to equilibrium. Parsons' AGIL names four functional prerequisites: adaptation, goal attainment, integration and latency (pattern maintenance). Merton separated manifest from latent functions and added dysfunction. The conflict or dialectical approach sees struggle over scarce resources: Marx's historical materialism sets the economic base beneath the superstructure and recasts Hegel's dialectic as class struggle; Dahrendorf roots conflict in authority; Coser (1956) showed conflict can integrate groups.
Approaches: structuralism and postmodernism. Structuralism seeks deep, unconscious structures. Saussure's langue (system) and parole (speech) inspired Lévi-Strauss, who read kinship (alliance theory) and myth through binary oppositions such as nature and culture. Postmodernism rejects grand theory: Lyotard (1979) described it as disbelief in metanarratives; Baudrillard wrote of simulacra and hyperreality; Foucault tied power to knowledge and discourse; Derrida's deconstruction exposes unstable binaries.
Family and religion as social systems. Murdock (1949) held the nuclear family universal, with four functions: sexual, reproductive, economic and educational. Parsons kept two: primary socialisation and stabilisation of adult personalities. Durkheim (Elementary Forms, 1912) defined religion through the sacred and the profane; Marx called it "the opium of the people"; Weber's Protestant Ethic linked Calvinist asceticism to capitalism.
Social stratification. Marxist: class is set by relation to the means of production, bourgeoisie against proletariat; a class in itself becomes a class for itself through class consciousness. Functionalist: Davis and Moore (1945) argued unequal rewards are functionally necessary to fill important positions with scarce talent; Tumin (1953) replied that stratification wastes talent and breeds hostility. Weberian: stratification is multidimensional, with class (market situation and life chances), status (social honour) and party (power), which need not coincide.
Human behaviour and the life span. Abnormality is judged by statistical deviance, norm violation, distress, dysfunction and danger, never one criterion alone; behaviour is determined by heredity, environment, maturation and learning. Hurlock's periods are prenatal (conception to birth), infancy (birth to two weeks), babyhood (two weeks to two years), early childhood (2–6), late childhood (6 to sexual maturity), puberty (roughly 10–14, overlapping both neighbours), adolescence (to 18), early adulthood (18–40), middle age (40–60) and old age (60 onward). Havighurst's developmental tasks arise at a given period; success eases later tasks, failure brings disapproval and later difficulty. Hazards range from teratogens before birth to identity crises in adolescence and vocational strain in adulthood.
Theories of personality. Psychoanalytic: Freud's id (pleasure principle), ego (reality principle) and superego; oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital stages; defences such as repression and projection. Neo-Freudians: Jung (collective unconscious, archetypes), Adler (inferiority, striving for superiority), Horney (basic anxiety) and Erikson, whose eight crises run from trust vs mistrust to integrity vs despair. Behavioural: Pavlov's classical and Skinner's operant conditioning, and Bandura's social learning (observational learning, self-efficacy, reciprocal determinism). Humanistic: Maslow's hierarchy (physiological, safety, belongingness, esteem, self-actualisation) and Rogers' self theory (congruence, unconditional positive regard).
Social perception, attitudes and communication. Heider's attribution theory separates internal from external causes; Kelley's covariation model uses consensus, consistency and distinctiveness; the fundamental attribution error over-weights dispositions in others. Attitudes have affective, behavioural and cognitive (ABC) components. Change theories: Festinger's cognitive dissonance, Heider's balance theory, the Yale (Hovland) source–message–audience approach and Petty and Cacioppo's elaboration likelihood model. Measurement: Thurstone's equal-appearing intervals, Likert's summated ratings, Bogardus' social distance scale, Guttman's cumulative scalogram and Osgood's semantic differential. Lasswell asks who says what, in which channel, to whom, with what effect; Shannon–Weaver adds noise.
Theories of collective behaviour. Le Bon's contagion theory (The Crowd, 1895) says a collective mind overrides individual reason. Convergence theory says like-minded people gather; Turner and Killian's emergent-norm theory says new norms arise in the situation. Smelser's value-added theory (1962) needs six determinants: structural conduciveness, structural strain, a generalised belief, precipitating factors, mobilisation for action and the operation of social control.
Communities, vulnerable groups, caste and class. Redfield's folk–urban continuum frames rural communities; Wirth (1938) defined urbanism by size, density and heterogeneity. Scheduled Tribes are notified under Article 342 and Scheduled Castes under Article 341; Census 2011 put SCs at 16.6% and STs at 8.6% of the population. Rheingold popularised "virtual community". Women, children, the aged and Dalits face layered disadvantage; the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989 protects SCs and STs. Ghurye listed six features of caste: segmental division, hierarchy, restrictions on feeding and social intercourse, civil and religious disabilities and privileges, restricted choice of occupation, and endogamy. Caste is ascribed, closed and ranked by purity and pollution (Dumont); class is achieved, open and economic.
Worked example
Scoring a Likert scale with reverse-keyed items. Five items measure attitude toward inclusive schooling, scored 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Items 2 and 4 are negatively worded, so each is reverse-scored as 6 − response.
| Item | Direction | A raw | A scored | B raw | B scored |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Positive | 4 | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| 2 | Negative | 2 | 4 | 4 | 2 |
| 3 | Positive | 5 | 5 | 1 | 1 |
| 4 | Negative | 1 | 5 | 5 | 1 |
| 5 | Positive | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| Total | All items | 15 | 21 | 15 | 9 |
- Reverse the negative items. A: 6 − 2 = 4 and 6 − 1 = 5. B: 6 − 4 = 2 and 6 − 5 = 1.
- Sum. A: 4 + 4 + 5 + 5 + 3 = 21. B: 2 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 3 = 9.
- Locate. The range is 5 × 1 = 5 to 5 × 5 = 25, midpoint 5 × 3 = 15. A (21, mean 4.2) is favourable; B (9, mean 1.8) is unfavourable.
Both raw totals were 15: unreversed, opposite attitudes both read as neutral.
Common traps
- Crediting Cooley with in-group and out-group: those are Sumner's; Cooley gave the primary group and the looking-glass self.
- Swapping Hurlock's infancy (birth to two weeks) and babyhood (two weeks to two years).
- Treating Davis and Moore as critics of inequality: they defended it as functional; Tumin was the critic.
- Mixing the scales: Thurstone uses judges and median scale values, Likert sums ratings, Guttman is cumulative.
Speed technique
- AGIL in order: Adaptation (economy), Goal attainment (polity), Integration (norms), Latency (family and school).
- Weber's three orders map to three goods: class to wealth, status to honour, party to power.
- Scale keywords: Thurstone, judges; Likert, sum; Guttman, cumulative; Bogardus, distance; Osgood, bipolar adjectives.
Check yourself
- In Parsons' AGIL scheme, what does L stand for?
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Latency, or pattern maintenance — sustaining values, chiefly via family and school. - In Hurlock's scheme, which period runs from two weeks to two years?
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Babyhood — infancy covers only birth to two weeks. - What are Weber's three dimensions of stratification?
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Class, status and party — economic position, social honour and power. - Which attitude scale has judges sort statements into equal-appearing intervals?
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The Thurstone scale — each item's scale value is the judges' median rating. - Which theory of collective behaviour needs six determinants, from structural conduciveness to social control?
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Smelser's value-added theory — each determinant narrows the possible outcomes.
Try it: Society, Human Behaviour and Communities questions
Real questions from the NET Social Work bank on exactly this skill. Pick an answer to see the full solution — the intuition, the worked steps, the faster methods and the traps.
In Erikson's psychosocial theory, the crisis characteristic of adolescence is:
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Answer: option C
Erikson's eight psychosocial stages run from trust versus mistrust in infancy to integrity versus despair in old age.
In adolescence, the fifth stage, the young person must form a coherent sense of who they are, so the crisis is identity versus role confusion; industry versus inferiority comes just before it and intimacy versus isolation just after.
So the adolescent crisis is identity versus role confusion, option C.
According to Piaget, the stage in which a child first masters conservation, understanding that a quantity stays the same when its shape changes, is the:
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Answer: option B
Piaget's stages are sensorimotor (birth to about 2), preoperational (about 2 to 7), concrete operational (about 7 to 11) and formal operational (about 11 onward).
Preoperational children fail conservation tasks because they centre on one dimension; mastering conservation is a hallmark of the concrete operational stage.
So conservation is first mastered in the concrete operational stage, option B.
In Hurlock's division of the life span, the period from the end of the second week after birth to the end of the second year is called:
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Answer: option D
Hurlock separates infancy, from birth to the end of the second week, from babyhood, from two weeks to two years.
Early childhood then runs from two to six years, and late childhood from six to sexual maturity.
So the period from two weeks to two years is babyhood, option D.
A six-item Likert scale is scored from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Items 2, 4 and 5 are negatively worded and are reverse-scored. A respondent's raw responses to items 1 to 6 are 5, 1, 4, 2, 2 and 3 respectively. What is the respondent's total attitude score?
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Answer: option B
On a 1–5 scale a reverse-keyed item is scored as 6 − response: item 2 gives 6 − 1 = 5, item 4 gives 6 − 2 = 4 and item 5 gives 6 − 2 = 4.
Positive items 1, 3 and 6 keep their raw scores, 5 + 4 + 3 = 12; the reversed items add 5 + 4 + 4 = 13; the total is 12 + 13 = 25, which checks item by item as 5 + 5 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 3 = 25.
So the respondent's total attitude score is 25, option B.
Read the following Assertion (A) and Reason (R) and choose the correct answer from the given options: Assertion (A) : Davis and Moore (1945) argued that stratification is dysfunctional because it wastes talent and breeds hostility. Reason (R) : Davis and Moore held that unequal rewards are needed to draw scarce talent into functionally important positions.
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Answer: option D
Assertion: Davis and Moore defended stratification as functionally necessary; the claim that it wastes talent and breeds hostility is Tumin's 1953 critique of them, so the assertion is false.
Reason: the core Davis–Moore argument is that societies must attach greater rewards to important positions to motivate scarce talent to train for and fill them; the reason is true.
So the assertion "Davis and Moore (1945) argued that stratification is dysfunctional…" is false but (R) is true, option D.
Answer above — every one shows its working.