Donya Javaheri October 12, 14
Investigating and Individual Summary
Social sciences are divided into three disciplines of anthropology, psychology, and sociology. The theories presented in these three disciplines can represent the factors that influence an individual's development. First off, Anthropology focuses on human cultures from a holistic approach. The three methods that anthropologists use to organize humans in a society are functionalism, structuralism, and cultural materialism. Robert King was the theorist that developed functionalism and he came up with a theory to explain how latent and manifest functions impact each individual in society. Functionalism is a method for understanding the social institutions that provide our physical needs for our society. Structuralism was developed based on the theory that values are practiced through the reinforcement of norms and different societies reinforce different values. Marvin Harris was the materialist that developed Cultural materialism, which focuses on how people adopt themselves to new environments and how much society changes over time.
Psychology is the study of human behavior and feelings under certain conditions. Fraud was one of the psychologists that were interested in outward behavior and he discovered the 3 parts of mind, which are ego, id and superego. He thought that operant conditioning was more effective than classical conditioning to make changes in people's behavior because people learn about positive reinforcement better than negative reinforcement.
Erik Erikson also examined that behavior could be understood through development years and the experiences people go through in order to grow up in a certain way, which proves that nurture has a bigger influence than nature. Sociology studies the actions of people within their society. Marxism theory focuses on class distinctions and how they influence certain issues. Anthropologists explain individual development through genetic evolution, nature, and culture. Humans carry out their traits but they are...