You Can't Do What You Want, So Stop Trying

Actually, that title isn't true. Social forces beyond our immediate control to matter in various ways, though it would be a bit dishonest to say society gives us no power over our lives. A sociological mindset can really help you understand how social forces shape your attitudes, beliefs, finances, and so forth.

You will probably be familiar with this argument: "You don't need to go to college to succeed." People who believe that statement probably can pull out one or two anecdotes to support their bogus claim. However, anectodes cannot change the facts. In fact, people with college degrees earn more money, on average, than people who only completed high school. A boring factual statement doesn't catch on like a pithy bit of "common sense" thinking.

We don't get our religious beliefs out of a vacuum. Social forces may not force you to be a Christian but the social environment does have a huge influence on your choice of religion. How many Christians are there in Nepal? How many Buddhists are there in Nepal? Did all of those Nepalese Buddhists consider which religion was true, or at least made sense? Of course you know the answer to that question.

We do have some control over how we deal with the social conditions we face, but ultimately we spend most of our time responding to things that happen in our social environment. You might decide to network some and polish your old resume because you want a new challenge. Often people do those things because they get laid off, or think they will.

Our society also helps perpetuate fringe beliefs and medical practices. The constant drumbeat of "secret" and "lifesaving" information sinks in. Our capitalistic culture provides a fertile environment for hucksters to promote craziness of all sorts. A relatively high standard of living gives people the time and money to engage in all manner of frivolous activities, like buying quamtum healing water.

Ice Cream Causes Crime: Avoiding Dubious Claims

One of my goals with this blog is to help people think more systematically and logically about how society really works. I've mentioned that thinking like a sociologist involves employing some of the scientific tools that sociologists use. This post focuses on statistics. If numbers make you queasy, no need to worry. For this example, I don't really need numbers.

Numbers Aren't Always Enough:

Using statistics goes beyond looking at numbers. You have to understand the relationships between different numbers. If you understand how to look at the relationship between two numbers, you will be a smidgen better prepared to understand society.

So, what do I mean by claiming that ice cream causes crime? How does that headline relate to understanding the relationships between numbers, to better understand how society works?

When Being Together Isn't Enough:

I'm not going to change course and talk about faltering relationships. In the sciences, we use the term "correlation" to describe a situation where one numerical value changes in some relationship to changes in another numerical value. In the ice cream example, ice cream sales tend to increase as burglaries increase. There really is a correlation. Why?  Let us ignore the strength of the correlation for this example.

Does it make sense that ice cream causes burglaries? Of course not! You can sense that something else must be going on. Well, ice cream increase in summer, and many people go out of town on vacation. The correlation is meaningless in this case. Time of year explains the seemingly related increase in both ice cream sales and burglaries. 

That section heading also applies to relationships between one thing we observe and another thing we observe. Correlation does not equal causation! Just because two things seem to have some relationship, it doesn't mean one causes the other.

To prove that ice cream causes burglaries we would have to do three things. First, we would have to establish a time order of events, so increased ice cream eating has to come before increasing burglaries. Second, there must be a correlation between ice cream sales and burglaries. Lastly, we would have to exclude all other factors that might influence ice cream sales or burglaries, or both.

Those three conditions are actually quite difficult to satisfy. It happens more often in the physical sciences than in sociology. Sociological research underlies many claims you see in the news. While straight news sources tend to do a decent job of presenting social research, this isn't necessarily so for politicians and talk show hosts.

Abusing Cause-and-Effect Thinking:

Stay alert for claims that X causes Y. X will be some government policy, or social trend, or behavior. Y is always some real or imagined social problem. Consider this made-up example: "Strict gun control laws cause more violent crime." X and Y in this case should be clear.

What if the crime rate does go up? Handguns are banned, then crime goes up. Seems like an obvious connection, right? Wrong. You should ask more questions about the situation. What was the trend in crime rates before the ban? Did the city's economy suffer a severe blow in 2002 or 2003? Was there a change in how violent crimes are reported?

Next time you listen to a talk show host or political analyst or politician explain how one thing "causes" another, you will be better prepared to know if you are being bamboozled.

(The ice cream example came from one of my graduate courses and I never had a source for it.)

Understanding How Society Really Works

What is going on here? You'll be glad to know that this post answers that question and many others. I'll get right to it. I'm a sociologist, so my background so I am trained to approach the study of society in a systematic way. Sociology is the scientific study of society.

Sociologists, like other scientifically-minded types, focus on many different topics and pursue different specialties. Like the other sciences, sociology has many specialties. Nobody's just a sociologist. They are urban sociologists, or social theorists or environmental sociologists.

My purpose here is to comment on what's happening in the world, but from a sociological perspective. what's that? The ability to see general social patterns reflected in specific events, and the ability to put individual experiences in a broader cultural context. 

I also want to comment extensively on how statistics are used in public policy discussions. Regardless of the issue and your stance on that issue, I hope you would agree that it is better for people to know what they are talking about. It is certainly better to know when you are being mislead or flat-out lied to. A basic knowledge of how to use statistics will be critically important.

There's naturally more to the sociological perspective but some elements are common to all sciences. Sociologists have theories about different aspects of social life. Social research uses hypotheses and numerous research methods to test them.

You've almost certainly taken a survey in the past. I'm not talking about a market research survey either. Telephone polls about current events are one form of sociological research.
Here are some of the themes you can expect to see:

1. How to analyze what's going on in your world
2. How advertising and marketing affect us
3. How common errors in perception, logic, and reasoning shape society.
4. The benefits of social problems like crime and religious fundamentalism.
5. The functions of various patterns of behavior that seem crazy, archaic, or trivial.

If you want to experience a new way to think about current events or about the trivial aspects of everyday life or about the big questions about modern civilization, odds are good I'll soon be writing something that gets your brain working overtime.