Ontario Grade 11 HSP3U Introduction to Anthropology, Psychology, and Sociology (Grade 11, University Preparation)
Chapters: 4
1. A. Research and Inquiry Skills
A1 Exploring · A2 Investigating · A3 Processing Information · A4 Communicating and Reflecting
- Nature of Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behaviour – Psychology is the science that studies mental processes (like thinking and remembering), experiences (our private feelings) and behaviour (what we do). Mental processes cannot be seen, so psychologists infer them from behaviour. Behaviour can be overt (seen from outside) or covert (hidden inside, like a racing heart). Psychology is a discipline with its own methods and theories. It is a natural science because it uses experiments and studies the brain and body, and a social science because it studies people in families, groups and culture. Mind and brain are linked but not the same. Many popular beliefs about psychology, like "psychologists read minds", are not true.
- Anthropology, Psychology and Sociology: Three Ways to Study People – Anthropology, psychology and sociology are social sciences: they use evidence to study people. Anthropology studies humans as a whole, especially culture, across time and place. It has four branches (cultural, biological, archaeology, linguistic) and uses fieldwork and participant observation. Psychology studies the mind and behaviour of individuals; its approaches include behaviourist, cognitive, biological, psychoanalytic and humanistic, and its main method is the experiment. Sociology studies groups, institutions and social patterns such as inequality and prejudice; its perspectives include functionalism, conflict theory and symbolic interactionism, and it often uses surveys and statistics. All three study socialization, the way we learn our culture from family, peers, school and media. Each subject has famous thinkers, and all follow ethical rules: consent, no harm, privacy. Good inquiry in these subjects means a clear question, a plan, reliable primary and secondary sources, honest citing, and clear communication.
2. B. Anthropology
B1 Theories, Perspectives, and Methodologies · B2 Explaining Human Behaviour and Culture · B3 Socialization
- Anthropology and Culture – Anthropology is the study of human beings as a whole: our bodies, our past, our languages and our ways of life. Culture is the shared, learned way of life of a group: what people make, do, say and believe. Culture is learned, shared, symbolic, connected and always changing. Anthropologists study it by living with people (participant observation) and try to understand each culture on its own terms (cultural relativism) instead of judging it by their own (ethnocentrism).
- Culture and Socialisation: How We Learn to Live Together – Culture is the whole way of life that a group learns and shares: its ideas, rules and things. It is learned, not born with us. Culture has three sides: cognitive (what we know and believe), normative (rules for how to behave) and material (tools and objects). Socialisation is the lifelong process by which a baby becomes a member of society by learning this culture. It happens through agencies: family, peer group, school, mass media, and others like work, religion and community.
3. C. Psychology
C1 Theories, Perspectives, and Methodologies · C2 Explaining Human Mental Processes and Behaviour · C3 Socialization
- Nature of Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behaviour – Psychology is the science that studies mental processes (like thinking and remembering), experiences (our private feelings) and behaviour (what we do). Mental processes cannot be seen, so psychologists infer them from behaviour. Behaviour can be overt (seen from outside) or covert (hidden inside, like a racing heart). Psychology is a discipline with its own methods and theories. It is a natural science because it uses experiments and studies the brain and body, and a social science because it studies people in families, groups and culture. Mind and brain are linked but not the same. Many popular beliefs about psychology, like "psychologists read minds", are not true.
- Culture and Socialisation: How We Learn to Live Together – Culture is the whole way of life that a group learns and shares: its ideas, rules and things. It is learned, not born with us. Culture has three sides: cognitive (what we know and believe), normative (rules for how to behave) and material (tools and objects). Socialisation is the lifelong process by which a baby becomes a member of society by learning this culture. It happens through agencies: family, peer group, school, mass media, and others like work, religion and community.
4. D. Sociology
D1 Theories, Perspectives, and Methodologies · D2 Explaining Social Behaviour · D3 Socialization
- Introducing Society and Sociology – Society is the web of groups and relations we live in. Every person is an individual, yet always part of groups like family, class and village. There is not one society but many, and inside each one people have unequal shares of money, power and respect. Sociology, the scientific study of society, was born in 19th-century Europe when reason, revolution and factories changed life fast. It studies almost every part of social life and works closely with economics, political science, history, psychology and anthropology.
- Culture and Socialisation: How We Learn to Live Together – Culture is the whole way of life that a group learns and shares: its ideas, rules and things. It is learned, not born with us. Culture has three sides: cognitive (what we know and believe), normative (rules for how to behave) and material (tools and objects). Socialisation is the lifelong process by which a baby becomes a member of society by learning this culture. It happens through agencies: family, peer group, school, mass media, and others like work, religion and community.
- Understanding Social Institutions – A social institution is a lasting set of rules and roles that meets a basic need of society. Family, marriage and kinship organise birth, care and relatives. Work and economic institutions organise how goods are made and shared, now with division of labour, factories and informal jobs. Political institutions decide who holds power and make it legitimate through authority, the state and laws. Religion gives shared beliefs and rituals about the sacred. Education passes knowledge and values to the next generation, and can both open doors and keep inequality going.