Human Behavior and the Social Environment

Sociology

Economic and social classes are artificial divisions of individuals and groups based on their incomes, lifestyles, and professions. Economic class stresses level of income, number and quality of material possessions, from houses to cars to electronic equipment. Social class is often a function of economic class but social class can also include the relative prestige of one's profession, unrelated to one's annual income. For example, a lawyer in the public defender's office might make less than a public sanitation worker but the lawyer is considered to be a member of a higher social class. In most modern societies, individuals are judged significantly based on economic and social class.

Likewise, individuals are judged based on their race and ethnicity. Race is an artificial construction that usually refers to physical features like skin color. Ethnicity and race are closely intertwined, but ethnicity usually incorporates cultural, historical, and nationalistic elements as well as physical attributes. For example, African-Americans are all considered "black" but may demonstrate a wide range of ethnic heritages, from first-generation Africans to tenth-generation Brazilians. Likewise, "white" is generally considered a race but white people hail from various ethnic heritages in Europe, from England to Scandinavia.

Gender is usually a function of one's sexual biology. However, gender is also a social construction that transcends biology. An individual may be born male but relates more to the female gender, for example. Sexual orientation refers to the ways an individual identifies sexually; sexual orientation commonly implies one's preference for engaging in sexual relationships. An individual's sexual orientation can be completely heterosexual, completely homosexual, or anywhere in between.

All of these are artificial distinctions. Our culture is diverse and persons from all economic and social classes, racial and ethnic heritages, and sexual and gender orientations deserve equal respect and recognition.

Various psychological theories present the individual as the focal system. Therapy is therefore centered on the individual: his or her behaviors, thoughts, feelings, and biology. Issues such as attachment and brain development are dealt with differently depending on the theory. For example, psychodynamic theory emphasizes unconscious forces and instinctual drives. Attachment would be explained as a function of early childhood experiences, when the individual develops a healthy or unhealthy attachment to one or both parents, usually the mother. Therefore, the unconscious and instinctual forces that caused the childhood attachment resurface in one's adult relationships. Within psychodynamic perspectives, physical brain development is not emphasized as much as the development of the conscious and subconscious minds.