Social Science

1. List down two (2) social consequences of decision making based on scarcity
The podcast on psychological phenomenon of scarcity talks about a situation where a working woman has
been terminated of her job as she mistakenly used the company credit card while shopping instead of her
personal card. Why such a mistake? She was in hurry due to the lack of time and mistakenly used the wrong
card. She paid a huge cost of the mistake she did. She lost her job. Time scarcity led her to take this
erroneous decision which took a toll on her. The story does not end here. The stress of not earning grew.
Then comes a day when her husband fought and yelled at her as they ran out of toilet papers. She was paying
a lot for a stupid mistake she made. Household supplies dwindled, anxiety increased and the only thought in
her mind was “MONEY”. She ordered a new credit card, and ran into the Wal-Mart as soon as she got the
card. Bought a family size of toilet paper and a family size laundry detergent. She used the credit limit at the
max in the very beginning of the month, ignoring the other emergency purposes she would have in the near
future. The credit card bill being the one of them. Unable to pay the credit card bills post two months, she also
realized that she has to pay the gas money. She has no way to buy the gas or pay the credit card bill but the
tax refund that she would get the next year. Now, she paid almost the double cost as she was supposed to
pay. This way, she got trapped in the debt and had no consistent way to come out of it. Maybe, if her mind
was not occupied by the household supplies and money, she could have focused on other priorities as well. If
she had made a budget for the whole month at the beginning, she would have realized the important spending
to be cared about. But that is why scarcity bias cannot be easily escaped. The ability to make decisions comes
with a limited capacity. The scarcity state depletes this finite capacity of decision-making. Lack of time or the
money scarce, either of the two produces anxiety that ends in a poor decision.
2. Constitutive nature of informal and formal institutions and their actors and how it constrains social
behavior
Formal institutions are those officially established in one way or another, often by governments. Laws are
an excellent example of formal institutions. For example, governments in the United States officially mandate
that automobiles drive on the right side of the street, that dollars are legally used as money, and that the fourth
Thursday in November is celebrated as Thanksgiving Day. Each of these institutions affect production,
consumption, and exchange. Other examples of formal institutions include business corporations, labor
unions, and religious organizations. Each provides "official" structure to society and the economy. Although
not part of government, many non-government institutions are actually enabled in one way or another by
government.
Governments, for example, establish the guidelines for what legally constitutes a corporation or a religion (at
least for tax purposes).
Informal institutions are not officially established, but are practices commonly accepted throughout society.
Many societies, for example, have informal institutions regarding courtship and marriage. In one society, it
might be common for parents to arrange a marriage when children are young. In another society, the accepted
practice might be for the groom-to-be to seek the blessings of the prospective father of the bride. Informal
institutions apply to all types of activity--social, cultural, political, and economic. It is, for example, common
practice to pay food servers a gratuity (or tip) at many restaurants (fancy eating places). Those who fail to tip
in the accepted manner commit a social blunder. However, tipping is not an accepted practice at other
restaurants (fast food burger joints), and attempting to tip is also considered a social faux pas.
Many formal institutions undoubtedly began life informally. Our earliest ancestors most likely agreed,
informally, that murder was a bad idea long before it was legally, and formally, outlawed by governments.
However, even if informal institutions do not carry the weight of law, they create a solid structure to society.
For example, triskaidekaphobia (fear of the number 13) is an informal institution that has virtually eliminated
the thirteenth floor from all high-rise skyscrapers.
3. What is the relationship of between gender ideology and gender inequality?
Gender ideology is concerned with normative beliefs about the proper roles for and fundamental natures of
women and men in human societies. The distinction between sex and gender is central to the concept of
gender ideology. When a child is born, the biological differences between males and females, or their sex
differences, are used as the basis for the assignment of gender and the cultural construction of gender
identities. People are assigned a gender identity in all societies, but gender systems and the gender ideologies
that are thought to help sustain them are culturally variable.
Gender inequality acknowledges that men and women are not equal and that gender affects an individual's
lived experience. These differences arise from distinctions in biology, psychology, and cultural norms.
Traditional gender ideologies emphasizes the value of distinctive roles for women and men where men fulfill
their family roles through bread winning activities and women fulfill their roles through homemaker and
parenting activities. Gender ideology also refers to societal beliefs that legitimate gender inequality.
4. What is the significance of data in Hermeneutical Phenomelogy?
Hermeneutic analysis is a name for various methods of analysis, which are based on interpreting. The
strategy forms an opposite to those research strategies which stress objectivity and independence of
interpretations in the formation of knowledge. Hermeneutic research includes various different approaches.
Methods of analysis may also vary, and in different disciplines discipline-specific methods exist for interpreting
phenomena. Hermeneutic analysis enables you to elicit an in-depth understanding of meanings of, for
example: human practices, culture, works of art and texts. Understanding is produced through systematic
interpretation processes. These processes are known as a hermeneutic circle Interpretation of details affects
the interpretation of the entire phenomenon; reviews of these interpretations produce a deepening
understanding of the phenomenon. You can combine hermeneutic analysis with other methods of analysis that
aim to interpret and understand meanings. A combination of the rules of hermeneutics and phenomenology
forms phenomenological hermeneutic analysis. Hermeneutic analysis also forms the basis of various
discipline-specific methods of analysis and close readings methods.
5. What are the ways by which humans environment interactions shape cultural and natural
landscapes?
Human-landscape interactions, also often described as nature-society or human-environment interactions,
is a topic examined by multiple disciplines and subdisciplines, including but not limited to geography,
anthropology, ecology, human ecology, cultural ecology, political ecology, environmental sociology,
environmental anthropology, and earth systems science. The concept of “landscape” varies within and among
disciplines, not to mention different languages. It is typically used to describe a distinctive combination of
natural and cultural features, and often serves as the basic unit of analysis for social and natural science
studies. To be human is to be a product of the environment you grew up in and negotiate in your everyday life.
In fact, this is the foundation of cultural anthropology and the reason we use the methods that we do to
understand the species. As such, we anthropologists won’t ever see a human as a bounded creature. Instead,
humans can be understood as entangled culturally and biologically with the environment around them. When
we look at a grove of trees, we are looking at people. When we feel the effects of a drought on our backs, we
are feeling people as well.
This leads me to an important caveat about the difference between the natural and cultural environments
alluded to in the question above. Beginning in earnest with the work of scholars such as Donna Hardaway and
Bruno LA tour, cultural anthropologists have turned away from the binary of nature and culture to instead
understand human ecology as being as much a part of the natural world as a rain forest. Discarding binary
thinking has allowed us to better understand systems, keeping us attuned to the complex partialities and deep-
shifting causalities at work in the world of which humans are but one agent. So in the end, environment cannot
effectively be extracted and framed apart from people, and people must be understood as corporal nodes
within extensive networks of environmental causation. The certainties are perspectives and change.
6. Explain environmental and social issues through the analysis of spatial distribution and spatial
processes.
Environment-society relationships are the processes that involve the impact of society on
the environment, such as soil erosion and the destruction of rain forests. Human systems
describe processes related to human behavior and innovation, such as language, technology, and religion.
SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION of Environmental hazards includes emissions from point-source polluters like coal
power plants, location in flood prone areas, or proximity to toxic wastes.
7. Cite social ideas of Filipino Thinkers:
Isabelo delos Reyes (labora activity/anthropologist)
-father of Filipino socialism
-initiated labor strikes against American business firm
-founded ‘el Ilocano’
-he organized the first Filipino union, Union Obrera Democratic Filipina
-Mother Tongue base Multilingual Education
Jose Rizal (Reformist)
-Intelligence is the solution to the ills of the country
-their consciousness should be freed from fanaticism, docility, inferiority, and hopelessness
-he started La Liga Filipina with the job of enlightening the minds of the people.
-believed in agnostic deism-the view that God created the universe with its law ,never to interfere with it again.
8. Person’s Personality using the core values of Sikolohiyang Pilipino.
Filipino psychology, or Sikolohiyang Pilipino, in Filipino, is defined as the psychology rooted on the
experience, ideas, and cultural orientation of the Filipinos. It was formalized in 1975 by the Pambansang
Samahan sa Sikolohiyang Pilipino (National Association for Filipino Psychology) under the leadership
of Virgilio Enriquez who is regarded by many as the father of Filipino Psychology.
Kapwa is the core construct of Filipino Psychology. Kapwa has two categories, Ibang Tao and Hindi Ibang
Tao.
Ibang Tao ("outsider") there are five interaction levels under this category:
Pakikitungo: civility - In Confucian ethics, right behavior meant right demeanor towards authorities (Parents,
Elders, etc.).
Pakikisalamuha: act of mixing - This is a social value that is primarily communitarian and Confucian. It
espouses the ability to adapt.
Pakikilahok: act of joining - This translates to participation of the entire community to help a person.
Pakikibagay: conformity - This runs into conflict with individuality which many Filipinos in fact willingly throw
away in favor of conformity with demands of those who are in charge.
Pakikisama: being united with the group.
Hindi Ibang Tao ("one-of-us") There are three interaction levels under this category:
Pakikipagpalagayang-loob: act of mutual trust
Pakikisangkot: act of joining other.
Pakikipagkaisa: being one with others

Pivotal interpersonal value

Pakiramdam: Shared inner perceptions. Filipinos use damdam, or the inner perception of others' emotions,
as a basic tool to guide his dealings with other people.
Linking socio-personal value
Kagandahang-Loob: Shared humanity. This refers to being able to help other people in dire need due to a
perception of being together as a part of one Filipino humanity.
Accommodative surface values
Hiya: Loosely translated as 'shyness' by most Western psychologists, Hiya is actually 'sense of propriety'.
Utang na loob: Norm of reciprocity. Filipinos are expected by their neighbors to return favors—whether
these were asked for or not—when it is needed or wanted.
Pakikisama and Pakikipagkapwa: Smooth Interpersonal Relationship, or SIR, as coined by Lynch (1961
and 1973). This attitude is primarily guided by conformity with the majority.
Confrontative surface values
Bahala Na: Bahala Na translates literally as "leave it up to God (Bathala)" and it is used as an expression,
almost universally, in Filipino culture. Filipinos engage in the behalf an attitude as a culture-influenced
adaptive coping strategy when faced with challenging situations.
Lakas ng Loob: This attitude is characterized by being courageous in the midst of problems and
uncertainties.
Pakikibaka: Literally in English, it means concurrent clashes. It refers to the ability of the Filipino to
undertake revolutions and uprisings against a common enemy.
Societal values
Karangalan: Loosely translated to dignity, this actually refers to what other people see in a person and how
they use that information to make a stand or judge about his/her worth.
Puri: the external aspect of dignity. May refer to how other people judge a person of his/her worth. This
compels a common Filipino to conform to social norms, regardless how obsolete they are.
Dangal: the internal aspect of dignity. May refer to how a person judges his own worth.
Katarungan: Loosely translated to justice, this actually refers to equity in giving rewards to a person.
Kalayaan: Freedom and mobility. Ironically, this may clash with the less important value of pakikisama or
pakikibagay (conformity).
9. Explain the significance of using a particular language for discourse.
Discourse analysis is a broad term for the study of the ways in which language is used between people,
both in written texts and spoken contexts.
Language is a system that consists of the development, acquisition, maintenance and use of complex
systems of communication, particularly the human ability to do so; a language is any specific example of such
a system.
10. Determine how social science can be used to address social concerns.
The social sciences, like the physical or biological sciences, are intellectual subjects, directed primarily
toward understanding, rather than action. It would of course be a curious kind of “understanding” that had no
implications for action, and this is perhaps especially true for the social sciences. Nevertheless, there is a
difference between enlarging one’s understanding of human behavior and society on the one hand and trying
to solve a social problem on the other. The social sciences are distinct from social problem solving, but each
can contribute to the other. During the last few years there has been a significant change in popular attitudes
and expectations in the United States regarding social change and social problems. A renewed determination
to ameliorate certain long-standing, as well as recently developed, ills of the society has arisen along with a
sense of power and confidence in its ability to do so.
In looking for ways in which to implement this desire for self-control, for directed rather than accidental
improvement, a good many leaders of society have begun to turn, increasingly expectant, to the social
sciences. Some have asked what the social sciences can contribute to the venture. Others have assumed that
these sciences have a great deal to contribute to a better society and that they need only to be force-fed (the
recommended diet varies from prescriber to prescriber) in order to grow faster and to make their contribution
larger. The social sciences do have a contribution to make to social practice, but not so large a contribution as
they will make if helped to develop properly. At this point in history, the magnitude of major social problems
exceeds the capacity of social scientists to solve them.
11. Multi-disciplinary and/or interdisciplinary as an approach to looking at society.
Multidisciplinary is what happens when members of two or more disciplines cooperate, using the tools and
knowledge of their disciplines in new ways to consider multifaceted problems that have at least one tentacle in
another area of study.
Interdisciplinary or integrative studies is what happens when researchers go beyond establishing a
common meeting place to developing new method and theory crafted to transcend the disciplines in order to
solve problems