 The American Heritage Dictionary: 1. The study of human society and of individual relationships in and to society; 2. A scholarly or scientific discipline that deals with such study, generally regarded as including sociology, psychology, anthropology, economics, political science, and history.  Mirriam-Webster Online Dictionary: 1. a branch of science that deals with the institutions and functioning of human society and with the interpersonal relationships of individuals as members of society. 2. a science (as economics or political science) dealing with a particular phase or aspect of human society  Compact Oxford English Dictionary: 1. the scientific study of human society and social relationships. 2. a subject within this field, such as economics

 Economics  Sociology  Anthropology  Demography  Geography  Political Science  Psychology

 Economics: Allocation of scarce resources among competing ends - to understand how individuals, groups and governments, faced with limited resources, choose to produce, distribute and consume goods and services.  Sociology: Systematic study of relationships among people. Structure of human societies and the behavior of individuals, groups and institutions in society.  Anthropology: Study of the relationship between biological traits and socially acquired characteristics.

 Psychology: The study of the mind and behavior.  Political Science: The study of social arrangements to maintain order within a society. Politics is the authoritative allocation of resources and values.  Demography: Human populations, including size, growth, density, and distribution; statistics on birth, marriage, migration, disease, and death.  Geography: Spatial distribution of human activity. Study of the natural environment and how it influences social and cultural development

 Which social science is most like a natural science? Why?

 Challenges that S.S. face when wanting to study something:  Scenario 1: If I want to do a study that involves gender and I have to randomly assign gender ….what’s the problem?  Problem 1- there are some IV that we can’t (or don’t want to) randomly assign

 Challenges that S.S. face when wanting to study something:  Scenario 2: If I want to study the effects of PTSD on the population, what’s the problem (randomly pick people to go to war and test on them).  Problem 2- ethics: you can’t just expose people to traumatic events

 Challenges that S.S. face when wanting to study something:  Scenario 3: If I want to test how countries respond/progress after their leader is assassinated (pick 4 leaders to assassinate). What’s the problem?  Problem 3- (ethics again) but also replication

 Main Point: there are certain things you can’t do an experiment on, but an experiment is the only way to establish CAUSALITY  Problem 4: establish causality in social sciences is really hard to do