Review the Sociology Matters prompt at the end of Ch. 2.Write a 700-word response to one bullet at the end of the chapter.The Bullet is over Values, below is what the chapters states about values. VALUESThough we all have our own personal sets of standards—which may include caring, fitness, or success in business—we also share a general set of objectives as members of a society. Cultural values are collective conceptions of what is considered good, desirable, and proper—or bad, undesirable, and improper. They indicate what people in a given culture prefer, as well as what they find important and morally right or wrong. Values may be specific, such as honoring one’s parents and owning a home, or they may be more general, such as health, love, and democracy. Of course, the members of a society do not uniformly share its values. Angry political debates and billboards promoting conflicting causes tell us that much.Values influence people’s behavior and serve as criteria for evaluating the actions of others. There is often a direct relationship among a culture’s values, norms, and sanctions. For example, if a culture highly values the institution of marriage, it may have norms (and strict sanctions) that prohibit the act of adultery. If a culture views private property as a basic value, it will probably have stiff laws against theft and vandalism.Socially shared, intensely felt values are a fundamental part of life in the United States. Even so, our values can and do change.Each year nearly 142,000 full-time, newly entering students at nearly 200 of the nation’s four-year colleges fill out a questionnaire about their values. Because this survey focuses on an array of issues, beliefs, and life goals, it is commonly cited as a barometer of the nation’s values. The respondents are asked what values are personally important to them. Over the past half century, the value of “being very well-off financially” has shown the strongest gain in popularity; the proportion of first-year college students who endorse this value as “essential” or “very important” rose from 42 percent in 1966 to 82 percent in 2015 (Figure 2–2).During the 1980s and 1990s, support for values having to do with money, power, and status grew. At the same time, support for certain values having to do with social awareness and altruism, such as “helping others,” declined. According to the 2015 nationwide survey, only 44 percent51
