ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL THEORY

    Paradigms are ways of looking at things; they don't explain anything.  Theories are explanations for what we see.  The purpose of this short section is to introduce some of the key elements involved in the construction of social theories.

    Concepts are mental images, which researchers transform into variables and attributes (introduced in Chapter One).

    Axioms or propositions are fundamental assertions, taken as true, and upon which theories are grounded.  "Everyone wants to be well thought of by others," might be an example.

     As you'll see in this section, theories posit relationships among concepts.  Hypotheses are logical expectations derived from theories.  For example, our theory may suggest there is a negative relationship between how much education people have and how prejudiced they are.  On the whole, the more educated people are, the less prejudiced they are.  We could collect data--measuring how much education people have and how prejudiced they are--to test that hypothesis.