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social environment
noun
- the environment developed by humans as contrasted with the natural environment; society as a whole, especially in its relation to the individual.
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Example Sentences
We know a lot about the social environments, the social experiences.
Interview by Cassie MartinEvolutionary anthropologistDuke UniversityJenny Tung, featured in 2018, studies how social environments — including social status, relationships and isolation — influence primates’ genes and health.
The secret to their effectiveness lies in the way they structure their requests, the way they arm themselves with one or another of the levers of influence that exist in the social environment.
Maybe the first-line treatment for hypertension should be meditation or changing your social environment.
Many college students are grappling with a new social environment, struggling to figure out their careers and worrying about finances, says Matthew Browning, an environmental psychologist at Clemson University in South Carolina.
But experiments that do not change the physical environment can certainly change the social environment.
Gold says we know that our social environment can help trigger mental illness in the first place.
The immediate social environment is all pulled in the same direction as the unconscious desire.
What children make most progress in and need most to know are the concrete things of their physical and social environment.
On this account too much stress can hardly be put upon the importance to a young man of his social environment.
It is the custom of the manor which gives them their social environment and their conception of public order.
The social environment acts through native impulses and speech and moral habitudes manifest themselves.
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More About Social Environment
What is a social environment?
A person’s social environment is their society and all surroundings influenced in some way by humans. It includes all relationships, institutions, culture, and physical structures.
The natural environment is the natural world around us: the ground, the trees, the air. The social environment is, collectively, all of the things that humans have overlaid on top of our world: our personal and societal relationships, our institutions, our cultures, and our physical surroundings—all of the aspects and products of human activity and interaction.
Sociologists, health researchers, and others study how the social environment shapes who we are and how we live, especially how individuals are affected by such factors.
How does a social environment affect behavior?
It can be hard to wrap your head around what things constitute the social environment. In fact, even experts debate what exactly it includes. In 2001, public health researchers from West Virginia University and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and came up with a working definition of social environment that was 182 words long! Social environment is so hard to define because it involves so many things, including many of the aspects of our daily lives that we take for granted.
It can be hard to summarize or comprehend, but when we start to list some of the specific elements that can make up the social environment, it starts to make a bit more sense. Here are some of the things those researchers mentioned in their definition as making up the social environment:
- immediate physical surroundings
- social relationships
- infrastructure
- industrial and occupational structure
- labor markets
- power relations
- government
- cultural practices
- beliefs and religious practices
While the term might sound impossibly abstract, your actual social environment is just the opposite—it’s the arena in which the entirety of your human experience happens. Sociologists and other researchers are interested in how all these factors taken together impact our lives.
Researchers rely on information about social environment all the time and for all kinds of research—like studies on decision making, the formation of prejudices, even our mental and physical health, just to name a few. Importantly, scientists factor in details about individuals’ social environment to determine why some populations are affected by particular diseases when others are not.
Did you know ... ?
A fancy word often used alongside social environment is milieu, which means one’s social or cultural surroundings (typically in a more narrow sense than social environment).
What are real-life examples of social environment?
Our social environment can shape our behavior in subtle ways. Watch this video for an explanation of some revealing experiments on the subject.
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Facinghistory.org
In our 2020 Global #Marketing Trends Report, we explore how brands can navigate the increasingly digitized business, economic, and social environment in a way that helps foster more authentic, meaningful human connections. Check it out: https://t.co/BkwsmIiKJ1 #GlobalMktgTrends pic.twitter.com/25NWsv1R1m
— Deloitte Digital NL (@DeloitteDIGI_NL) October 31, 2019
How do international aid agencies operate on the ground in Myanmar, with its complex, unstable and sometimes hostile political and social environment?
Anthropologist Dr Anne Décobert and civil society expert Dr Tamas Wells explore:https://t.co/pmpVcX5OVc
— Faculty of Arts (@ArtsUnimelb) October 2, 2019
What other words are related to social environment?
Quiz yourself!
True or False: Someone’s social environment includes the type of weather they experience.
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