Undergraduate Bulletin

Fall 2024

Understand, Observe, and Analyze Human Behavior and Societal Constructs (SBS)

Humans are social creatures. Examining a list of human behaviors and experiences including forms of communication and expression reveals the important meaning that takes place in the context of human interaction, either between individuals or among small and large groups. Our need for social connection and community, or shared experiences, often leads to the construction of societies and to a social interdependence that is both essential and inevitable. Further, the social sciences find ways to understand the important relationships among all humans that can range from the very intimate to the larger political and economic connections we have to one another and to the larger groups to which we belong. The study of these kinds of behaviors—in such fields as anthropology, economics, history, linguistics, political science, sociology and psychology, among others—invariably includes the necessary ways that groups assign values to its members, to their behaviors, and to the symbolic outcomes of these interactions. Finally, it is the ever-changing nature of the social world that makes its study at once uniquely complex and utterly fascinating. 

For a list of Stony Brook courses that satisfy SBS, complete a course search at this link.

SBC Learning Outcomes