Intro to Sociology Exam 1 ch. 1 – ch. 4 – Flashcards
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Sociologists and economists have shown that the benefits of higher education include higher median incomes for college graduates. This is known as
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the returns to schooling.
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In today's society, Randall Collins might suggest that getting a "piece of paper" is more important to many than actually having the knowledge to do a job. He calls the priority placed on formal education
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credentialism.
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A family, as a group of people living together and sharing individual stories, makes up a ______ institution.
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social.
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Which of the following sociologists developed the theory of positivism?
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Auguste Comte
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Each of the following is known as one of the three epistemological stages of human society, as explained by Comte, EXCEPT:
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the postscientific stage.
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To Marx, conflict between a small number of capitalists and a large number of workers would divide society. He referred to this large number of workers as:
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proletariat.
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Who criticized Marx for focusing exclusively on economics and social class as explanations for human behavior and advocated sociological analyses that allowed for multiple influences?
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Max Weber
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To truly understand why people act the way they do, we must understand the meanings they attach to their behaviors. Max Weber called this:
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Verstehen.
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Which of the following is the study of social meanings that emphasizes subjectivity in understanding human behavior?
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interpretive sociology
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According to the theory of social solidarity, the division of labor in a society helps to determine:
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the way social cohesion among individuals is maintained.
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According to Suicide, one of the main social forces leading to suicide is a sense of normlessness that results from drastic changes in society. This normlessness was called:
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anomie.
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The basic premise of the Chicago School was that human behaviors and personalities are shaped by social and physical environments. This is known as:
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social ecology.
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The Chicago School's main laboratory for sociological research was the city of Chicago itself, because:
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they were interested in how the social and physical environment shapes the individual.
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Chicago was a good place to study urbanism using more of a community-based approach (a.k.a. social ecology). Why?
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The population was experiencing rapid growth due to foreign immigration and the influx of African Americans from the rural South.
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Charles H. Cooley argued that the "self " emerges from how an individual interacts with others and then interprets those interactions. He calls this:
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the looking glass self.
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Which of the following was the first African American to receive a PhD from Harvard University?
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W. E. B. Du Bois
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A white woman goes into an upscale shop to look at clothes. She is excited to see that there is a sale and gathers a huge pile of clothes to take into the dressing room. An African American woman goes into the store and is also excited about the sale but hesitates to take too many clothes into the dressing room because she is afraid the staff will think she might shoplift. W. E. B. Du Bois would say that the African American woman has:
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a double consciousness.
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Which of the following modern sociological theories states that the best way to analyze society is to identify the purpose that different aspects or phenomena play in the overall structure of society?
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functionalism
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The intended purpose of desegregation of schools in the 1950s was to make education equal for everyone. What was not intended was that many racial minority teachers and principals lost their jobs. This unintended purpose was called a(n) ____________ function by functionalist theorist Talcott Parsons.
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latent
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The functionalist paradigm went largely unchallenged in the United States until about the 1950s. C. Wright Mills criticized Talcott Parsons for:
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supporting the dominant class structure and the inequalities associated with it.
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Which modern sociological theory examines how power relationships are defined, shaped, and reproduced on the basis of gender differences?
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feminism
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What do symbolic interactionists study?
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shared meaning
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Which of the following argues that the organizing narratives of history are over, and that progress has led to a condition where there are no shared, objective meanings?
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postmodernism
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Some postmodern sociologists work to show us how all "facts" are created arbitrarily by people with varying degrees of power. This is known as:
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deconstructing social phenomena.
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Robert Merton's modern sociological theory focused on attempting to predict how certain social institutions function between microsociology and macrosociology. This is known as:
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midrange theory.
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Explaining unique cases is the focus of most historians, whereas the comparative method is the staple of the sociologist. This comparative method is also known as:
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the nomothetic approach.
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Which area within the discipline of anthropology is most similar to sociology?
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cultural anthropology
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The examination of human behavior within a rational actor model is the focus of which of the following "cousins" of sociology?
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economics
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Economists tend to see humans as ____________, but sociologists would tend to include ____________.
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rational actors; emotional motivations
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Which of the following focuses its analyses on face-to-face encounters and interactions?
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microsociology
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The two broad approaches social scientists use to gather data about the social world are:
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qualitative and quantitative
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The research method that uses information that can be converted to numerical form is:
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quantitative.
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Elizabeth would like to conduct a study to determine how women define spousal abuse and the meanings they attach to their abuse. What research method will Elizabeth most likely use?
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qualitative
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Which of the following describes the deductive approach to research?
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A researcher starts with a theory, forms hypotheses, makes observations, and then analyzes the data.
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A correlation is a:
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simultaneous change in two variables.
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Which of the following factors is needed to establish causality?
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time order
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A sociologist finds a strong relationship between education and income. If he only assumes that the amount of education people receive directly causes them to earn a certain income, and not that a family's income can determine educational attainment, he is forgetting to consider:
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reverse causality.
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Professor Clayton hypothesizes that travel to other countries increases students' abilities to do well in advanced sociology classes. Which variable is the independent variable?
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travel to other countries
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A variable that is thought to cause a change in another variable is called the:
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independent variable.
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A testable statement about the relationship between two or more variables is called a(n):
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hypothesis.
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If Jose's study measures religiosity by the number of hours people spend in organized religious activities, while Deidra's study measures religiosity by whether people agree or disagree that religion plays an important part in their life, Jose and Deidra:
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operationalize their concepts of religion differently.
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In her study, Darby is using church membership as an indicator of how religious a person is. She discovers that some "very religious" people rarely attend church. Darby may conclude that:
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her measure of religiosity lacks validity.
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After consistently burning dinner for a month, John found out that his oven's temperature gauge was giving readings that were 50 degrees cooler than the oven's actual temperature. John's oven thermometer can be said to be:
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reliable but not valid.
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The more consistent the results given by repeated measurements, the higher the ____________ of the measurement procedure (and vice versa).
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reliability
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Because they are an accessible population, sociologists sometimes use undergraduate students in their research. In relation to the concept of generalizability in science, this tendency could represent a potential defect in research because:
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college undergraduates are not typical of the public at large.
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What is the meaning of the term white coat effects in social research?
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the impact researchers have on the people/relationships they study
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A qualitative researcher who assumes everything he observes would have happened exactly the same way if he wasn't there observing lacks:
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reflexivity.
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Positivist sociologists tend to use which of the following types of measures?
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quantitative
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Sandra is doing research on cheating among students at Duke University. The student body at Duke will serve as her:
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population.
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The subset of a population from which a researcher collects data is known as a:
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sample.
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If a sociologist studies one high school in a study of the effectiveness of its Parent-Teacher Association, he or she is using which of the following research methods?
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a case study
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A market researcher, who asks an ordered series of questions intended to elicit information from research respondents, is administering a(n):
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survey.
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The main reason that achieving high response rates and limiting selection bias are so important is that they lead to:
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increasing generalizability.
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A potential shortcoming of survey research is that surveys:
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rely on people's honesty and willingness to cooperate.
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Which of the following methods involves collecting data from written reports or other artifacts in order to discover patterns in behavior/attitudes dating to an earlier time period?
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historical methods
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Rogers Brubaker (1992) studied the notions of citizenship and nationhood in both France and Germany. His method of research is known as:
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comparative research.
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The general approach to comparative research is to:
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find cases that match on many potentially relevant dimensions yet vary on just one.
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LeeAnn is a graduate student in sociology who is studying media depictions of gun violence in popular films such as Rambo and Scarface. Her choice of methods is known as:
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content analysis.
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All of the following are described as golden rules of ethical conduct in social research EXCEPT:
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never debrief.
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A sociologist studying minor children, pregnant women, or inmates must get approval, as these groups are known as:
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protected populations.
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Which of the following defines culture?
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behavior
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During the 1800s, culture was defined by Matthew Arnold as an ideal, something that is opposed to the real world in which we live. Sociologists today define culture as:
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the sum total of beliefs, behaviors, and practices that humans create to adapt to the environment around them.
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Which of the following was a poet and cultural critic who defined culture as the pursuit of perfection and broad knowledge of the world, in contrast to narrow self-centeredness and material gain?
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Matthew Arnold
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Everything in our constructed environment, including technology, buildings, furniture, clothing, and books, is part of our:
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material culture.
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An example of nonmaterial culture is:
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values.
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The study of culture tells us that:
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there are many ways to view the same symbol.
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An element of nonmaterial culture known as ____________ is a system of concepts and relationships sometimes used to understand cause and effect.
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ideology
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Ideologies are:
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often brought into question when certain aspects of that ideology are challenged.
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Low culture, such as hip-hop music, is also known as:
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pop culture.
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While they are difficult to define, ____________ are smaller subgroups within a larger dominant society united by sets of concepts, values, symbols, and shared meanings specific to the members of that group.
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subcultures
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The various musical genres and the groups inspired by them, such as post-punk music and the goths, are examples of which of the following?
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subcultures
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If you are a member of a subculture, like the goth subculture, you can be sure that the meaning of certain words and the behavior of the members:
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can be different within the group.
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Stanley Lieberson, a sociology professor at Harvard, studied culture using first names. He found that names:
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reflect cultural trends of specific times.
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Class mobility and equal opportunity have their roots in:
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the U.S. idea of the American Dream.
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The experience of internalizing a culture's norms, values, and the like, is known as:
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socialization.
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Karl Marx asserted that culture:
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is a reflection of the means of production of a particular time.
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When your friend returns from a study abroad, he reports back to you on the very different foods that people in his host country ate. He explains that to them it's normal, that people in different cultures do things differently, and that he learned not to make value judgments. This is known as:
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cultural relativism.
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Gendered behaviors, such as wearing dresses and high heels, are examples of learned behaviors that are not natural or universal, and are known as:
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cultural scripts.
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You take a trip to Alaska and find that Inuit families sleep together naked to stay warm. You find this practice disgusting and can't understand why they don't consider this incestuous. You are being:
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ethnocentric.
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The United States has laws that prohibit cockfighting. People in Bali might say that people in the United States are:
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ethnocentric.
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According to data presented in Chapter 3, by 1964, ____________ percent of U.S. households had a television set.
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92
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Antonio Gramsci coined the term hegemony to mean that a dominant group wins "consent" of the masses through "moral and intellectual leadership." His thoughts are closely related to:
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Karl Marx.
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In 1941, Time magazine ran an article on how to distinguish between Chinese and Japanese people. These descriptions reflected:
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the state of mind of many Americans at the time.
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Research questions such as why fairy tales often begin with a mother's death are an example of the analysis of media content stemming from Gramsci's work and known as:
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textual analysis.
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According to Herbert Gans, what determines the content of news stories?
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powerful corporate boards
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You see an advertisement on television for a new burger at McDonald's. The next day, you are riding by McDonald's and decide to drive in and give it a try. This would be called a:
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short-term deliberate media effect.
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Many Americans fear school shootings and terrorist attacks. This is due to the:
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exaggerated frequency of the reports of these rarely occurring events.
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The O. J. Simpson murder case and Hurricane Katrina are examples of which of the following?
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how the media reflects racist ideology
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How was Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty a response to feminist critiques of the media's messages to girls and women?
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It embraced those critiques and was among the first to feature women with cellulite and frizzy hair.
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The first interracial kiss in a film took place in:
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1967.
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The process by which people internalize the values, beliefs, and norms required to become functioning members of a given society is known as:
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socialization.
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Ultimately we hold people responsible for their behavior precisely because they can exercise choice over what they do. This speaks to the limits of socialization that sociologists refer to as:
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agency.
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Which theory uses game playing to understand the development of self?
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Mead's role-playing theory
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Theories of socialization focus, in part, on how the self develops. According to your textbook, the self is the:
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individual identity of a person as perceived by that same person.
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Which theorist argued that other people essentially provide us with a social mirror and that our interpretations of this mirror affect how we see ourselves?
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Charles Horton Cooley
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Cooley's theory of socialization states that the self develops from our interactions with others and their reactions to us. This theory is known as:
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looking glass self theory.
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Concepts such as I, me, and generalized other are part of which theorist's work?
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George Herbert Mead
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According to George Herbert Mead's stages of development, children learn to recognize an other through:
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imitation.
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Which of the following is considered an advanced stage of development, according to George Herbert Mead?
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the game stage
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Mead would probably argue that if your four-year-old daughter picks her nose and keeps pulling up her dress while you are out at a fancy restaurant, it is because she:
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has not internalized the generalized other.
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People and groups who influence our orientation to life and our self-concept, emotions, attitudes, and behaviors are:
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agents of socialization
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Although there are many agents of socialization, four of the primary ones, according to the textbook, are:
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family, schools, peers, and media
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Which of the following scenarios involves the use of peer pressure?
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A student decides to go out for drinks after her friends make her feel guilty for studying too much.
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The popular television show Sesame Street was created with the explicit purpose of providing educational opportunities for low-income children. Being that this show was successful, we can argue that:
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the media serves as a powerful socializing agent.
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A drastic type of adult socialization that may occur when adults change environments is known as:
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resocialization
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Military boot camps and prisons are places that control all of the basics of people's day-to-day lives and are known as:
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total institutions.
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Which of the following would be the best example of a total institution?
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a convent
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A recognizable social position that an individual occupies, such as student or professor, is known as a:
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status.
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The sociological significance of roles is that they:
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lay out what is expected of people.
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Expectations that define appropriate or inappropriate behavior for the occupants of a particular status are called:
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roles.
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Who developed role theory as a way to examine social interaction?
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Erving Goffman
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Venus Williams is one of the top women's tennis players in the world. This status overrides all of her other statuses and is known as her:
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master status.
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Sandra's boss asked her to work this weekend, but Sandra feels obligated to attend a family reunion and she has to study for an exam. She is having trouble deciding which activity to let go. Sandra is experiencing:
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enlightenment.
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All of the statuses that an individual occupies at any given time constitute his or her:
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status set.
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Most people occupy many statuses at a particular point in time (e.g., student, son or daughter, employee, citizen). This list of statuses is known as the:
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status set.
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Which of the following is the best example of an achieved status?
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a newly ordained minister in a Pentecostal church
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Involuntary statuses that we are born into are called:
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ascribed statuses
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An ascribed status is one:
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a person has little or no control over
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Which of the following represents an ascribed status?
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an American of Japanese descent
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The expectations that Barbie dolls are for girls and G.I. Joe dolls are for boys are examples of:
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gender roles.
