Sociology 101 Midterm Ch. 1-5 – Flashcards
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You've noticed that when you sleep less, your grades suffer. At the same time, you realize that lower grades could also lead to a lack of sleep: that worrying about a possible dip in your grade point average could keep you up at night. What kind of relationship between the two variables, lack of sleep and lower grades, are you noticing here?
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correlation A correlation is a relationship between two variables. Here, we notice a relationship between sleep and grades. To establish a causal relationship, though, we need more than a simple correlation.
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Hypothesis: Children in families that eat dinner together at least four times per week experience fewer behavioral problems in school. In this hypothesis, what is the dependent variable?
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how often children misbehave in school A dependent variable is the outcome that a researcher is trying to explain.
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A female manager is attempting to climb her way to the top of the corporate ladder. She works as hard as, if not harder than, her male colleagues, but nothing she does seems to help her advance. She begins to notice a pattern: Men are often promoted, but women are often overlooked for advancement. The realization that many women in her circumstance are experiencing the same discrimination is an example of:
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sociological imagination
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Suppose you're at a party at a friend's apartment. One of the guests strikes up a conversation with you about voter apathy and claims he has a pretty good idea as to why it is so high, calling it a "well-educated hypothesis." You point (much to his annoyance) out that his idea is really nothing more than a guess. In order to accurately call his idea a hypothesis, he would need to do what?
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propose a relationship between two variables Hypotheses propose relationships between two variables. They usually include the direction of the relationship; in other words, they usually include whether the variables move in the same direction (positive) or in opposite directions (negative).
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Amber is conducting research on the negative portrayal of Latinos in the media. She searches through newspapers to document instances of discriminatory language toward Latinos. What type of research is Amber conducting?
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content analysis Content analysis examines the content rather than the structure of communication.
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In the effort to stop the spread of HIV, organizations and countries have invested in research to understand how the virus spreads within a population. Often, this research investigates transmission through "having sex." Here, one of the challenges is to precisely define what "having sex means," so that researchers can identify the pertinent variables. This challenge of specifying a key idea is crucial to any good sociological study and is called
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operationalization What a particular term means is critical to the success and usefulness of a study. Operationalization is the process of clearly defining a term so as to assign a precise method for measuring the defined term.
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Which of the following is an example of a negative relationship between an independent and a dependent variable?
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Employees with more responsibility are less likely to miss work A negative relationship between an independent variable and a dependent variable means that as one variable increases, the other decreases.
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A thermometer that consistently gives readings that are five degrees cooler than the actual temperature is
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reliable but not valid. Reliability is consistency in measurement. A thermometer can be reliable but not valid. In other words, it can provide consistent temperatures, though they may be consistently incorrect.
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Both quantitative and qualitative methods (the way sociologists can gather data about a social issue or problem) are approaches that ideally attempt to establish a __________ between social elements.
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causal relationship Whether one uses a qualitative approach and collects data that is in (or can be set up in) numeric form, or a qualitative approach and collects data that can be used to decipher meanings, the goal is to establish causal relationships in order to lend certainty to the result of the investigation.
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As defined by C. Wright Mills, which of the following "enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society"?
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sociological imagination
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Social institutions often appear monolithic and unchanging. The sociological perspective sees that:
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social institutions are socially constructed and changeable.
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Which of the following is the best example of a quantitative research method?
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conducting a survey of how often people read Quantitative methods seek to obtain information about the social world that is already in, or can be converted to, numeric form. A survey of how often people read could be easily quantified, though it is possible that data obtained from other methods, such as content analysis, could also be quantified.
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In an interview with the Dalton Conley, Mitchell Duneier describes his desire to conduct research that adheres to the ethical guidelines of social research. If Duneier had interviewed street vendors by secretly recording their interactions, what ethical guideline would he have violated?
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informed consent Informed consent is the right of a research subject to know they are participating in a study and what the study will consist of.
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In his experiment, Duncan Watts created a website where respondents could rate songs. His sample size was 14,341 respondents. If Watts selected a new sample of 14,341 different respondents and their average ratings of each song were significantly different than the first sample, what problem would Watts's research suffer from?
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low reliability Reliability refers to how likely you are to obtain the same result using the same measure if you conduct the study again.
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You have decided to conduct an interview-based study on your campus that examines sexual assault with the hope of offering recommendations to the administration for policy changes. You have selected as your sample the members of all the campus fraternities, as this is a subpopulation of the entire campus and seems to often be at the center of the cases. While this is an interesting approach, your results will likely be
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limited in generalizability because of your sampling decision. Choosing a sample is probably the most important steps in a research project. Selecting the wrong sample, or one that is too limited or too specialized, makes it unlikely that the data and results can be generalized.
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While historians are more likely to focus on unique cases, sociologists are more likely to focus on:
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commonalities across cases.
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Comparative research usually involves studying which of the following?
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two or more units of analysis that have a number of things in common but differ on a dimension (or dimensions) of interest Comparative research is a methodology by which a research compares two or more entities (often countries or cultures) with the intent of learning more about factors that differ between them.
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What three factors are needed to establish causation?
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correlation, time order, and ruling out alternative explanations Causality is the notion that a change in one factor results in the change of another factor. To establish causality, three factors are needed: correlation, time order, and ruling out alternative explanations.
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A social scientist is trying to understand the daily life of panhandlers. To conduct her study, she spends time hanging out with panhandlers on the streets of an urban city. What type of research is she conducting?
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participant observation Participant observation seeks to uncover the meanings people give their behavior by observing social actions in practice.
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While today the phrase "mass media" might bring to mind a cable TV network or a print publication with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, the earliest mass media were
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books. Media has a long history, from oral traditions (the town crier), to the Internet. The first form of mass media was the printed book, which was made possible by invention of the result of the printing press.
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Every year, as many as 20,000 devotees of Harley Davidson motorcycles convene in Sturgis, South Dakota. Their numbers frequently overwhelm nearby towns and cities, including the Mt. Rushmore National Monument. For some tourists visiting the monument at that time, the cultural collision with tattooed and long-haired bikers might be jarring. For the tourist who thinks like a sociologist, such an encounter is an opportunity to observe a different group of people by applying
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cultural relativism. Cultural relativism means taking into account the differences across cultures without assigning a value. In this scenario, it means recognizing differences across cultures without judging those differences as positive or negative.
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Robert Cornelius took a self-portrait on a daguerreotype in 1839, which is believed to be the first American portrait, but it wasn't until the 2000s that "selfie" became a word: It was the Oxford English Dictionary's word of the year in 2013. The gap between the first instance of self-portraiture by camera and the proliferation of the term "selfie" more than a century later is an (extreme) example of
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cultural lag. When it takes time for culture to catch up with technological innovations, there is a cultural lag. In this case, it is the gradual emergence of language to describe practices enabled by technological innovations, with the term "selfies" arising to describe self-portraits made simple through the widespread use of camera phones with front-facing cameras.
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A common argument made against bans on female genital cutting is that each culture has different values. This argument is an example of
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cultural relativism. Cultural relativism is taking differences across cultures into account without assigning a value.
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Skateboarding is a popular youth pastime. Within the activity, there are distinct variations on how it's done, and the skating lexicon can vary by place. In addition, skateboarders have distinctive gear, like skate shoes designed to provide grip and durability. All this sets skaters apart as a kind of
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subculture. A subculture is a group united by sets of concepts, values, symbols, and shared meaning specific to the members of that group distinctive enough to distinguish it from others within the same culture or society.
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Sociologist Allison Pugh researched consumer culture and socioeconomic class differences through parental purchases for children. In their relationship with their children, low-income parents tended to strive for symbolic indulgence, while high-income parents tended toward symbolic deprivation. Both of these approaches are an attempt to ensure that kids "fit in" at school, indicating that parents of all classes shy away from difference. These actions reflect
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values. Values are our moral beliefs. They are shaped, in part, by culture.
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Climate change has evoked a politically polarized debate in the United States. For many, the cause and effect relationship between human activity and climate change seems obvious based on the science available. For others, such a claim seems ludicrous. While it may seem that climate change is a matter of science, underlying the disagreement are attachments to opposing
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ideologies. An ideology is a system of concepts and relationships involving an understanding of cause and effect. It is a form of nonmaterial culture.
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Think about your own experience of going to school. More than simply "what you learned in school today," much of our lives in the United States are shaped by that entire experience: what we choose to wear, with whom we make friends, whom we avoid, and how we respond to authority figures, whether teachers or preachers or police. Overall, our experience of school is
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a major part of socialization. Socialization is the way in which we all internalize our society's values, beliefs, and norms and in the process, become members of that society.
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Which of the following is an example of nonmaterial culture?
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spirituality Aspects of nonmaterial culture are values, beliefs, behaviors, and social norms.
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Which one of the following is an example of using cultural relativism to think about cultural differences?
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You see a news story about a country where people often eat spicy seafood dishes in the morning, and you reason that their long coastline and hot climate provide easy access to both seafood and hot peppers.
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Suppose you are part of a research team stationed in Uganda to do sociological surveys. You are there with your same-sex spouse of eight years. In Uganda, homosexuality was criminalized in 2009 and is currently punishable by life imprisonment. Attitudes in the country are not favorable toward homosexuality, but you have not experienced difficulties in daily life. As you begin the write-up of your research, you are especially aware of the scholarly need to
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avoid letting your own beliefs about same-sex relationships enter your writing. When we examine the practices of others cultures or when we are immersed in a culture other than our own with the goal of conducting valuable research, overcoming our own ethnocentrism can pose real challenges.
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As a budding sociologist, you decide to study American politics by attending presidential caucuses. You identify as a liberal independent, but you are interested in the process from different perspectives. Your first stop is at a caucus for Republican candidates. Everyone in the audience is passionate about their beliefs, and you find yourself swept up in the process, reacting against ideas that you see as extreme. In developing the paper discussing your study results, what is one of the challenges you in particular must overcome to produce an unbiased study?
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remembering that everyone, including you, is inculcated into systems of beliefs that influence thinking and perceptions All of us have an ideology, a set of internal beliefs and ideas that are instilled in us as we grow. This inherently imparts in us a sense of ethnocentrism. As a sociologist, it is important to be aware of this, disclose it, and avoid tainting the results we share in the community of professionals.
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Nonmaterial culture includes
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values, beliefs, behaviors, and social norms. Nonmaterial culture includes values, beliefs, behaviors, and social norms. By contrast, material culture includes everything that is part of our constructed, physical environment.
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Some businesses in the United States, especially food-service establishments, will post signs that read, "No shirt, no shoes, no service." These signs
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reinforce a cultural norm. Norms are the way in which values tell us to behave.
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A group of people is waiting to be helped at a customer service desk in a store. A woman in the waiting area suddenly clears her throat and spits on the floor. Everyone else in the room is taken aback and gives her horrified looks. How can this reaction be explained in sociological terms?
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The woman who spit on the floor is not conforming to social norms that are shared by the other people in the room. Recall that social norms are values that tell us how to act in the social world. (Perhaps the woman is actually a sociology student conducting a breaching experiment!)
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If you were to tell someone that you were conducting breaching experiments, you would be telling them that you were intentionally
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ignoring social norms to see what happens. Harold Garfinkel and his followers became famous for seeing what happened when social norms were breached. This is an example of ethnomethodology.
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Which of the following is an example of a given off gesture?
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inadvertently glancing at the clock during a boring lecture Given off gestures are unconscious signals of our true feelings. (However, if you looked at your watch intentionally to signal you needed to go, this would not be a given off gesture).
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Which of the following is an example of a total institution?
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A total institution is an institution in which one is totally immersed and that controls all the basics of day-to-day life.
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A classmate has been talking for weeks about trying out for the school dance team. The day after the tryouts, you ask her how it went, and she answers that she couldn't go because she was sick. (In reality, however, she did try out but wasn't selected.) The way your classmate reported the situation to you is an example of what?
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saving face Face is the esteem in which an individual is held by others. It is the most important goal of impression management.
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A friend of yours has invited you to a big social event. Knowing you might meet people who could offer you a job after graduation, you polish your shoes, buy a new outfit, and practice introducing yourself and explaining the insights you've gained during college, all in the hopes of making a strong professional impression. In sociological terms, you're preparing to present yourself as a young professional, in accordance with
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dramaturgical theory Erving Goffman's dramaturgical theory advances the idea that life is essentially a play in which we are all struggling to make a good impression on our audience.
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While you're riding a crowded city bus, a woman sits on the seat next to you. Rather than strike up a conversation, she briefly rifles through her purse, then put in earbud, turns on some music, and stares past you out the bus winter. The woman is exercising what is called
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civil inattention. Generally, interactions begin with an opening to signal the start of an encounter. Civil inattention means refraining from directly interacting with someone until there is an opening signal.
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As a mother, Linda sometimes feels torn. Most of the time she focuses on being loving and supportive, but sometimes she needs to be firm to discipline her children. These opposing expectations are an example of
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role strain. Role strain is the incompatibility among roles corresponding to a single status.
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The decision to marry is a major life step. Contemporary Americans do so with certain cultural expectations: that our partner will love and care for us, will share the duties of managing a household (nowadays, fairly equally and regardless of gender), and will support us in our lives when problems arise at work or with other family members. These expectations of a spouse are an example of
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roles. Robert Merton's role theory provides a language about social interaction. Roles refer to duties and behaviors associated with a particular status. For marriage, we learn the expected status and role while growing up from parents and others, and when we marry, those expectations have predefined those same things in our partner.
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When sociologists refer to the social construction of reality, they are referring to the idea that
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something is real or meaningful when society tells us that it is. The social construction of reality essentially means that society tells us what is real or meaningful. The most important aspects of social life are things we learn without anyone actually teaching us.
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In India, there is an elaborate system of social classification called the caste system. This has existed for thousands of years, and still dictates, to a great extent, the social and economic status of an individual. A person's caste is an example of
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an ascribed status. An ascribed status is essentially what you are born into. This is contrasted with an achieved status, which is what you become. In the caste system, individuals may have a difficult time changing their status.
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At a friend's housewarming, you meet a young engaged couple from India. They tell you that their relationship was arranged when they both very young (she was 12, he was 14). They seem happy with this arrangement, but you're taken aback. The couple's comfort with the arrangement, as well as your initial discomfort, are examples of
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socialization. Socialization is the process by which people learn the values, beliefs, and norms of a given society. These values and beliefs vary by culture.
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A prison, an army, and a boarding school are examples of
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total institutions. A total institution is an institution in which one is totally immersed. It controls all the basics of day-to-day life, such as a prison, a boarding school, or the army.
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The case of a young girl named Genie is the most carefully documented and well-studied instance of what happens to a child who does not experience adequate contact with other people during infancy and childhood. Genie was locked in a room alone for nearly 13 years and never developed language skills the way most children do. Obviously, this is a story in part of severe parental neglect, but it also provides insight into whether abilities like language are innate. Fundamentally, this case about a feral child is about whether
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biology or socialization shapes human behavior. The debate over the roles of nature and nurture involves whether our genetic makeup or our social interactions make us who we are. Which side is correct? Neither. Today, most social scientists agree that socialization cannot explain everything about someone's behavior, and most biologists and their colleagues recognize that socialization influences behavior. Language, and cases like Genie's, are one way we can examine this problem.
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Martha wants to get a highly competitive internship with a state senator. She has shared this interest with her family and friends, but no one seems to have any useful contacts who can help her. One day, she runs into a former classmate she has not seen for several years and learns that the classmate has a cousin who worked as the assistant campaign manager for that senator in a recent election. The classmate then offers to introduce Martha to his cousin. This is an example of what concept?
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the strength of weak ties The strength of weak ties is the notion that often relatively weak ties turn out to be quite valuable because they yield new information.
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The Asch test provides insight into what concept?
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group conformity Social psychologist Solomon Asch demonstrated the power of conformity by examining how the pressure to conform influences whether a subject will provide the correct answer about the length of lines.
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In August 2014, police in Ferguson, Missouri, shot Michael Brown, a young black man. The incident sparked a wave of protest, and elicited a dialogue about police and race relations nationwide. The town of Ferguson is predominantly African American, having become increasingly so as white residents moved to the suburbs. Some people have argued that part of the problem in Ferguson originated from the disparity between the residents and police department, where the city was comprised of one population (black) and the police department of another (white). This underlies a more fundamental problem faced by many communities, in that the decline of communal ties has lessened the amount of
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trust. Robert Wuthnow argues that modernization has brought about a new form of "loose connections." The breakdown of families and a decline in neighborliness is a dominant concern, and many view their neighbors as inherently untrustworthy. Wuthnow also notes that this new "loose connection" does not mean the loss of all connection.
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Suppose a friend of yours spends a lot of time on Facebook, as he has a lot of close friendships there. He is somewhat alienated from his family, who live far away and most of whom he sees perhaps only once a year. Despite your friend's difficult relationship with them, his family is considered
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a primary group. A primary group is an end unto itself, whose members are noninterchangeable. Despite the emotional and physical distance, loyalty to family invariably trumps other connections. Secondary groups exist as a means to an end, but are both contingent and, despite how it may seem, impersonal.
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At finals time, you are studying at a downtown coffee shop. Feeling stressed, you are relieved to hear two students from a college across town who are sitting at a nearby table and talking about how tough their tests are. You strike up a conversation with the pair, and you all end the conversation by agreeing that both schools could give students an extra study day to relieve the pressure. This insight came about thanks to your use of the other students as a
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reference group. Reference groups help us understand our position in society relative to other groups. In this case, a neighboring college can serve as a reference group.
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Our birth families (mother, father, sister, and so on) are a central part of our lives. Suppose you family decides to host a foreign exchange student for a year. It goes well, and, the next year, the student's entire family (all nine of them) decides to visit America and your family. In the ensuing year, various members of the two families stay in touch, and you share these relationships with your own friends. In the context of social networks, what's happening between your two families, as well as the way you share the experience with your friends, is what sociologists call a tie, and although the two families are unrelated, this "tie that binds" is made real because of
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a set of stories that explains our relationship to the other members of our network. A tie is the content of a relationship, and here, it is the set of stories that explains the relationship. The narratives within the stories are the sum of the ties. Not all ties are based on consanguinity or blood relations such as birth family. They can also be deeper friendships.
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Many cell phone companies have similar offers and restrictions on changing numbers, adding numbers to a plan, getting a new phone, paying for minutes used beyond those allotted, and so on. These similarities are due to which of the following processes?
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institutional isomorphism In this scenario, the cell phone companies have become more like each other. This is an example of institutional isomorphism.
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Melinda and Alex are co-leads on a project at work, but their working styles differ greatly and they are having trouble agreeing on procedures and objectives. Elena, a member of their team who is relatively new to the company, steps in and pulls together a crucial part of the project to meet a tight deadline. The account manager is impressed with Elena's work, and Elena ends up getting a promotion after the project is completed. In this triad, Elena could be said to have assumed what role?
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tertius gaudens In this case, the addition of Elena creates a triad whereby Elena benefits from the conflict between Melinda and Alex. If Elena had intentionally tried to drive a wedge between Melina and Alex, this would have been an example of divide et impera. Note that Elena was not called in to resolve the differences, so she is not a mediator.
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Which of the following is an example of a primary group?
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a family in which the parents live in California and their children live in different states Recall that primary groups are social groups, such as family or friends, composed of intimate face-to-face relationships that strongly influence the attitudes and ideals of those involved. Members are not interchangeable and relationships are enduring, even in the case of family members moving away from each other.
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José goes to a training session for election volunteers in his precinct. There are 15 participants and two trainers. This type of group is known as a
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large group. A large group is characterized by the presence of a formal structure that mediates interaction and creates status differentiation. The training session presumably has a formal structure and status differentiation between trainers and volunteers, so this is a large group.
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____________ is/are the information, knowledge of people or things, and connections that help individuals enter preexisting networks or gain power in them.
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Social capital Social capital is the knowledge and connections that help individuals enter preexisting networks or gain power in them.
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There are many different student organizations on a college campus. Like a larger society, such organizations have
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organizational culture. "Organizational culture" refers to the shared beliefs and behaviors within a social group. This term is also used interchangeably with "corporate culture."
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True or False: Secondary groups exist as a means to an end.
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True Secondary groups, such as a group of co-workers, exist as a means to an end.. By contrast, primary groups are ends unto themselves.
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Which of the following represents the highest amount of embeddedness? (Note that any knowledge is reciprocal; that is, if A knows B, then B knows A.)
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You know Ted, Alice, Bob, and Carol. Bob knows Carol, Ted, and Alice. Carol knows Ted and Alice. Ted knows Alice. Embeddedness is the degree to which ties are reinforced through indirect paths. The more embedded a tie is, the stronger it is. Complex network relationships can indicate a deep embeddedness. In this example, you and Bob and Ted and Carol and Alice are the most deeply embedded.
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Suppose you attend a dinner party, to which you were invited by a close friend who is trying to help you land a job in your chosen field of human resources. Your friend was unable to attend, and you knew nobody at the dinner, even though the dozen guests were all employed in human resource departments in the area. During the dinner, you were quiet and reserved, just listening to conversations around you. Afterward, you worry you missed the chance to gain new
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social capital. Social capital is the knowledge and connections that help individuals enter preexisting networks or gain power in them.
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According to the sociologist Georg Simmel, what can you use to predict the behavior of members of a social group?
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the number of people in the group Georg Simmel argued that you can make predictions about the way people are going to behave in a group based on the number of members.
