Chapter 01 Quiz [The Sociological Perspective]

Which of the following statements best illustrates the career advantage a person gains by studying sociology?

A police officer understands which categories of people are at high risk of becoming victims of crime.

W. E. B. Du Bois described African Americans as having a "double consciousness" because ________

African Americans are American citizens who have a second identity based on skin color.

The term "sociology" was coined in 1838 by ________

Auguste Comte.

The pioneering sociologist who studied patterns of suicide in Europe was ________

Emile Durkheim.

__________, one of the founding sociologists, urged sociologists to understand a social setting from the point of view of the people in it.

Max Weber

According to Auguste Comte, people begin to try to understand how social life operates as their society enters which stage of development?

Metaphysical stage

________ is a way of understanding the world based on science.

Positivism

Who was the U.S. sociologist who distinguished between the manifest functions and the latent functions of social patterns?

Robert K. Merton

Auguste Comte described the earliest human societies as being at which stage of historical development?

Scientific stage

Social structures sometimes have negative consequences for the operation of society as a whole. Which of the following concepts refers to these negative consequences?

Social dysfunctions

Which of the following concepts is used to describe relatively stable patterns of social behavior?

Social structure

Which theoretical approach claims that it is not so much what people do that matters as much as what meaning they attach to their behavior?

Symbolic-interaction approach

Which theoretical approach would highlight the fact that, on average, African American families have less income than white families?

The race-conflict approach

What might a sociologist say about people's selection of marriage partners?

Typically, a person marries someone of similar social position.

Which early U.S. sociologist studied the African American community and served as a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)?

W. E. B. Du Bois

In the United States today, the suicide rate is highest for which of the following categories of people?

White males

According to Auguste Comte, people living in Europe during the Middle Ages thought of society as ________

an expression of God's will.

Learning more sociology can help you ________

assess the opportunities and constraints in our lives.

Making use of the sociological perspective encourages ________

challenging many commonly-held beliefs.

Following the thinking of C. Wright Mills, we would expect the sociological imagination to be more widespread in a population ________

during times of social crisis.

Sarah is spending a summer living in another country where people have a way of life that differs from her own. A sociologist might expect that this experience would lead her to ________

end up with a greater understanding of both a new way of life and her own way of life.

An accurate criticism of the structural-functional approach is that it ________

focuses too much on power divisions in society.

To evaluate a theory using evidence, sociologists ________

gather data or facts.

Because there is more social isolation in rural areas of the United States than in urban areas, we would expect suicide rates to be ________

higher in rural areas.

Sociologists cannot identify "laws of society" that allow us to precisely predict the behavior of an individual because ________

human behavior may be patterned, but it is also spontaneous.

Gaining a global understanding is ________

important for college students because most new U.S. jobs involve international trade.

A sociologist using the gender-conflict approach might state that ________

in many ways, men are in positions of power over women.

Sociology provides an advantage to students preparing for later careers by preparing them for work ________

in teaching, criminal justice, business, and many other careers.

Using the social-conflict approach, a sociologist might highlight ________

income differences among young people in high school.

An example of a latent function of college is ________

keeping young people out of a tight labor force, which may not have jobs for them.

Unrecognized and unintended consequences of a social pattern are called ________

latent functions.

According to Emile Durkheim, categories of people with a higher suicide rate typically have ________

lower levels of social integration.

The recognized and intended consequences of a social pattern are referred to as ________

manifest functions.

The social-conflict approach draws attention to ________

patterns of social inequality.

The symbolic-interaction approach focuses on how ________

people experience society.

C. Wright Mills claimed that the "sociological imagination" transformed ________personal problems into public issues.

personal problems into public issues.

W. E. B. Du Bois claimed that ________ was the major problem facing the United States during the twentieth century.

race

By stating that the sociological perspective shows us "the strange in the familiar," the text argues that sociologists ________

reject the familiar idea that people simply decide how to act in favor of the initially strange idea that society shapes our lives.

Peter Berger describes using the sociological perspective as:

seeing the general in the particular

The "framework for building theory that sees society as an arena of inequality that generates conflict and change" is the ________

social-conflict approach.

The main characteristic of the _____ approach is its view of society as being orderly and stable.

structural-functional

The theoretical approach in sociology that assumes society is a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability is the ________

structural-functional approach.

The basic idea of the symbolic-interaction approach is that society is ________

the product of people interacting in countless everyday situations.

Among the historical changes that stimulated the development of sociology as a discipline was ________

the rise of the industrial economy and growth of cities.

About 1.25million immigrants enter the United States each year and many (including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gloria Estefan) have become well known. These facts support the conclusion that ________

the world's nations are increasingly interconnected.

A statement that explains how and why specific facts are related is called a(n) ________

theory.

Sociology differs from the older discipline of philosophy by focusing on ________

what the ideal society should be.

In the feature about Barbara Ehrenreich working at low-wage jobs (see Thinking about Diversity), we learned that she ________

worked very hard, but never made enough money to pay for her basic needs.