Sociology Final

A person's self-conception of being male or female based on his or her association with masculine or feminine gender roles can be defined as:

Gender Identity

What is the sociological term for signs people make with their bodies?

Gestures

Which of the following groups is a subculture?

Horseback riders

Erving Goffman theorized social life as a kind of con game in which we work to control the impressions others have of us. What did Goffman call this process?

Impression management

Which of the following statements about the process of socialization is true?

The process is reciprocal: society shapes the individual and the individual shapes society.

How are the terms gender and sex different?

The term sex refers to the biological differences between males and females, whereas the term gender refers to the socially constructed behavior of men and women.

Most sociologists argue that gender is a social construction, and they acknowledge the possibility that binary male-female categories are not the only way of classifying individuals. This perspective is called:

a constructionist perspective

In Émile Durkheim's study Suicide, he reported that suicide rates went up when the economy slumped but they also increased when the economy boomed. Which of Durkheim's concepts explains why both positive and negative economic conditions could increase suicide rates?

Anomie

A paradigm shift is a major break in the assumptions that are used to understand the world. For social scientists, what causes a paradigm shift?

new data forcing a new way of looking at the world

According to Karl Marx, the most important factor in social life is a person's:

relationship to the means of production.

What did sociologist Charles Cooley argue was taking place in people's minds when he developed the concept of the looking-glass self?

seeing ourselves reflected back from others

Sociologists observe society:

by studying the various parts of a society, and the ways they interact and influence each other.

A questionnaire with a set of predetermined responses is

closed-ended.

Monique believes that religious practices such as prohibiting women from becoming priests promote inequality. Monique understands religion through which sociological lens?

conflict theory

C. Wright Mills identifies the small and unified group of people who occupy the highest positions of the major economic, political, and military institutions and exercise tremendous influence in American social life as:

the power elite.

In which sort of institution are individuals' identities systematically stripped away in an effort to create a new identity that is strongly rooted in a particular group's membership?

total institution

You are conducting research on violence in the media. If you are trying to decide whether "violence" includes words as well as actions, in what part of the research process are you engaged?

defining the variables

What did Max Weber believe people would experience more of as the dehumanizing features of bureaucratic processes became increasingly prevalent in society?

disenchantment

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis suggests that:

language can structure our perception of reality.

On any given day, within ten minutes of waking up, you probably depend on more than 100 strangers to provide electricity, water, natural gas, weather forecasts, and other services. According to Durkheim, this interdependence gives rise to:

organic solidarity.

Émile Durkheim suggested that mechanical solidarity created the

social bonds that held agrarian societies together.

The term " socialization" refers to:

the lifelong process by which people learn the norms, values, and beliefs of their culture.

When survey researchers write closed-ended questions, they often use Likert scales to construct the possible answers. How do Likert scales allow respondents to answer?

They allow respondents to answer along a continuum, from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree."

What do schools, churches, and governments all have in common?

They are all social institutions.

According to Karl Marx, how is class consciousness, or revolutionary consciousness, developed?

When the lower classes come to recognize how society works and challenge those in power

When does gender role socialization begin?

before birth

What are religions called that worship one divine figure?

monotheistic

What does Jean Baudrillard call an image in the media that people can no longer distinguish from the reality that it is supposed to represent?

simulacrum

"Gender is socially constructed and maintained in our everyday lives. Gender is something we 'do' on a daily basis." This statement most likely comes from which perspective?

symbolic interactionism

In Schooling in Capitalist America, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis argued that schools train a labor force in the skills and attitudes necessary for the health of a modern economy. What are these skills and attitudes?

taking orders and performing repetitive tasks

The nature vs. nurture debate helps us understand:

the complex interaction between hereditary traits and social learning

What is religiosity?

the extent of a person's commitment to a religion

What is reactivity?

the tendency of research subjects to change their behavior in response to being studied

Max Weber helped lay the groundwork for sociologists who would develop symbolic interactionism as a theory, because he believed that a social scientist should approach the study of human action:

with verstehen (understanding), which emphasizes the need for empathy with individuals' experiences.

How many babies out of every thousand are born intersex?

17

How does a person come to possess an achieved status?

An achieved status is earned.

Which film in my master's thesis featured integrated products like, Toyota, Pepsi-Free, and Calvin Klein underwear?

Back to the Future

How is a subculture different from a counterculture?

Both are distinct from mainstream culture, but a counterculture actively opposes important aspects of the mainstream.

How are norms enforced in everyday settings?

By sanctions

What did Karl Marx think the lower classes needed to develop in order to end their oppression?

Class consciousness

What do sociologists call it when cultures that were once distinct become increasingly similar?

Cultural Leveling

While on vacation far from home, Candice wants to go to a restaurant where the locals go, wanting something different than what she can get back home. However, while looking for a place to eat, all she sees are the same chain restaurants she has near her home. This is an example of:

Cultural leveling

What is the definition of "culture"?

Culture is the entire way of life of a group of people, and it acts as a lens through which we view the world.

A famous monologue from Shakespeare's As You Like It begins: All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts Which theory of social life could be seen as taking its inspiration from these lines?

Dramaturgy

Which of the following statements best characterizes microsociology?

It is an approach that examines interactions between individuals and the ways those interactions reflect larger patterns within a society.

How has the Kinsey Scale of Sexuality helped us to better understand sexual orientation?

It supports the idea that human sexuality exists as a highly diverse continuum over the lifetime of any individual.

Which of the following statements best describes the approach taken by macrosociologists?

Macrosociology examines large-scale social structure to see how it affects individual lives.

Symbolic interactionism argues that people act toward things on the basis of their meaning. According to this perspective, how does meaning arise?

Meaning is negotiated through interaction with others.

What did Max Weber mean when he said that modern people are trapped in an "iron cage"?

Most aspects of life are increasingly controlled by rigid rules and rationalization.

Which term describes a policy of honoring diverse racial, ethnic, religious, linguistic, and national background?

Multiculturalism

Wearing your seatbelt is common, and today it is usually a legal requirement. In the 1950s, however, it was not common nor expected. This example demonstrates that what aspect of culture can change over time?

Norms

Why do politics, education, and religion all appear in the same chapter of your text?

Political, religious, and educational concerns often overlap in everyday life.

In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Émile Durkheim argued that religion was a powerful source of social solidarity. Why?

Religion reinforced collective bonds and cultivated shared moral values.

A high school football coach is worried about how he should handle his roster. On the one hand, it's his job to try to win as many games as possible, which means playing the best players; on the other hand, his contract also requires him to try to allow every member of the team to meaningfully participate. The tension he feels is the result of:

Role strain

What do functionalists generally believe to be true about gender?

Some social roles are better suited to one gender than the other.

Conflict theorists believe that arguments over values and beliefs have their roots in:

Struggles over scarce resources and power.

Which social theory focuses on micro-level interactions?

Symbolic interactionism

What is the sociological imagination?

The ability to understand the connections between biography and history, or the interplay of the self and the world

Max Weber believed that as the Industrial Revolution progressed, society became increasingly rationalized. How did he define rationalization?

The application of economic logic to all aspects of social life

Which theorist argued that if people define a situation as real, it is real in its consequences?

W. I. Thomas

How is culture transmitted and internalized?

We learn values and beliefs slowly and incrementally

In the opening pages of The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan wrote about a problem that "lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of the American women." What was this problem?

Women experienced dissatisfaction with traditional gender roles.

Patriarchy can be defined as:

a society in which women are dominated by men

The term "master status" is defined as:

a status that seems to override all other statuses a person may possess.

According to your textbook, what do all religions have in common?

a system of beliefs and rituals that establish a relationship between the sacred and the profane

A study showed a strong correlation between not smoking and having a high college grade point average. Although some people used this study as evidence that smoking is bad, if you accept that smoking does NOT cause someone to lose brain cells or study less, you would probably conclude that the study:

employed a spurious correlation.

When Charles and Kim visit Great Britain, Charles quickly decided to NOT drive the rental car because he perceives the drivers as strange and weird and he wants nothing to do with them. Kim, on the other hand, is excited about driving the car. She is looking forward to learning how to do things differently than in the United States. In this example, Charles is experiencing _____ while Kim is experiencing _____.

ethnocentrism, cultural relativism

Which sociological perspective explores how society is structured and maintains order?

functionalist

Auguste Comte is credited with coining the term "sociology," largely through the development of a theory of human thinking called positivism. What does positivism attempt to do?

identify laws that describe the behavior of a reality

A simple random sample is defined as a sample:

in which every member of the population has a chance of being included.

Dr. Lui plans to research the relationship between breast-feeding and preschool success. In this research, breast-feeding is the

independent variable

The three branches of government established in the early years of the United States are the executive, legislative, and judicial. More recently however, there is a growing belief that we have established a fourth branch of government. What does this refer to?

media

The ideal of objectivity means that a researcher:

must try to adopt a stance of personal neutrality toward the outcome of the research

Systems and structures that persist over time and help organize group life are called:

social institutions.

Manny believes that religion gives meaning to his life. He believes that religion helps him understand the most fundamental questions about life and existence. Manny understands religion through which sociological lens?

structural functionalism