Social Theory Exam Preparation Guide
Course Introduction
Social Theory explores the key ideas, concepts, and debates that have shaped the study of society, social structures, and human interaction. This course provides an overview of classical and contemporary theorists including Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and others whose work forms the foundation of sociology. Students will critically examine how social theories address issues such as power, inequality, identity, culture, and social change, and will apply these frameworks to understand current societal issues. Through readings, discussions, and written assignments, the course aims to develop students analytical skills and deepen their understanding of the major paradigms influencing sociological thought.
Recommended Textbook
You May Ask Yourself An Introduction to Thinking Like a Sociologist Core 4th Edition by Dalton Conley
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Chapter 1: The Sociological Imagination: An Introduction
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Q1) Which early U.S.sociologist told other sociologists in the Chicago School to "go out and get the seats of [their] pants dirty in real research"?
A) Charles H. Cooley
B) George H. Mead
C) Robert Park
D) Louis Wirth
Answer: C
Q2) Which of the following was the first African American to receive a PhD from Harvard University?
A) W. E. B. Du Bois
B) Jane Addams
C) Frederick Douglass
D) Booker T. Washington
Answer: A
Q3) Which area within the discipline of anthropology is most similar to sociology?
A) physical anthropology
B) cultural anthropology
C) genetic anthropology
D) forensic anthropology
Answer: B
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Chapter 2: Methods
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Q1) The subset of a population from which a researcher collects data is known as a:
A) census.
B) selection bias.
C) sample.
D) survey.
Answer: C
Q2) 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?
A) experiments
B) audit studies
C) panel surveys
D) historical methods
Answer: D
Q3) A potential shortcoming of survey research is that surveys:
A) tend to focus more on what people do than what they say.
B) rely on people's honesty and willingness to cooperate.
C) cannot reflect the total population.
D) cannot be used on large populations.
Answer: B
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Chapter 3: Culture and Media
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Q1) Deliberate,long-term media campaigns such as Smokey the Bear,which began in 1944 and is still with us today,are examples of ads used by nonprofit organizations to educate the public.They are commonly known as:
A) messages to the masses.
B) mass-media services.
C) public service announcements.
D) fireside chats.
Answer: C
Q2) Stanley Lieberson's research on first names in the United States found that:
A) it is more common for names to cross from men to women over time than vice versa.
B) it is more common for names to cross from women to men over time than vice versa.
C) with the exception of a few androgynous names, names don't cross between boys and girls over time.
D) children's names do not follow any noticeable patterns over time.
Answer: A
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Chapter 4: Socialization and the Construction of Reality
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Q1) List and give an example of each of the four main agents of socialization.
Q2) Which of the following provides a good example of the generalized other?
A) A little girl has a grandmother who always wears a hat. One day, the girl sees a woman who is about her grandmother's age and asks her where her hat is.
B) A child goes to a friend's house to play and is surprised when her friend asks her to remove her shoes before coming into the house.
C) A child is taught to say "bless you" every time someone sneezes in her home. When she is at the grocery store one day, the child says "bless you" to a complete stranger who sneezes in the checkout line.
D) While at the park, a little girl notices a boy about her age standing all alone. Feeling sorry for him, she walks over and asks him if he would like to play.
Q3) Expected conformity,especially among teenage friends,is known as:
A) peer pressure.
B) adolescent angst.
C) teenage wasteland.
D) role conflict.
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Chapter 5: Groups and Networks
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Q1) The examples of more and more people bowling and eating alone are used to highlight a more general trend involving:
A) the decline in social and emotional support.
B) civic disengagement and a decline in social capital.
C) social isolationism and alienation in modern society.
D) the breakdown in the nuclear family.
Q2) You are at a party with a very close group of friends one evening,and you spy an acquaintance (a former classmate from a sociology class)at the same party.If the acquaintance becomes friends with your group of friends,the tie between you and your former classmate is stronger because:
A) you are now much more intimate with your former classmate.
B) it is now reinforced by the ties between your close group of friends.
C) ties to your close group of friends have changed.
D) of dialectics.
Q3) Stigmatized groups,such as gays and lesbians in the United States,are known as:
A) primary groups.
B) secondary groups.
C) in-groups.
D) out-groups.
Q4) Describe the Asch experiments conducted on group conformity.
Page 7
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Chapter 6: Social Control and Deviance
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Q1) Devah Pager (2001)found,in her study of job applications and criminal records,that a negative social label affects people's chances in life.This label is called a ____________ by sociologists.
A) crime
B) bias
C) stigma
D) primary deviance
Q2) Illegal drug dealing is an example of which of the following types of crimes,as defined by sociologists?
A) white-collar crimes
B) street crimes
C) violations
D) misdemeanors
Q3) According to Merton,which of the following describes a person who accepts both the goals defined by society and the means to achieve them?
A) conformist
B) innovator
C) retreatist
D) ritualist
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Chapter 7: Stratification
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Q1) The government's definition of poverty for a family of four (as of 2011)is a total yearly salary of just under:
A) $15,000.
B) $23,000.
C) $32,000.
D) $45,000.
Q2) Rousseau believed that the source of all social ills was:
A) income.
B) private property.
C) racism.
D) business ownership.
Q3) The U.S.estate tax is sometimes called the ____________ tax.
A) elite
B) death
C) middle-class
D) inheritance
Q4) Compare and contrast Rousseau's perspective of social inequality with that of Malthus,Millar,and Ferguson.
Q5) Explain the estate,caste,class,and status hierarchy systems,using examples.
Page 9
Q6) How does the status-attainment model help us understand social mobility?
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Chapter 8: Gender
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Q1) According to the textbook,prison rape is usually about power,and a man who commits a homosexual act within prison:
A) generally takes on a homosexual identity to match his homosexual behaviors.
B) does not necessarily view himself as a homosexual.
C) is viewed by all the other prisoners as having a homosexual identity.
D) sees himself as powerless.
Q2) Discuss the connection between sex and power in reference to homosexuality.Give a historical progression of homosexuality.Include Foucault's philosophy and Kinsey's study.
Q3) What is the term that refers to desire,sexual preference,sexual identity,and behavior?
A) sexual orientation
B) sexuality
C) sex
D) gender
Q4) Inappropriate jokes on the job and sexual bartering are both examples of:
A) sexual advancement.
B) gender discrimination.
C) sexual harassment.
D) gender harassment.
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Chapter 9: Race
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Q1) Your text introduces the concepts of whiteness and the browning of America.What effect do you think the presence of one will have on the other? In other words,as American "browns," will the degree of "whiteness" remain the same,or how will it change?
Q2) Which term refers to the mass killing of a particular population?
A) extinction
B) extermination
C) expulsion
D) genocide
Q3) The majority of the Latinos in the United States come from:
A) Puerto Rico.
B) Cuba.
C) Mexico.
D) the Dominican Republic.
Q4) Japanese internment camps resulted in:
A) greater wealth for Chinese Americans.
B) a decrease in wealth for white Americans.
C) greater wealth for white Americans.
D) more Chinese immigrants entering the United States.
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Chapter 10: Poverty
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Q1) What population was Oscar Lewis studying when he coined the term "culture of poverty"?
A) blacks
B) single mothers on welfare
C) the underclass
D) Mexicans
Q2) The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act was also referred to as the:
A) "end of welfare as we know it."
B) War on Welfare.
C) "deserving poor" tax credit.
D) War on Poverty.
Q3) The stress that poor parents experience manifests itself in:
A) lower IQs among children.
B) more punitive parenting behaviors.
C) more of the children's time spent in day care and with babysitters.
D) poor parents providing cheaper educational environments for their children.
Q4) Why is there such unequal distribution of wealth in the United States? How does the United States compare to other nations?
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Chapter 11: Health and Society
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Q1) Which of the following contributes to increasing rates of heart disease and hypertension in women?
A) There are higher rates of single mothers.
B) More women are entering high-level jobs.
C) Fewer women are having children.
D) Women are less likely to see a doctor.
Q2) Use of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)IV is now required by:
A) medical doctors.
B) psychiatrists.
C) the insurance industry.
D) psychologists.
Q3) Asians tend to have lower infant mortality rates than others in the United States.This is most likely attributable to:
A) socioeconomic status.
B) low birth weight.
C) lower incidences of HIV.
D) having fewer children overall.
Q4) What are the signs that doctors' authority is declining? How does this affect you?
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Chapter 12: Family (in Core edition)
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Q1) Discuss three specific reasons why housework is overlooked as a worthy or meaningful activity in the United States.
Q2) Talcott Parsons and other functionalists argued that the nuclear family was necessary in modern industrial society.Problems with the functionalist argument are highlighted in which of the research findings below?
A) A majority of single mothers on welfare get off of it in two years.
B) Cohabitants who eventually marry have increased divorce rates compared to non-cohabitants who marry.
C) Mundurucu mothers and fathers live in separate homes, eat separate meals, and sleep apart, yet this arrangement is functional for this culture.
D) Research shows that married parents provide better homes for their children than divorced ones.
Q3) As discussed in Chapter 12,in which cultures would it be acceptable for a man to marry his 14-year-old cousin?
A) no cultures would accept this practice
B) in the United States and Kenya
C) in 1960s Japan
D) in Victorian England and in some modern-day Muslim tribes
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Chapter 13: Education
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Q1) Research has shown that the ____________ the family,the ____________ the children's achievement on test scores and grades.
A) smaller; lower
B) larger; lower
C) larger; higher
D) none of the above; family size has no effect on children's educational achievement.
Q2) Social capital is:
A) the knowledge and skills individuals can build to make themselves competitive.
B) the collection of relationships that can facilitate the actions and behaviors of others.
C) social class and cultural differences in types of knowledge that people can use to their advantage.
D) the center of socialization resources that a group of people has at its disposal.
Q3) Discuss how tracking creates differences among students within the same schools that may be significantly greater than differences between schools.
Q4) What factors inside classrooms can affect students' learning experiences?
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Chapter 14: Capitalism and the Economy
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Q1) According to Hochschild,Jacobs,and Gerson,why don't workers take advantage of family-friendly policies?
Q2) Which theorist claimed that modern capitalism would not have arisen without the Protestant Reformation,which created the necessary social conditions for capitalism by creating theological insecurity and instilling a doctrine of predestination?
A) Karl Marx
B) Georg Simmel
C) Adam Smith
D) Max Weber
Q3) The Bell Telephone Company,which for decades was the only provider of telephone service in the United States,was a(n):
A) oligopoly.
B) autocracy.
C) market organization.
D) monopoly.
Q4) The personal bankruptcy rate in America is higher than it has ever been.Why? Do any theories or theorists help explain this trend?
Q5) Corporations have what is called limited liability.What does this mean?
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Chapter 15: Authority and the State
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Q1) The principle of ____________ means that each state tacitly agrees to mind its own business when it comes to the internal affairs of other sovereign countries as long as borders are respected.
A) interdependence
B) noninterference
C) respect
D) independence
Q2) Why does Puerto Rico have higher voting rates than the United States?
A) There is more incentive for Puerto Ricans to vote.
B) Nonvoters are socially ostracized.
C) Election Day is a holiday.
D) Voting is mandatory.
Q3) ____________ theory asks how democracy and capitalism can coexist and is concerned with explaining the contradictions between formal legal equality and social class inequality.
A) Weber's authority
B) Neo-classical
C) Weber's welfare
D) Neo-Marxist
Q4) Explain why Weber's definition of state does not fit many African states.
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Chapter 16: Religion
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Q1) There have been a greater number of ____________ presidents of the United States than of any other denomination of Christianity.
A) Baptist
B) Methodist
C) Episcopalian
D) Catholic
Q2) Animism is the ____________; examples of it are ____________.
A) belief in a difference between the sacred and the profane; holy books and holy water
B) belief that spirits are present in the natural world; totemism and shamanism
C) adherence to ethical principles in order to live a moral life; Taoism and Buddhism
D) worship of a god or gods; Hinduism and Islam
Q3) Calvinists believed that their souls were selected for salvation before birth.This is known as:
A) rationality.
B) self-sacrifice.
C) predestination.
D) faith.
Q4) What is the sect-church cycle? How can this help us understand social change?
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Chapter 17: Science, the Environment, and Society
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Q1) Which of the following is NOT cited in your text as a factor that influences researchers to choose a particular area of study?
A) the university where the researcher studied
B) interest in the topic
C) available funding
D) politics
Q2) The term used to describe how a well-known scientist is more likely to be credited with a particular scientific discovery than lesser-known colleagues is:
A) the hierarchy rule.
B) prestige seniority.
C) science wars.
D) the Matthew effect.
Q3) Sociologists who study scientists in the laboratory do so typically because they:
A) want to be sure their findings are valid.
B) want to reinforce their research results.
C) are interested in how scientific facts are socially constructed.
D) are interested in discovering the Theory of Everything.
Q4) What are the sociological effects of genetic information related to race?
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Chapter 18: Collective Action, Social Movements, and Social Change
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Q1) The ____________ is a group of present-day activists who attempt to create social movements through satire.
A) Anti-inflammatory League
B) NRA
C) Yes Men
D) Convergence Group
Q2) Give an example of technological innovation and the emergence of new ideas as causes of social change,and give possible examples of the three stages of social movements that would follow.
Q3) A group of conservationists encourages their community to save water by using low-flushing toilets or faucets that release more pressure but less water.Which social movement would this represent?
A) alterative
B) redemptive
C) reformative
D) revolutionary
Q4) What are the two types of collective action? Give examples of membership.
Q5) Discuss the theories of collective action: convergence theory,contagion theory,and emergent norm theory.
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