Chapter 1 Test Yourself: End of Chapter 1

When we exercise our sociological imagination, we increase our ability to understand

the history of how sociology developed as a discipline.

why some people seem to overcome life's obstacles and others don't.

changes in social phenomenon over time.

the relationship between larger social forces and the experiences of individual people.

What makes sociology a social science that is different from other social sciences?

its focus on methodical, systematic observation of social behavior

its relationship in the university system to economics, political science, and psychology departments

its focus on human experiences

its belief that, as a discipline, it can improve the world

You want to better understand if people think about the nutrition content of fast food when they are ordering it. You want to approach the topic sociologically, so you decide to

ask your sociology professor if they think about the nutrition content of fast food before he orders.

give your classmates in your sociology class a quiz about the nutrition content of various popular fast food items.

ask a fast food restaurant to provide you with a list of what customers order in the span of a week.

interview people who are dining in a fast food restaurant about whether they considered nutrition content before they ordered their food.

A romantic matchmaking company wants to learn more about what makes a successful first date. They hire a sociologist to observe, with permission, a number of first dates of people who met online through their company. What kind of research will the sociologist conduct?

macrosociological

sociologically imaginative

institutional

microsociological

Dr. Gunderson wants to learn whether nations with a tradition of a free press are less likely to devote a high percent of their national budget to national defense. What kind of research is he conducting?

microsociology

institutional

confirmation bias

macrosociology

One way we know that the family is an institution is that

it defines people's roles in relationship to each other-such as mother, daughter, father, son, sister, brother, etc.-and how they should act in those roles.

it has a legal definition, even though people may understand others as part of their family who are legally not part of it.

people generally agree on what constitutes a family.

it has changed over time.

Solidarity can spark conflict between groups because

people may think they have something valuable in common but later discover that it was superficial and thus not sufficient to hold the group together.

those with more power within the group may bully members with less power.

in order to define some people as part of the "in-group," others have to be part of the "out-group," which often comes to be seen as less worthy of respect than the in-group.

people who are excluded often accept that exclusion.

Glenda is a caseworker in a mental health hospital. She is currently attending to a patient who has been placed there involuntarily because of threats to his life and the safety of others. Glenda tells the patient that if he does not stop throwing or threatening to throw items at the staff, he will be sedated. He complies in order to avoid being sedated. In her role as caseworker, Glenda is exercising

power.

privilege.

structure.

solidarity.

Which of the students below are experiencing privilege in the scene described?

LaDonna lives with a chronic condition that sometimes requires her to use a wheelchair. Even if she doesn't use her wheelchair, though, she parks in spaces reserved for people with disabilities, for which she has a parking pass, because she can never be sure that she will feel well enough after class to walk a longer distance to her car, even if she felt well enough to do so when she arrived on campus.

Josh is running for president of the gay-straight alliance, a student club that promotes the interests of LGBTQ+ students on campus. Josh is a straight student who argues that he should be president of this student club because a straight person will have a better chance of being persuasive to other students, faculty, staff, and administrators. Josh also wants to win this position because he wants to add it to his resumé as evidence of his leadership potential. He wins the election.

Next year, Giovanni wants to live in a dorm named after his grandfather, a major donor to the university he attends. However, to live in this dorm, he must be on the university honor roll. Currently, his grades are not high enough, so he asks his sociology professor to "bump up" his C grade to a B in order to increase his grade point average. She refuses, and Giovanni writes a negative review of her as a teacher on a website that gathers such information about professors.

Maria has spoken both Spanish and English fluently since childhood. Her university requires four semesters of study of a foreign language. She asks permission for this requirement to be waived for her since she is already fluent in Spanish. The foreign language department refuses to grant this, arguing that since Spanish is one of her native languages, it does not count as a foreign language. She is required to study an additional language, one she doesn't already speak, in order to meet this requirement.

Which of the following is evidence of the continued strength of local cultures?

Few American adults live in the town where they were born.

Tourists seek "authentic" experiences from the places they visit, from eating at local restaurants to touring local historical sites.

The majority of farmworkers in the US are foreign-born.

Most Americans no longer consider spaghetti or tacos to be "foreign" foods.

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