Module 1

Question 1

For Durkheim, even “purely moral maxims” have power over us.

Answer 1

True

There are still penalties

Constraint can be less but is still there

Question 2

Durkheim says that religious believers do not invent their beliefs and rituals but, rather, find them outside themselves, already in existence.

Answer 2

True

Given religious truths at birth, so if they existed before he did then they exist outside of him

Question 3

According to Durkheim, industrialists have often succeed by determination alone, even when they relied on outmoded procedures and methods.

Answer 3

False?

Cannot succeed on outdated methods because then industrialists are always fighting against rules

Question 4

Durkheim calls himself a “zealous partisan of absolute individualism.”

Answer 4

False

He says he is not because he uses the word we in opposition to this statement

He believes individuals are not entirely dependent on himself and this angers ___

Question 5

According to Durkheim, social constraint deprives us of all individual personality.

Answer 5

False

Deprives us of some not all

We know we are not entirely our own

Social constraint is not exclusive of individual personality

Question 6

Durkheim says that, when we get “carried away” by the enthusiasm of a crowd, we are experiencing the influence of a social current.

Answer 6

True?

Question 7

Durkheim says that it is impossible to be unaware of the pressure the group exerts on us.

Answer 7

False?

Pressures reveal themselves when we fight against them

We may not feel them all the time

Question 8

According to Durkheim, once we fall under the spell of a common emotion, we remain unalterably in the grip of that emotion.

Answer 8

False

Alterable when we are in group versus when we are not

Question 9

Under the pressure of group emotion, we may embrace sentiments that, under other circumstances, would “horrify” us, Durkheim says.

Answer 9

True

Emotions can be like foreign objects

It’s the power of a group

Question 10

The education of children is, for Durkheim, the “miniature” version of the process by which people in general are socialized.

Answer 10

True

Education creates a social being, shape them in society’s image

A child will not become the way they are without the influence of society and education to help them figure out how to think

Gives rise to habits

Question 11

According to Durkheim, children experience social pressure “every single second.”

Answer 11

True

By teachers and parents and society

Social word seeks to shape its own image

Question 12

A gesture repeated by every individual is, for Durkheim, inherently a social fact.

Answer 12

False

Not alone

“social facts are the beliefs, tendencies, practices of the group taken collectively”

Question 13

For Asch, interactions between people occur exclusively in the social field, NOT in nature.

Answer 13

False

This gets the greatest diversity

Basis for social happenings

Question 14

Asch says that social psychology should remove the “veil of self-evidence” from the interpretation of people’s actions.

Answer 14

True

Usually be get rid of problems by depending on others, and other people’s actions have consequences for us

Dependence requires knowledge of human fact

We try to make sense of others actions

Question 15

Asch says that we can understand people’s actions in relation to objects, but not in relation to other people.

Answer 15

False

We can say they come and go, push and pull things

But we can also say their mental state of concentration or searching and finding

We can help, fight, advise other people

Psychology is the study of people and people

Question 16

Reciprocity is a key aspect of social action, according to Asch.

Answer 16

True ???

Most simple forms of social interaction are replication

Sameness

Observe that a cheerful friend cheers us

Interpretation shows the actions of suggestion

Sympathetic induction of emotions

We imitate under certain conditions, not under others

We can feel with them

Teacher should not feel like students

Question 17

For Asch, situations of mass panic, in which everyone reacts separately to feelings that absorb them personally, are instances of the breakdown of group relations.

Answer 17

True

Each person is responding in their own way

Own alarm completely absorbs individuals

Not reflecting group emotion

Question 18

Opposing another person is just as much social action, Asch says, as imitating another person.

Answer 18

True

Opposing and imitating are still reacting to the action of a person

Makes relevant social action possible

Action of one person answers action of another

Question 19

Asch would agree that, by working, people change the world around them; but he would deny that, by working, people change themselves.

Answer 19

False

Work does change the world, i.e. technology, social organization

Working builds relationships

Work socializes the individual

Needs mastery of process and correct use of power

Question 20

For Asch, the efforts of two people who cooperate to achieve a common goal can be characterized as simply the sum, the additive effect, of their separate forces.

Answer 20

False

Unity of action embraces the participants and common objects, perform a joint action

Need direct communication

Not separate focuses because they share a common goal

Performance is a new product

People would not act the same if the other person wasn’t there

Question 21

Asch says that the accomplishment of a “bucket brigade” is ultimately “more than and different from” the sum of individual efforts by brigade members.

Answer 21

True

Fundamental structural alteration / actions are now reorganized for the group unit

Division of functions

Operations are the best and most efficient way to meet the goal as they save time, energy, confusion, waste

Question 22

Asch says that speedy teamwork is equivalent both to “stretching” time and “compressing” effort within a concentrated time period.

Answer 22

True

Joint action is qualitatively new

Some work cannot be compressed into a certain amount of time

Groups multiplies tools needed for the task: guarantees continuous effort

Question 23

Asch denies that cooperation has any “profound novelty” about it.

Answer 23

False

Performance of group cannot be predicted from what individual members know

Certain relations and operations only occur in a group i.e. helping and encouraging

Cooperation of group is more than what an individual could do

Everyone has different knowledge and skills, in group can act near and distant

Starts motive to cooperate

Question 24

In a footnote, Asch says that cooperation involves mutual understanding, but that competition does not.

Answer 24

False

Competition involves mutual understanding of goals and aims

Understands actions of others

However, people act as barriers instead of as aids

In game groups have shared goal but cannot share

Question 25

Objects have properties only in themselves, Asch says, NOT in their "relation" to us as well.

Answer 25

False Objects are social things because of their social setting and function A chair would not have the properties of sitting if we did not assign in the function of somewhere to sit Posses social reality, functional property, what we decide to do with them and how that affects us What objects can do and what we can do with them : gain social understanding Uses and aims are social

Question 26

Ownership, Asch says, is a physical matter of control and possession, not a social "relation or "fact."

Answer 26

False Ownership is obviously a social fact The first thing a child learns is the chair its family members sit in, forbidden rooms, and its own home Gold is on object of ownership, which would not be known without social relation Becomes reality at the will of others

Question 27

Asch says that only objects made by people can be social facts. This would include houses and tenement buildings but not sunlight, airwaves or clouds.

Answer 27

False Everything can be made into a social fact through ownership Mutual social field More inclusive ownership with more technology Light and sunshine in a tenement building have a price

Question 28

For Asch everyone, at birth, is already an "I" or a "You."

Answer 28

False Interaction between people creates the I and You, so they must be developed One does not start out as a friend or cousin, this is socially created, humans make each other into mothers for example Relational and mutally dependent To be an I means someone else experiences the You Can form We

Question 29

Mauss says the Ewe concept of dzo is associated with pearls and shells.

Answer 29

True Word comes from root of other cultures Dzo means power, magical things, and deeds Used in African magic and religion

Question 30

Mauss says “mana” and “Manitou” were originally mispronunciations of the English word “money.”

Answer 30

False Mana directly linked to the concept of money Related to notion of talisman

Question 31

Mauss says the symbolic power of sacred talismans renders them suitable to represent buying power as well.

Answer 31

True? Quartz in the Americas was exchanged as well as other Talismans Measure value among people Thus provided people with buying power through symbolic power

Question 32

Talismans have been used by tribal chieftains to compel their underlings to render service to them.

Answer 32

True Talismans represent power, not only of substances but also of human authority Talismans were fought over and passed down, and used to exert power (society gave them power)

Question 33

Mauss regards the value of gold as inherent in gold, not in people’s ideas or attitudes.

Answer 33

False People place a value in gold We believe we can obtain things from others like goods and services Society allows us to demand these services

Question 34

Mauss disagrees with economists who say that expectations can be quantified.

Answer 34

False Mauss agrees that expectations, emotions and intentions can be quantified Example of expectations of having kids when purchasing a wife for a certain quantity of cattle in Belgian Congo Marriage agreement links him to other people in family

Question 35

Oualid argues that belief is an individual rather than a social phenomenon.

Answer 35

False Belief and social reality can happen together, as they do with money Money is a belief and therefore a social reality Money is freed from its material reduction

Question 36

Pirou says that a “realistic” theory of money must focus exclusively on material forms of money.

Answer 36

False A realistic theory must focuses on the non-material forms of money Focus on script, cannot be narrow Value of money is based on the level of trust and confidence that a given social group puts into it

Question 37

Pirou says that (except for economists) most people continue to believe that gold coins are intrinsically valuable.

Answer 37

True People don’t read books, so they still believe intrinsic value Gold has historically been used as currency in many societies, so it is hard to place trust in other places

Question 38

Pirou agrees with Keynes that gold is an outdated fetish.

Answer 38

False He thinks it is premature to say gold is outdated and a fetish The public still believes in the power and fetish of gold This faith is the basis of gold currency

Question 39

Cohen says that, like gold or silver, salt rods can be divided into many small units of value.

Answer 39

False Salt rods had exchange rates and consumption Easily convertible into consumer goods Became so because it is rare in some parts of Africa Only valuable when certain shape the rods can be cut in two pieces only; further division will make them lose their value

Question 40

Even rifle shells and cartridges have sometimes served as money.

Answer 40

True Commonly used market rate for shells Use of money will not be altered

Question 41

Simiand stresses that social realities are more than just collective.

Answer 41

True Social aspect of central importance should be central Should look into degrees of significance

Question 42

Simiand dismisses the significance of psychological factors altogether.

Answer 42

False Doesn't dismiss them altogether Even if we do take them into account, social aspects are most important Social belief conditions reality Not sure wheat will hold value but we know our money will because of our social belief

Question 43

Early in his career Durkheim rejected what he saw as the one-sided individualism of most previous attempts at social explanation.

Answer 43

True Hermeneutic principle – whole greater than sum of its parts Study not only individuals but the distinctive facts that come from social interactions Society is made up of individuals but has its own individualistic qualities

Question 44

Again and again during his lifetime, Durkheim was accused of being the latter-day equivalent of a medieval scholastic.

Answer 44

True View that society is substantive reality that constrains individuality There is no separate existence People did not follow Durkheim’s ideas and thought they were backwards

Question 45

Asch was one of the first social scientists to recognize that Durkheim was, in reality, not a reductionist.

Answer 45

False He misread Durkheim as a reductionist even though he was a unconventional thinker He himself was even pegged as reductionist

Question 46

Most scholars today reject the once prevalent view of Durkheim as a sociological reductionist, an enemy of psychology.

Answer 46

False most scholars except Durkheim as an enemy of psychology

Question 47

Asch held that his research findings undermined what he called the "baseless consensus" which prevailed, he believed, in conventional social psychology.

Answer 47

True Current thinking stresses the power of social thought to induce psychological changes Individual deprived of independence External forces took control away from individual in line experiment

Question 48

Asch agreed with psychologists and others who regarded hypnotic "suggestibility" as the most important feature of personal psychology.

Answer 48

False He published findings to counter popular belief He said social life was not equivalent to sleepwalking Personality matters, with repeated trials people always picked the same path

Question 49

Most of the textbooks that reported Asch's findings reported them in a balanced and accurate way.

Answer 49

False Most textbooks reported Asch’s findings as supporting conformity Many key facts of the experiment had been ignored We should be equally concerned with studying independence People are blinded by prejudice

Question 50

Asch found it reassuring that most psychologists resisted inflated claims about the efficacy of marketing and propaganda.

Answer 50

False Most psychologists did not resist the claims, were blinded by prejudice that people are sheep-like Scholars saw people in a miserable light, they were either cheerful or spiritless

Question 51

Serge Moscovici deduced from Asch's research that individuals conform to their groups "blindly" even when they realize that this entails disregarding the truth.

Answer 51

True He understood that people blindly conform after Saw contradiction but was loyal to the stereotype

Question 52

Durkheim's guiding premise was, as he wrote, that "No one has ever seen 'the collective spirit' speak or guide the pens of secretaries of deliberative assemblies."

Answer 52

False Charles Andler wrote this quote as a criticism to Durkheim’s work Durkheim said these words absurd and not about his work, his words are distorted

Question 53

In replying to his critics, Durkheim explained that, in his view, sociology can be regarded as a kind of "collective psychology."

Answer 53

True Cannot be individual psychology because of the new factor of association has intervened and changed Ground of individual consciousnesses

Question 54

Asch and Durkheim are both now "lionized" for their anti-reductionism.

Answer 54

False lionized for reductionism

Question 55

Tarde argued that people should be viewed as “somnambulists.”

Answer 55

True Spread of opinion, crowds following leaders is like sleepwalking

Question 56

Asch questions whether opinions are truly as “watery” as people often think.

Answer 56

True In a study he cited, people changed their opinions to match “common beliefs” He questions if people actually changed their opinions or it was just recorded that they did Maybe people were trying to be good subjects Maybe the researchers were just biased in what they wanted to see

Question 57

Asch says that “dissenters” in his experiments reacted with surprise and worry.

Answer 57

True Their opinions would differ from the group, who was unanimous He would show signs of embarrassment, surprise, and worry through his actions like pausing or a small smile

Question 58

Asch’s “dissenter” was actually a confederate who helped him deceive the others.

Answer 58

False The other members of the experiment were confederates and instructed to be unanimously incorrect The point was to see if the dissenter would follow common sense or be swayed to the opinion of majority

Question 59

Asch reports results from experiments with 25 subjects, mainly at Swarthmore.

Answer 59

False He had a total of 123 subjects who were not from Swarthmore were he worked

Question 60

Nearly two-thirds of Asch's subjects resisted the majority and stayed true to their own opinions.

Answer 60

True??? Considerable percentage yielded to majority: about 33%

Question 61

Asch says the most compliant subjects agreed with the majority ”nearly” always.

Answer 61

True???? Compliant subjects are those who went with majority, and as time went on in the experiment they would continue to go with majority

Question 62

Asch says his experiment revealed “startling individual differences.”

Answer 62

True Many reasons people did not comply to majority Ranging from confidence in judgement to capacity to recover from doubt Obligation to just call it as they saw it

Question 63

Many extremely compliant subjects regarded OTHERS in the group as “sheep.”

Answer 63

True The compliant subjects thought the others of the group were sheep and all following the first responder

Question 64

Subjects who were opposed by three people accepted wrong answers more than twice as often as people facing majorities of two people.

Answer 64

True Those who were opposed by three were in the 30%s while those with two were 13% Those with one opposition answered independently Size of majority matters, but only to a point

Question 65

Support from even one truthful partner enabled minority subjects to give 75% fewer wrong answers.

Answer 65

False??? Gave 25% fewer answers Help of a truthful partner decreased wrong answers, but not too drastically

Question 66

Asch says that “extremes of yielding” are unaffected when a dissenting subject makes an error less extreme than the majority's error.

Answer 66

False The “extremes of yielding” are gone when the dissenter is moderate

Question 67

When “extremist” dissenters committed especially flagrant errors, minority subjects committed more (and more flagrant) errors, too.

Answer 67

False Increased independence with extreme dissenters Errors dropped to 9%, errors were moderate

Question 68

Skinner considers it impossible to design “whole cultures.”

Answer 68

False

Question 69

The supreme norm of “technotronic society,” Fromm says, is to realize humanistic values.

Answer 69

False It means to negate human values We must advance technologically because we can

Question 70

Skinner says that, if we value democracy, we must not be “controllers” of other people's behavior.

Answer 70

False??? We can find ourselves in a way to be in the position of a controller So we must apply science to the design of cultural patterns

Question 71

Fromm says that behaviorists see only behavior, not behaving people.

Answer 71

True They say that a smile is a smile, however smiles can mean different things

Question 72

Skinner denies that appeals to self-interest can determine behavior “completely.”

Answer 72

False He believes that men always behave with their self-interest guiding them Behavior completely determined by self-interest because the environment will reward it Self-interest over all human passions

Question 73

Buss, like other behaviorists, sees “intention” as the most important psychological concept.

Answer 73

False Intent is a private event that is not verbalized It implies that actions have been all thought out, which does not align with behaviorist views Not always accurately said Instead of intent, look at reinforcing consequences that affect occurrence and strength of aggressive responses

Question 74

Fromm says that the same behaviors can flow from multiple kinds of character structure.

Answer 74

True?? Many factors in character system Act comes from environment though Character structures such as spanking child can have different intents and response, like spanking out of love or out of meanness

Question 75

Fromm says that Milgram's experiment revealed cruelty as well as conformity.

Answer 75

True Similar to soldiers obeying generals or people in command to inflict great harms, and how destructive this is to the soldier himself Fromm connected this to the Nazis Executing great crimes without question Used science, which most people trust to be right, against subjects through person of authority

Question 76

Fromm regrets that so few of Milgram's obedient subjects expressed indignation or revulsion about what they were told to do.

Answer 76

False He finds it surprising and encouraging, they had strong reactions against More than a third of subjects showed disobedience Claims we actually learn to harm to achieve personal things

Question 77

Fromm defended Zimbardo against the charge that he humiliated his test subjects.

Answer 77

False Fromm defended the charge, saying that the police and unclear outline of experiment was humiliating and confusing Could not differentiate between reality and role playing

Question 78

In an early report, Zimbardo said that two-thirds of the guards were either fair or friendly.

Answer 78

True Said some guards were tough but fair (1), friendly (2), and some engaged in cruel behavior and harassment (one-third) Different from later report, more precise than other reports as well, which indicates lack of precision (which was crucial to the thesis) Data shows that people will not transform so easily, experiment deprived of value

Question 79

Fromm says that his own empirical research shows that, in an average population, the percentage of unconscious sadists is not zero.

Answer 79

True Guards selected because they had no sadistic predisposition, however this goes against empirical evidence, cannot be detected through questionnaires The fact that no sadistic predisposition was detected does not speak well for the aptness of this test with regard to its problem

Question 80

According to survivors of Nazi concentration camp, SS guards were always highly personally cruel.

Answer 80

False Only cruel at beginning, but not to “old prisoners” Disproves Zimbardo that environment is powerful enough to change personal convictions Values and conviction of prisoners is what makes a difference to reaction and condition of camps