Sociology Practice Reviews

Question 1

role of state religion in government

Answer 1

it is recognized by the government but it does not influence laws by which the nation operates, if it does, it is more appropriately a theocracy

Question 2

social construction accounts for:

Answer 2

assignment of meaning to certain constructs

Question 3

symbolic interactionism accounts for:

Answer 3

agreement upon certain gestures, words, symbols to which we apply meaning (more for communication than social construction)

Question 4

cultural transmission

Answer 4

continuing of cultural traditions down successive generations

Question 5

cultural diffusion

Answer 5

the spread of cultural beliefs and social activities from one group to another

Question 6

cultural interaction

Answer 6

cultural exchange in which one group assumes the beliefs/practices of another without sacrificing characteristics of their own culture

Question 7

normative organization

Answer 7

voluntarily joined, usually involved in moral activities

Question 8

utilitarian organization

Answer 8

paid/compensated for tasks performed

Question 9

coercive organization

Answer 9

not voluntary

Question 10

oligarchy

Answer 10

a type of governmental structure in which a few people are in power

Question 11

cultural transmission

Answer 11

how culture is learned and passed on from generations

Question 12

life course approach to health

Answer 12

viewing health in terms of the patient’s entire life history. a holistic approach that considers many more factors than ones directly incidental to the illness at hand

Question 13

demographic transition

Answer 13

refers to a population cycle that will begin with a fall in the death rate, continues with a phase of rapid population growth and concludes with a decline in the birth rate

Question 14

horizontal mobility

Answer 14

a person changes his/her occupation but the overall social standing remains the same

Question 15

vertical mobility

Answer 15

any change in the occupational, economic or political status of an individual or group which leads to change of their position/social status (can be ascending or descending)

Question 16

inter-generational mobility

Answer 16

one generation changes its social status in contrast to the preceding generation

Question 17

intra-generational mobility

Answer 17

type of mobility that takes place in the life span of one generation, can be divided into:

1) change in the position of one individual in his life span
2) change in the position of one brother but no change in the position of another brother

Question 18

what are the four components of McDonaldization/principles of bureaucracy?

Answer 18

efficiency, calculability (assessing performance through quantity and/or speed of output), predictability, and control (automating work where possible in order to make results more predictable)

Question 19

social reproduction

Answer 19

a concept proposed by Karl Marx, refers to the emphasis on the structures and activities that transmit social inequality from one generation to the next

Question 20

atypical antipsychotics (second generation antipsychotic drugs)

Answer 20

block certain chemical receptors in the brain, relieves symptoms of psychotic disorders (fewer side effects than regular antipsychotic agents), usually block dopamine and serotonin receptors and less likely to cause extrapyramidal motor control disabilities

Question 21

neuroleptics are also known as:

Answer 21

antipsychotics, block dopamine receptors in brain pathways, may cause extrapyramidal motor control disabilities (ex. unsteady Parkinson’s disease-type movements)

Question 22

Thomas theorem

Answer 22

a theory of sociology: “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” Our behaviour depends on our subjective interpretation of reality rather than the objective reality of a situation. The consequences and results of behaviour make it real

Question 23

Hawthorne effect

Answer 23

refers to the tendency of some people to work harder and perform better when they are participants in an experiment; behaviour is changed due to the attention subjects receive from the researchers, rather than because of any manipulation in dependent variables.

Question 24

extinction

Answer 24

in operant conditioning, refers to the disappearance of a previously learned behaviour when the behaviour is not reinforced

Question 25

instinctual drift

Answer 25

tendency of an animal, of any species, to revert to unconscious and automatic behaviour that interferes with operant conditioning

Question 26

partial reinforcement

Answer 26

unlike continuous reinforcement, is only reinforced at certain intervals of time or ratios (ex. intermittent schedules)

Question 27

partial report technique

Answer 27

requires participants to identify a subset of the characters from the visual display using cued recall (tests sensory memory, usually eidetic/iconic memory/photographic memory)

Question 28

word association testing

Answer 28

a test of personality and mental function in which the subject is required to respond to each of a series of words with the first word that comes to mind or with a word of a specified class of words

Question 29

operational span testing

Answer 29

determines your ability to store short-term memory while using working-memory on tasks

Question 30

psychophysical discrimination testing

Answer 30

determine our perception of stimuli in relation to the stimuli’s true physical properties (tests how accurate our perception of stimuli really is)

Question 31

operation span

Answer 31

the maximum amount of words a person can remember (short term memory) after the working memory tasks

Question 32

whole report testing technique

Answer 32

tests visual short-term memory: asked to immediately recall all the letters shown

Question 33

partial report testing technique

Answer 33

tests visual short-term memory: asked to immediately recall a specific row of letter

Question 34

what does whole report and partial report test?

Answer 34

visual short-term memory (demonstrates that short-term memory can hold a ton of information, but only for a very short amount of time)

Question 35

incentive stimulus

Answer 35

relates to incentive theory of motivation, includes external factors in one’s environment (ex. community, cultural values, social networks)

Question 36

proximal stimulus and distal stimulus are defined based on:

Answer 36

where the stimulus comes from and the physiological changes it can cause a person

Question 37

proximal stimulus

Answer 37

the transduction of an external stimulus (eg. phototransduction pathway caused by receiving light into the eye)

Question 38

distal stimulus

Answer 38

the source of the external stimulus (eg. the activation of the phototransduction pathway is caused by the sun or a source of light)

Question 39

sensory stimulus

Answer 39

refers to the type of information being received by your receptors which elicits a response

Question 40

George Herbert Mead is associated with which school of sociology?

Answer 40

symbolic interactionism/social behaviourism

Question 41

social behaviourism

Answer 41

the mind and self emerge through the process of communicating with others

Question 42

symbolic interactionism

Answer 42

micro-sociological theory, specifically focuses on how individuals interact with one another to create symbolic worlds, and in return, how these worlds shapes individual behaviours.