Optional Concept Exam Study Guide
Life Span Development and Introduction to Sociology
Your optional exam is placed in the college’s testing center. It consists of 33
multiple-choice and True/False questions. The questions will focus upon many – but
not all – of the concepts and issues listed below.
The nature, use and consequences of “perspectives”
“Maslow’s Hammer, ” the “Burke theorem”
The Eugenics Movement
Nature vs. Nurture
The importance of the first experimental psychology laboratory, set up by Wilhelm
Wundt in 1879 in Leipzig Germany
Key aspects of the theoretical perspectives in psychology and sociology:
Psychology
Freudian psychoanalytic theory;
Erickson’s psychosocial theory;
the behaviorism of Pavlov, Watson, and Skinner;
Bandura’s social learning theory;
Piaget’s cognitive theory;
Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory;
evolutionary psychological theory.
Sociology
Structural-functional analysis:
Manifest and Latent Functions and Dysfunctions
Systemic Autonomy and Interdependence
Conflict approach:
Social statuses, status-sets, Status-conflict, status-strain, Master Status;
status inconsistency
Social roles, role-sets, role-conflict, role strain
Social structure
Symbolic interaction approach, dramaturgical, conflict
Interpretative flexibility
Impression management, “social scripts;” “rehearsal,” “props,” “face
work,” “front stage,” “back stage,” expressions-given; expressions given-off
The “Popeye Effect”
Culture, sub-culture, counter culture, cultural integration, cultural ambivalence
Norms, folkways, mores, values, attitudes, customs, traditions
Ethnocentrism and cultural relativity
The Sapir-Whorf linguistic relativity hypothesis
Multiculturalism; cultural universals
Socialization
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development
Charles Horton Cooley: looking-glass self
George Herbert Mead: generalized others, significant others, I, Me
Freud: id, ego, superego
Nature-Nurture debate
Primary, secondary, and reference groups
The notion of “childhood”