Sociology Chapter 3 and 4 Study Guide Questions
Chapter 3 (Socialization) Key Terms
1. Agents of socialization: people or groups that affect our self concept,
attitudes, behavior, or other orientations toward life
2. Anticipatory socialization: a term coined by Harold Garfinkel to describe an
attempt to remake the self by stripping away an individual’s self identity and
stamping a new identity in its place
3. Ego: Freud’s term for a force that balances the id and the demands of society
(superego)
4. Gender role: the behaviors and attitudes that a group considers proper for
males and females, masculinity and femininity
5. Generalized other: the norms, values, attitudes, and expectations of people ‘in
general’, the chld’s ablity to take the role of the generalized other is a
significant step in the development of a self
6. I: Mead’s term for the self as subject, the active, spontaneous, creative part of
the self
7. Id: Freud’s term for the individual’s basic drives
8. Life course: the stages of our life as we go from birth to death
9. Looking Glass Self: A term coined by Charles Cooley to refer to the process
by which our sense of self develops through internalizing other’s reactions to
us
10. Mass media: forms of communication, such as radio, newspapers, movies,
television that are directed to mass audiences
11. Peer group: a group of individuals of roughly the same age who are linked by
common interests
12. Re-socialization: the process of learning new norms, values, attitudes, and
behaviors
13. Self: the uniquely human capacity of being able to see ourselves from the
outside, the pictures we gain of how others see us
14. Significant other: an individual which significantly influences someone else’s
life
15. Social environment: the entire human environment, including direct contact
with others
16. Social inequality: giving privileges and obligations to one group of people
while denying them to another
17. Socialization: the process by which people learn the characteristics of their
group – the knowledge, skills attitudes, values, and actions thought
appropriate for them
18. Socialization of gender: the ways in which society sets children onto different
courses in life because they are male or female
19. Superego: Freud’s term for the conscience, the internalized norms and values
of our social groups
20. Take the role of the other: putting oneself in someone else’s shoes;
understanding how someone else feels and thinks and thus anticipating how
that person will act.
21. Total institution: a place in which people are cut off from the rest of society
and are almost totally controlled by the officials who run the place
22. Transitional adulthood: a period of extended youth during which young
people gradually ease into adult responsibilities
23. From the cases of institutionalized children, it is possible to conclude that
social interaction is important for humans to establish close bonds with
others.
24. The looking glass self includes imagining how we appear to those around us,
interpreting others’ reactions to us, and developing a self concept.
25. Cooley’s theory of self development states the development of self is an
ongoing, life long process, the self is always in process, and the process of the
looking glass self applies to old age.
26. Taking the role of the other means to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes.
27. According to George Herbert Mead, the three stages in learning to take the
role of the generalized other include imitation, game and play.
28. The stage of learning to take the role of the other (play stage) generally takes
place from three to six years of age.
29. According to Jean Piaget, children develop the ability to use symbols during
the preoperational stage.
30. In Piaget’s formal operational stage children are capable of abstract thinking.
31. Freud’s term for balancing force between the inborn drives for self
gratification and the demands of society is the ego.
32. Paul Ekman found that everyone in the world experiences six basic emotions.
33. Socialization not only leads to different ways of expressing emotions, but
even affects what we feel.
34. The result of being socialized into a self and emotions sets up effective
controls over our behavior.
35. Usually, the significant others who first teach us our part in the gender
division of the world are our parents.
36. People and groups that influence our self concept, emotions, attitudes, and
behavior are agents of socialization.
37. According to sociologist Melvin Kohn, middle class parents try to develop
their children’s curiosity, self expression, and self control.
38. When we examine influences of religion, 61% of Americans belong to a local
congregation.
39. According to researchers, poor children and children from dysfunctional
families seem to benefit most from day care.
40. According to a study by Adler and Adler, the norms that made boys popular
in elementary school include athletic ability, coolness, and toughness.
41. Anticipatory socialization is the concern about what answers to give during a
job interview.
42. Total institutions are places in which people are cut off from the rest of
society and are almost totally controlled by the officials who run the place.
43. The stages that we all go through in life are called the life course.
44. Everyone’s childhood occurs at some point in history, and is embedded in aor
particular social location, social class, and gender.
45. The sandwich generation experience is most likely to occur in the U.S. during
the later middle years of life.
46. Given recent social changes that have taken place within the U.S., women of
all groups are particularly challenged by the early middle years stage of life
course.
47. For many aging people, the most comfortable period in their life’s is the later
middle years.
48. Most men and women in their 60s and 70s are sexually, physically, and
mentally active.
49. Increasingly during the last stage of life, people begin to contemplate death.
50. Our own sense of self prevents us from being prisoners of socialization.
51. Each of us is actively involved in the construction of self.
52. Studies of monkeys suggest that animals react in similar ways to humans
when isolated.
53. Socialization is the process by which we learn the ways of society.
54. George H. Mead introduced the concept of the generalized other to sociology.
55. Mead thought that play is crucial to the development of the self.
56. Piaget used the term “operational” to mean the ability to reason.
57. Freud assumed that to be male is normal.
58. Each culture has norms of emotion that demand conformity.
59. Our social mirror sets up effective controls over our behavior.
60. The Adler study found that athletic ability helped make boys popular.
61. Anticipatory socialization involves learning to play a role before actually
taking on that role.
62. A person who was married but is now divorced and single will experience
the process of re-socialization.
63. Total institutions encourage ‘degradation’ ceremonies.
64. Industrialization brought with it a delay in the onset of old age.
65. In the case of Isabelle, the debate about nature vs. nurture became important
again.
66. In a series of experiments with rhesus monkeys, the researchers Harlow and
Harlow demonstrated the importance of ‘early learning.’
67. Charles H. Cooley coined the term looking glass self to describe the process
by which a sense of self develops.
68. To put yourself in someone else’s shoes is to learn to take the role of the
other.
69. The ability to understand how the group as a whole feels and thinks is to
perceive the generalized other.
70. “Significant other” is the term used to describe someone, which as a parent
and / or a sibling, who lays a major role in our social development.
71. The ego develops to balance the id.
72. In their studies of young children, Goldberg and Lewis concluded that
mothers unconsciously reward their daughters fro being passive and
dependent.
73. One of the main findings of the sociologist Kohn was that socialization
depends on a family’s social class.
74. The process of learning new norms, values, attitudes, and behaviors to match
new life situations is re-socialization.
75. An attempt to remake the self by stripping away the individual’s current
identity and stamping a new one in its place is a degradation ceremony.
76. Stages, from birth to death are called life course.
77. The life course stage between childhood and adulthood is adolescence.
78. The stage of the life cour3e that poses a special challenge for women in the
U.S is the early middle years.
79. In pre-industrial societies, old age was thought to begin around age 40.
80. Mead coined the term generalized other.
81. Kohn studies social class differences in child rearing.
82. Piaget concluded that children experience four stages of development.
83. Re-socialization is the process of learning new norms.
84. Gender socialization is the process of learning to be male or female.
85. Peer groups are groups of individuals approximately the same age.
86. Sociologists argue that socialization is a process, not an end product.
87. Gender roles remain generally unchanged from one generation to the next
since most people act according to the culture’s guidelines.
88. The stages of life course are influenced by the biological clock but are
affected by many other broad social factors.
Chapter 4 Key Terms (Social Structure and Social Interaction)
1. Achieved statuses: positions that are earned or accomplished, or that
involve at least some effort or activity on the individual’s part.
2. Agricultural society: those who were able to accumulate a huge food
surplus after the invention of the plow.
3. Ascribed statuses are positions an individual either inherits at birth or
receives involuntarily later in life.
4. Background assumptions are deeply embedded common understandings,
or basic rules, concerning our view of the world and how people ought to
act.
5. Biotech society: where the economy centers on applying and altering
genetic structures to produce food, medicine, and materials.
6. Division of labor is the splitting of a group’s or a society’s tasks into
specialties.
7. Dramaturgy is an approach pioneered by Erving Goffman, in which social
life is analyzed in terms of drama or the stage, also called dramaturgical
analysis.
8. Ethnomethodology is the study of how people use background
assumptions to make sense of life.
9. Face saving behavior are techniques people use to salvage a performance
that is going sour.
10. Gemeinschaft is a type of society in which life is intimate, a community in
which everyone knows everyone else and people share a sense of
togetherness.
11. Gellschaft is a type of society that is dominated by impersonal
relationships, individual accomplishments and self interest.
12. Group is a people who have something in common and who believe that
what they have in common is important, also called a social group.
13. Horticultural society is a society based on cultivating plants by the use of
tools
14. Hunting and gathering society is a human group dependent on hunting
and gathering for survival.
15. Impression management: people’s efforts to control the impressions that
others receive of them
16. Industrial Revolution: the third revolution occurring when machines
powered by fuels replaced most animal and human power.
17. Industrial society: an efficient society with greater surplus and inequality.
18. Macrosociology: analysis of social life that focuses broad features of social
structure, such as social class and the relationships of groups to one
another, an approach usually used by functionalists and conflict theorists.
19. Master status is a status that cuts across the other statuses that an
individual occupies.
20. Mechanical solidarity: Durkheim’s term for the unity ( a shared
consciousness) that people feel as a result of performing the same or
similar tasks.
21. Microsciology is an analysis of social life that focuses on social
interaction; an approach usually used by symbolic inter-actionist.
22. Organic solidarity is solidarity based on the interdependence that results
from the divisions of labor; people needing others to fulfill their jobs.
23. Pastoral society is a society based on the pasturing of animals.
24. Postindustrial society: a new type of society based on information,
services, and the latest technology rather than on raw materials and
manufacturing.
25. Role: the behaviors, obligations, and privileges attached to a status.
26. Role conflict: conflicts that someone feels between roles because the
expectations attached to one role are incompatible with the expectations
of another role.
27. Role performance is the particular emphasis or interpretation that we
give to a role.
28. Role strain are conflicts that someone feels within a role.
29. Social class: according to Weber, a large number of people who rank close
to one another in wealth, power, and prestige, according to Marx, one of
two groups: capitalists who own the mans of production or workers who
sell their labor.
30. Social construction of reality: the use of background assumptions and life
experiences to define what is real.
31. Social institution: the organized, usual , or standard ways by which
society meets its basic needs.
32. Social integration: the degree to which members of a society are united
by shared values and other social bonds.
33. Social interaction: what people do when they are in one another’s
presence
34. Social structure: the framework that surrounds us, consisting of the
relationship of people and groups to one another, which give direction to
and set limits on behavior.
35. Society: people who share a culture and a territory.
36. Status: social ranking, the position that someone occupies in society or a
social group
37. Status inconsistency: a contradiction or mismatch between statuses; a
condition in which a person ranks high on some dimensions of social
class and low on others
38. Status set: all the statuses or positions that an individual occupies.
39. Status symbols: items used to identify a status
40. Teamwork: the collaboration of two or more people to manage
impressions jointly
41. Thomas Theorem: William I. and Dorothy Thomas’ classic formulation of
the definition of the situation: “If people define situations as real, they
are real in their consequences.”
42. Micro-sociology chiefly focuses on social interaction.
43. If a sociologist decided to research the perceptions that different social
classes have of each other in the U.S., macro-sociology would be the most
appropriate level of analysis.
44. The framework of a society that was already laid out before we were born
is social structure.
45. According to sociologists, differences among individuals in behavior and
attitude is due to location in the social structure.
46. A group’s language, beliefs, values, and behaviors id known as culture.
47. Social class is based on income, occupational prestige, and education.
48. You are a student, a friend, a son or daughter, a sister or a brother. These
characteristics are known as your status set.
49. Being a friend, student, married, but not your sex are known as your
achieved statuses.
50. One’s status symbols include: signs that identify a status; symbols
indicating that one has ‘made it’ in life; announcing one’s status to others.
51. In contemporary America, being an AIDS victim would very likely be
one’s master status.
52. Being a male elementary school teacher in many schools would be
considered a status inconsistency.
53. The behaviors, obligations and privileges attached to statuses are called
roles.
54. The means that each society develops to meet its needs are social
institutions.
55. A society that is egalitarian, small, and nomadic is a hunting and
gathering society.
56. The use of the steam engine to run machinery ushered in the Industrial
Revolution.
57. The societies in which groups first developed permanent settlements
were the horticultural societies.
58. The Industrial Revolution is associated with the invention of the steam
engine.
59. A society whose chief distinguishing characteristic is an economy
centered on the application of genetics is a biotech society.
60. Workers in service provide information, apply information, sell
specialized knowledge, but do not produce material goods.
61. The basic component of the postindustrial society is information.
62. As societies get larger, their division of labor becomes more specialized.
63. Organic solidarity refers to a society with highly specialized division of
labor, members being interdependent on one another and with a high
degree of impersonal relationships.
64. A society in which contracts replace handshakes and work centers on
strangers and short term acquaintances is a Gesellschaft society.
65. Hall observed that North Americans used different distance zones. The
zone that marks impersonal or formal relationships is the social distance
zone.
66. Dramaturgy is the term used to describe Goffman’s perspective that life is
like a stage play.
67. You have an Intro to Sociology exam to take tomorrow, but you also have
need to visit your mother who is in the hospital. You will probably
experience role conflict.
68. When performances do not go off as planned, we often have to engage in
face saving behaviors.
69. The study of how people use common sense understandings to get
through everyday life is ethnomethodology.
70. The Thomas Theorem is based on symbolic interactionism.
71. Whereas macrosociology stresses the importance of social structure,
microsociology helps us understand the role social interaction plays in
our everyday lives.
72. Conflict theory and functionalism both focuses on the macrosociological
perspective.
73. Social inequality increases as society evolves from the hunting /
gathering to the pastoral / horticultural , to the agricultural, to the
industrial society.
74. Culture is the broadest framework that determines what kind of people
we become.
75. Social status refers to the position that someone occupies.
76. Master statuses can be ascribed, or achieved, statuses.
77. Belonging to a group means that we yield to others the right to make
certain decisions about our behavior.
78. Medicine is a social institution.
79. The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain.
80. The postindustrial society’s main component is information.
81. The biotech society is centered around the application of genetic
structures.
82. Microsciologisists examine face to face interaction.
83. Studied nonobservance is a form of face saving.
84. Symbolic interactionists assume that reality has an objective existence
and people must deal with it.
85. The social construction of reality involves subjective interpretation.
86. Macrosociology places the focus on broad features of society.
87. Social interaction is what people do when they are in the presence of one
another.
88. The Down to Earth sociology box on football mirrors social structure.
89. Income, education, and occupational prestige indicate social class.
90. Master status is a status that cuts across the other statuses one holds.
91. Roles are the behaviors, obligations, and privileges attached to a status.
92. Social institutions work together to meet universal needs.
93. Social cohesion is the degree to which members of a society feel united by
shared values and other bonds.
94. As societies get larger, their division of labor becomes more specialized.
95. Ferdinance Tonnies used the term Gesellschaft to refer to societies
dominated by impersonal relations, individual accomplishments, and self
interest.
96. Role strain is the conflict one feels within a role.
97. When two or more people collaborate to manage impressions jointly, this
is referred to as teamwork.
98. Goffman called the techniques that we use to salvage a performance that
is going bad as face saving behavior.
99. Ethnomethodologists explore background assumptions.
100. What people define as real because of their background assumptions
and life experiences is the Thomas Theorem.
101.