2. Once we "create" what is our reality: we constantly modify it

3. Norms (normative expectations) are not objective phenomena but are negotiated. Negotiations regarding norms take place within:
 a) small groups 
 b) institutions 
 c) organizations
ANSWER: d) all of the above 
 
4. That human beings act toward other people and objects based on the meanings they have for them, assign meanings to interactions based on the definition of the situation, and modify those meanings through the interpretations they make in their dealings with others, are the major premises of: symbolic interactionism

5. Punishment, or adverse stimuli, can cause the response to be:  discontinued 
 
6. Reference groups serve a normative function if they: set and enforce standards for the individual member

7. Social influence induced by expectations of gaining rewards or avoiding punishments by conforming is:     compliance

8. Age norms which control events such as the right time to go to school, marry, or settle into an occupation, are part to social time or of society's:    age grading

9. Deviance as a problematic behavior means that the behavior: differs from generally accepted norms and values

10. Subjective interpretation:
 a) allows people to see things differently 
 b) allows people to assign different meanings to different situations<br
 c) is a quality that animals do not possess
ANSWER: d) all of the above

11. Depravation is perceived as compared to the standard of living enjoyed by other members of society: relative poverty

12. During the cognitive process, one must learn to: recall information

13. Impressions of others usually include information about their traits, behavior, and abilities. First impression are based primarily on:   appearance

14. In many social interactions, the fit between one actor's role expectations and goals and those of other participants is imperfect. When this occurs the parties will usually: negotiate new situated identities or roles

15. The more we are around people, the more we come to like them. This phenomenon is known as the:   mere exposure effect

16. The degree to which an individual feels motivated to help someone in need is a function of the:
 a) proximity of the person who is suffering
 b) similarity of the person needing help to the helper 
 c) responsibility the potential helper feels
 d) severity  of the other person's suffering
ANSWER: e) all of the above

17. A consistent minority can have a strong impact on the majority because the: deviant minority threatens the cohesiveness of the group

18. According to relative deprivation theory: the greater the feeling of relative deprivation, the greater the feeling of distress and frustration

19. Why do the elderly rarely press charges against family members for abuse? 
 a) they are afraid 
 b) they take part of the guilt 
 c) they do not dare risk their situations
ANSWER: d) all of the above

20. What is the most common punishment to elderly done by family? denial of access to grandkids

21. We alter reality, seeing what we are willing to see. This is an example of: perception

22. When someone accepts the values of a group and uses them in their life (whether seen by the group or not), it is called: internalization 

23. Actually changing beliefs based on the desire to bond with others:   identification 

24. Conformity is most likely to occur when norms are:
ambiguous (example: what, exactly, are older people supposed to do when they first find themselves in a nursing home?

25. Females are usually assigned to take care of the family and the relationships within the family. This is called: kin-keepers 

26. Your "social convoy" is: people you care about and receive care from over a large portion of your lifetime--even if at a distance 

27. Rewards may be ineffective because they are delayed too long in time from the: stimulus
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1-Briefly summarize the central ideas of Behaviorism, Exchange, Ethnomethodology, Psychoanalytical, and Cognitive, theories.
Behaviorism: Directly observable stimulus-response (Classical conditioning and operant conditioning) behavior. No concern about subjective "black box"

3-If the human did not socially create meaning to their surroundings, then the human "universals" (like incest taboo, marriage rites, gift-giving, etc) would all be played out in the same manner---which they are NOT. Often times these various human endeavors may be found to be opposite in differing cultures (ex: matriarchal vs patriarchal).

4-What advantage does the human being have because he has mental ability (the self) to designate themselves as an object?
Since one such symbol is self (being able to imagine oneself as an object) an individual is able to "...anticipate the future...[and to] suspend time by inhibiting its action" when considering self. This means motivations can exist, fantasy can exist that allows for goal-setting, and many of the human emotions and acts can be considered both before and after the actual event takes place. This allows an individual to somewhat control his destiny by forethought consideration of implication of his actions and in actions.

5-What role does language play in the formation of objects? What role does the individual (such as yourself) play in assigning meaning to social objects which already have a "group" meaning?
Language is necessary to the meaning of objects, even to be able to comprehend the object. (Ex: the many words for "snow" in Native Alaska allowed that culture to deal on a different plane with respect to snow conditions than we can). "When we learn the names of the things around us, we take it on faith that things exist, that they are what they are called, and that they are important."

9-What advantage does a person's mental ability (the mind) to conceptualize a general other have with respect to monitoring evaluating and carrying out  role playing in a social setting?
The generalized other (a mental construct of the "proper" way to behave in a given role) allows for individuals to compare their own thoughts, actions, and behaviors with a "standard" that they deem appropriate to that role.

It also allows the person to first imagine themselves in the role (which may be new and initially terrifying) without the real life consequences necessarily impinging upon their fantasy performance. This allows for "practice" before the actual performance is required; alternatives may be considered and behavior may be, therefore, modified.

10-What do SI theorists mean when they assert "that socialization is symbolical interaction that lasts a lifetime."
As long as a person can interact and assign meaning to symbols and define situations, the socialization process continues. When the person (presumably at death) no longer can take part in symbolic interaction, the socialization of that person ceases.

11-Explain what Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman mean by the social construction of reality.  Include in your answer a description as to how this mental process affects a person's definition of a situation. 

So people conceive of a situation, they do so from social perspectives.  Time and space are social and not physical dimensions.  The situation is a social space in which each participant has a perspective that is defined relative to the perspectives of others.  This is what Peter Berger an Thomas Luckman mean by the social construction of reality.

14-What is meant by the argument that the social order is a constructed reality?
Society is an object toward which its members act, and to a greater extend the fact of social order is simply the fact that people act toward and so constitute this object in a stable, orderly fashion.  People constitute and act differently toward a nation, an organization, and a community.  It is their acting toward it that defines it, constitutes it, and causes it to persist.

15-What is true of a society as a whole also is true of the smaller groups, organizations, communities, institutions, and other units that make it up.  The orderly and stable existence and persistence of these units depends in part in the fact that people act toward them as objects.

16-What does talking have to do with constructing and maintaining a social order?
 One way the members of a society constitute and uphold the social order is by talking about it.  Talk is sociologically important.  It is an important part of the cement that binds the social order.  For whatever the situation in which it occurs, talk is a primary means by which people sustain the world of objects in which they live. 

Through talk we give shape and substance to our ideals and values, and our conception of how things ought to work in society.  Talk is a major way of societal goals being established and behavior realigned.  Talk shapes our view of social order, but people do not discuss problems for the sake of social order.  Talk about past decades puts our present in connection with our past. Such talk is significant in constructing the social order and linking the person to it.

17-In what way do members of a society utilize quasi-theorizing in reaffirming the preserving their culture?    
Quasi-theorizing, according to Hewitt, is a name for one process in which people construct such explanations.  It is a peculiar kind of explanatory process, for it runs counter to our common sense notions about how we should find explanations.  In quasi-theorizing, people tend to identify the cause before the effect and to construct the reality of the latter in terms of the former.  In other words, they perceive a set of conditions that match the cause they have settled on, rather than finding a cause that can account for an observed set of conditions. 

19-Collective conceptions of social problems have at least three important dimensions.  Briefly describe these and also include in your answer why these three dimensions are essential to the conceptual definition of a social problem. The three dimensions are:
1)  such conceptions generally treat some major object as the core of the problem (i.e., poverty, homelessness, etc.);
2)  human activity is treated as causally related to the problem.  Problems exist because of what people do or don't do;
3)  it emphasizes the possibility of human solutions.  People are responsible for problems therefore they can find solutions.
 
20-Sometimes collective efforts to define social problems focus on the basic institutions of a society (e.g., poverty in a exploitative capitalist system).  People reject social problems claims that attribute causality to basic social institutions, preferring to focus on relatively superficial aspects of underlying conditions and to ignore the possibility that inherent faults of the social order responsible for the problem. 

Thus, poverty is seen as society's failure to include everybody in its opportunity structure rather than as a basic feature of the operation of the social system.  Since people produce problems, human solutions are both necessary and possible.  Given appropriate changes in human conduct and the right social polity, it is assumed the problem can be eliminated.  
 
21-Explain why and how Blumer and/or Mead would view social order as a "mentally" coordinated activity.
The social construction of reality is an important aspect of social order.  If we could stand outside of society and look at the activities of its members, we would see their actions as regular, patterned, and coordinated. In this sense, social order is an objective reality.  When we stand inside the society as members, we do not have anything like a dispassionate and objective perspective.  We see things from the standpoint of our own gender, social class, religion, age, or region, viewing reality not in a scientific way but from a common sense perspective. 

For this reason the social order we perceive is largely a matter of the social construction of reality.  Social order is thus a double reality.  It is something we construct as we confront the external realities that face us and as we attempt to make sense of them.  And it can be portrayed as coordinated social activity, as the total network of persons, groups, and organized activities that make up a society and that can, at least in theory, be described from the perspective of someone standing outside of society.

22-People coordinate their social activities and thus produce social order or social structure.  Blumer called activities like banking transactions, religious services, lectures and wars a joint action--an organization of several different acts of many participants into a single whole.  The joint action lies in the articulation or linkage as apart from what may be articulated or linked (Blumer, 1969). 
 
23-From the perspective of symbolic interactionists, society consists of extended inter-linkages of joint actions and collectivities in which diverse people and activities are interconnected over space and time.  Concepts of problem solving, negotiated order, horizontal linkages, and careers help integrate different institutions into complex joint actions.

24- Why are "careers" (a term in SI, not with reference to an employment) so important in maintaining social order in a given community.  Cite one or two examples to illustrate your answer.  A way in which joint actions are coordinated and organized at various levels involves the temporal dimension of human activity.  This temporal character of social activity is important to social order, for the recognition of various activities as typical of similar activities carried on at other times is essential to preserving a sense of orderly joint action. 

 Institutional behavior is a term applied to conduct that is well organized by the expectations associated with various roles and by the organizations and situations in which those roles are made.  Collective behavior is a term applied to conduct in situations that are not well defined, that represent novel and often challenging circumstances for which routine joint actions are not available.
 
29-Behavior is institutional when people know in advance the identities of the others with whom they are going to interact, when they bring to the situation a definition they assume others share and when the other aspects of a situation are taken for granted as routine and normal. 

Behavior is collective to the extent that objects, roles, meanings, and definitions of the situation are emergent--when their existence is not taken for granted but depends on the self-conscious efforts of people to create them.  The behavior of various kinds of crowds, responses to disaster, public opinion, and social movements are examples of collective behavior.

Behavior in panic situations can lead to hysteria, riots, looting, and lynching.  Yet conduct in such situations seems on the surface to be the epitome of social disorder.  Social movements are oriented toward social change, they seek to restructure the society, to alter its values, beliefs, practices, and modes of organization. Thus, there is a simple relationship of opposition between the social order the movement would like to create and the social order that exists and against which it struggles.

31-"REFERENCE GROUPS" are generally thought of as pertaining to the fact that people evaluate themselves and orient their behavior by reference to:
1) the groups in which they hold official membership;
2) others to which they aspire or to which they hope to belong in the future; and
3) others which they reject and definitely do not wish to belong to.
 
32-Attributes and Images of the Old
It has been suggested that an old age "subculture" is emerging. This subculture in part a reaction to the increasing stratification of American society along age-specific, work-related, and kinship line, stresses a return to the values and ideologies of rural America at the turn of the century.
 
This social world has formed in response to:
a) pressures to retire at age 65;
b) increased leisure time as a result of early retirement or loss of family roles; and
c) a weakening of the family's functions as social welfare and educational agencies take over the family's responsibilities in the areas of health care, child supervision, and extended family support in the forms of financial, moral, and social assistance.

33-Belonging to a social world, with its special language, means to be to some degree affected by the symbolic coordinates or ideologies. These may be political, religious, occupational, racial, or class. But they often "cut across" each other. Individuals tend to have as their friends other people who have the same beliefs to validate & revalidate the interpretations they already have.
 
34-This includes choice of media chosen to feed selective facts and interpretations. Therefore people adopt a political position in terms of self-interest (but not on the basis of the way the world really is or on actual self-interest, but rather on the world as it is INTERPRETED and on what people are persuaded to believe is in their best interests. The mass media, though NOT as influencing than that of friends and family, significantly defines who we are, who our idols are, and what our ideal self-images are. It commodifies the self & promotes a public self and style that did not exist in the pre-mass tv age.