SOME STUDY QUESTIONS FOR THE 2010 MIDTERMS OK, OK, I am a day late getting this out to you.

I will be continuing working on your midterm up until the last minute on Thursday. Below are some of the questions that I am considering. This does not necessary mean that all will be included in the examconsider them as a sampling of the kinds of questions that can appear. 1. As noted in one of the Tlearn postings, the related issues of nature vs. nurture, of free will vs. determinism, have entered into the legal system. Having been enrolled in this course, you have been hired as an expert in two legal cases involving a murder. One murderer grew up as a feral child. The other involves an individual who, after a neural brain scan, is found to lack the brain chemistry allowing for empathy and moral reasoning. How differently would you testify in these two cases? 2. Applying exchange theory to old age, adult children assist their aging parents because a. their parents assisted them when they were children. b. tradition dictates that one care for one's family members. c. they want to be included in their parents' wills. d. of the profound emotional bonds between parent and child. 3. The central lesson of David Rosenhans On Being Sane in Insane Places is a. The power of labeling b. The thinness of the boundary between being normal and insane c. The potency of cognitive dissonance d. How individuals tend to become the roles that they occupy 4. Howard S. Becker in Whose Side Are We On? sheds doubt on the possibility of social scientists to conduct value-free research. What strategies does he recommend to avoid research bias? 5. It used to be that only sailors and social misfits would have tattoos in this country. Nowadays, according to Pew researchers (2006), 36 percent of those ages 18 to 25, and 40 percent of those ages 26 to 40, have at least one tattoo. a. Create two testable and falsifiable hypotheses about what has led to the increasing acceptability of tattoos. b. Develop one methodology by you can put to the test one of your hypotheses above. 6. According to Mead, the primary way by which social control is exerted over self development and behavior is through a. role-taking c. primary socialization b. conformity d. self-labeling

7. Briefly develop how behaviorists, symbolic interactionists, and cognitive theorists differ in their understandings of how social control works. 8. Why are stereotypes so difficult to eradicate? What are some of the most successful strategies for eliminating racist or sexist or ageist stereotypes? Link each strategy with its underlying theoretical basis. 9. Your professor has argued how changes in societies produce changes in selves. What social changes underlie the growing distinctions of tweens, teen-agers, and adultolescents in recent years? 10. Those of what theoretical orientation are most likely to believe that animal studies can be generalized to account for human behavior? a. psychoanalytic c. cognitive b. role d. behaviorist 11. Many in the U.S. see Mexican Americans and Cuban Americans as Hispanic Americans, with individuals having more in common with each other than with Asian Americans. This is an example of a. labeling theory c. the Pygmalion effect e. the availability heuristic b. misplaced concreteness d. attribution theory 12. Let's say that we have information on the percentage of men 35 to 60 years old who sport beards. Which of the following is the most probable null hypothesis concerning how this percentage changes historically? a. every other generation has high percentages of bearded men b. rates are equal across time c. bearded rates increase during times of peace and decline during war years d. bearded rates increase during wars and decline during peace times e. beards are removed when the stock market rises, and grow back as it declines 13. Youve take n the F-test (recall how many Fs were in the sentence), the penny test, and other quizzes of your perceptual powers. Why do individuals normally make such poor observers of social phenomena? 14. There definitely will be a question where you interpret the percentages of a table. Review question 5 of the MicroCase assignment. 15. Argue either for or against the following: the concept of the self really is not all that necessary in predicting human behavior.