SBS 3033                                                                                             Spring 2009

Perspectives                                                                                        Dr. Tait

In-Class Test, February 23

Posted February 16 at 10:35 AM

The in-class part of the test will be given in class on Monday February 23.  Please plan to be there, as make-up exams are normally not available in this class.

General  Information

The in-class test covers the material for Weeks 1-6, and also the additional reading distributed in class and/or listed on he class website.  You should bring with you a #2 pencil for marking a Scantron.  You may also want to bring a pen; blue or black ink only, please.  You may bring one 8.5X11 sheet of notes.  The professor will provide anything else that may be needed, including a Scantron.

The test may include some, or all, of the following kinds of questions:

1. Multiple-choice: choose the best available answer
2. True/False: choose between two alternatives
3. Fill-in-the blanks: insert the appropriate word or information in a sentence.
4. Matching: match up items from two columns of names, terms, etc.
5. Identification: write a short answer (one to three paragraphs) in which you provide the key information about a name, term, etc., along with relevant examples, and indicate why the item is important.
6. Artifact interpretation: provide a brief written response to a question about a picture, chart, table, graph, or document.
7. Short writing assignment: provide a brief answer to a question similar to the discussion questions posted in the reading guidelines.

The exam concentrates on portions of the reading (and related class presentations and discussions). The material below is excerpted from the reading guidelines on the course website. The material could appear on the test in a variety of forms, for example identifications, multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blanks or matching questions.

Anthropology

Monaghan, John, and Peter Just.  Social and Cultural Anthropology: A Very Short Introduction.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Introduction and chapter 1

Objectives

When you have completed your reading, you should be able to:

Define and discuss ethnography, attending to

• its key method(s)
• motivations for anthropological research
• advantages of ethnography
• disadvantages of ethnography
• strategies & practices of fieldwork
• critiques of fieldwork
• ethical issues
• examples of ethnographic studies

Key Terms

ethnography

participant observation

Discussion question

Is participant observation a good way to study human life? Why/why not?

Chapter 2

Objectives

When you have completed your reading, you should be able to:

Define and discuss the implications of the concept of “cultural relativism.”

Key Terms

Culture

Cultural relativism

Discussion questions

• The authors contend that the difference between “food” and “not-food” is to some degree a cultural matter.  What evidence do they offer for saying this?  Can you think of other evidence that might support their assertion?

Chapter 3

Objectives

When you have completed your reading, you should be able to:

·         distinguish between a focus on culture and a focus on society (54)

·         distinguish between the research interests of sociologists and anthropologists.

Key Terms

Division of labor

Social structure

Joking relationship

Avoidance relationship

Structural situation

Function

·         Manifest

·         Latent

Discussion question

Provide additional examples of manifest and latent functions performed by various institutions (such as churches; the military; etc.).

Chapter 4

Objectives

When you have completed your reading, you should be able to:

1. Describe a number of different forms of marriage reported by anthropologists.

2.  Discuss the authors’ alternative to the search for a single definition covering all forms of marriage.

Key Terms

Levirate marriage

Sororate marriage

Polygyny

Polyandry

Patrilineal

Matrilineal

Discussion questions

• The authors briefly discuss “same-sex marriages” (80-81).  How do they differ from the kinds of relationships supported by some contemporary Americans?
• The authors write, “A single society may easily accommodate a variety of family types” (83).  Is it necessarily “easy”?  Might it make sense for a society to privilege some kinds of family arrangements and discourage others?

Sociology

Bruce, Steve.  Sociology: A Very Short Introduction.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Chapter 1

Objectives

When you have completed your reading, you should be able to:

• Identify what the author thinks are the key characteristics of a good scientific theory.
• Explain why it may be more important to find evidence against an idea than evidence for it.
• Explain why social scientists often cannot do experiments, and discuss alternatives to the use of experiments.

Key Terms

Science

Experiment

Explanation

Discussion questions

• Steve Bruce says that is especially important to look for “reasons not to believe [an idea of explanation], to seek evidence that does not fit” (3).  Why does he say this?  Do you agree or disagree?  Explain your position.
• Bruce says explanation in the social sciences is not the same as explanation in chemistry or physics.  Why does he say that?  Do you agree?  Why or why not?

Chapter 2

Objectives

When you have completed your reading, you should be able to:

• Summarize and evaluate the author’s argument against biological determinism in human life, including a treatment of the idea of “world-openness.”

• Summarize and evaluate the author’s proposals for sociological as opposed to simply biological explanations of human behavior.
• Explain how reciprocal roles rather than biological determinants organize human societies.

Key Terms

Sociology

Social construction (of reality)

Biological determinism

World-openness

Role

Discussion questions

• Bruce refers to “regulation.  A moral force, a shared culture that specifies what we can desire and how we can attain these goals, takes the place of the biological straitjacket” (21).  How do you see such regulation affecting your own desires and ways of pursuing them, and the desires and actions of other people?
• Bruce writes, “We are socialized in the culture so that important elements of it become embedded in our personalities:” (22)  Discuss, using specific examples that support or undermine this assertion.
• According to Bruce, “Human biology does nothing to structure human society.”  (22). Assess this claim with respect to his remarks and also to the treatment of marriage in John Monaghan, and Peter Just,  Social and Cultural Anthropology: A Very Short Introduction. 
• Bruce writes, “the realm that interests sociologists is neither ‘all in the mind’ nor entirely external to our consciousness: it is inter-subjective.”  (26)  What does he mean?

Chapter 4

Objectives

When you have completed your reading, you should be able to:

• Describe Max Weber’s way of differentiating social classes.
• Summarize possible sociological explanations for rising divorce rates.

Key Terms

Modernization

Social mobility

Discussion question

Bruce says people often confuse an individual’s chances of upward mobility with “the opportunity for social advancement” (64).  What does he mean?  Do you agree? Why or why not?

Psychology

Butler, Gillian, and Freda McManus. Psychology: A Very Short Introduction.  Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1998.

Chapter 1

Objectives

When you have completed your reading, you should be able to:

• Say what psychology studies and indicate why it is not easy to do so.
• Briefly describe the main methods employed in psychology (see page 8).
• Identify and describe the main branches of psychology (see pages 9 and 10).

Key Terms

Gestalt psychology

Psychoanalysis

Humanistic psychology

Discussion questions

• Compare the statements below about psychology and sociology.

1. For William James, psychology is concerned with “thoughts and feelings, a physical world which exists in time and space, and a way of knowing about these things.  For each of us, this knowledge is primarily personal and private.” (Psychology: A Very Short Introduction, 1)
2. Steve Bruce writes, “the realm that interests sociologists is neither ‘all in the mind’ nor entirely external to our consciousness: it is inter-subjective.” (Sociology: A Very Short Introduction, 26)

• According to Butler and McManus, “’Psychology has the same goals as any other science: to describe, understand, predict, and learn how to control or modify the processes it studies.”  Compare this understanding of science with that offered by Steve Bruce in Sociology: A Very Short Introduction. 

Chapter 2

Objectives

When you have completed your reading, you should be able to:

• Explain what the authors mean when they write, “what we are ultimately aware of is a combination of sensory stimulation and interpretation.” 15
• Identify factors that interfere with attention.
• Describe Ulric Neisser’s perceptual cycle
• Compare bottom-up and top-down processing.

Key Terms.

Perception

Attention

Signal detection theory

Sensory deprivation

Subliminal perception

Bottom-up processing

Top-down processing

Discussion questions

What do the authors mean when they write, “perception is not just a matter of passively picking up information from the senses, but the product of an active construction process”?  14

Chapter 3

Objectives

When you have completed your reading, you should be able to:

1. Briefly describe how babies learn through
   1. Contingencies
   2. Discrepancies
   3. Transactions
2. Briefly describe classical condition/association learning.
3. Briefly describe operant conditioning and the role of reinforcement in learning.
4. Briefly describe the three different kinds of memory store discussed in the chapter.

Key Terms.

Contingencies

Discrepancies

Transactions

Association Learning

Classical Conditioning

Operant conditioning

Reinforcement

Behavior Modification

Discussion questions

What do the authors mean when they say “contemporary psychologists . . . think of memory as an activity, not a thing?”

Chapter 5

Objectives

When you have completed your reading, you should be able to:

1. Briefly define and differentiate between emotions and motivations.
2. Briefly discuss primary and secondary motives.
3. Briefly describe Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
4. Describe and compare homeostatic drive theory and goal theory.

Key Terms.

Emotion

Motivation

Primary motives

Secondary motives

Homoeostatic drive theory

Goal theory

Cognitive labeling theory

Chapter 6

Objectives

When you have completed your reading, you should be able to:

1. Briefly discuss attachment theory and describe the three main types of attachment
2. Describe Erik Erikson’s theory of stages of development (see Table 6.2 on age 80)

Key Terms.

Critical periods (in human development)

Attachment

            Attachment figure

            Strange situation

            Primary care-giver

Psychosocial crisis

Disengagement theory

Activity theory

Cohort effect

Chapter 7

Objectives

When you have completed your reading, you should be able to:

• Discuss intelligence tests, identifying what they try to do and indicating some of the difficulties involved in designing them and evaluating the scores.
• Identify and briefly describe different theories of personality (pages 93-96).

Key Terms.

Intelligence

Intelligence tests

Intelligence quotient (IQ)

Mental age

Personality

Discussion questions

1. Should a university administer intelligence tests to incoming students and provide scores of individual students to their professors?  Explain your view by referring to the material presented in the chapter.
2. If you were assigned to work on a group project in this class, would it be valuable for group members to share the results of personality tests with each other? Explain your view by referring to the material presented in the chapter.

Chapter 8

Objectives

When you have completed your reading, you should be able to:

1. Describe and compare different ways of defining abnormal behavior: psychological; medical; statistical and social; existential; and normalizing or health-based.
2. Identify and briefly describe different types of abnormal behavior (as described in Table 8.1 on pages 103-104)
3. Briefly compare the following ways of explaining abnormal behavior: medical; psychodynamic; humanistic; and cognitive-behavioral

Key Terms.

Abnormal psychology

All types listed in Table 8.1 (pages 103-104)

Diagnosis

Medical model

Defense mechanism

Free association

Cognitive-behavior therapy

Discussion questions

The authors write, ““Psychologists have recognized that part of the difficulty in defining abnormal behaviour arises from the fact that such behaviour may have reflected an entirely adaptive response in an earlier environment.” (101)  What do they mean by this?  Do you agree or disagree?  Explain why.

Chapter 9

Objectives

When you have completed your reading, you should be able to:

1. Define social facilitation and give examples of it.
2. Briefly describe social psychological findings with respect to leadership, conformity, obedience, and prejudice.

Key Terms.

Social Psychology

Social facilitation

Audience effect

Coaction effect

Leadership

Conformity

Obedience

Prejudice

                                                                     Food

Michael Pollan, "Unhappy Meals," New York Times, January 28, 2007.

“6 Food Mistakes Parents Make,” New York Times, September 15, 2008

“

Michael Pollan, "Unhappy Meals"

When you have completed your reading, you should be able to:

1. Summarize the author’s view of the roles played by nutritionists, the food industry, and journalists in creating widespread confusion about what people should eat.
2. Summarize the author’s distinction between “food” and “nutrients.”
3. Explain what the author means by “nutritionism,” and why he thinks it is pernicious.
4. Describe and evaluate the author’s criticisms of allegedly “bad science” conducted by nutritionists.
5. Evaluate the article in light of the claim that the difference between “food” and “not-food” is to some degree a cultural matter (Social and Cultural Anthropology: A Very Short Introduction, chapter 2). 

“6 Food Mistakes Parents Make,” New York Times, September 15, 2008

When you have completed your reading, you should be able to:

1. Discuss a variety of parental behaviors and the potential impact of those behaviors on their children’s eating.