These are the questions..
Chapter 5: Social Interaction
Chapter 6: Social Groups and Organizations
Chapter 7: Deviance and Crime
Objective: Answer the following chapter questions in detail for full credit.
Chapter 5: Social Interaction
1) What is the difference between ascribed status and achieved status? Name a few of your achieved and ascribed statuses.
2) What is a social group? Which social groups are you a part of?
3) What are the social institutions of society and why are they needed according to the functionalist perspective? You can use one institution to support your answer.
4) How do the roles we play in society shape our social interaction with others? Provide an example.
5) What is impression management? Where have you ever used impression management?
6) If you were in charge of our society, what socialization practice (something we’re used to learning growing up) would you change to improve society?
7) Suppose you are working in a financial services firm and are married with a 2-year-old daughter. Your spouse is out of town at a conference, and you have an important meeting to attend shortly after lunch where you are scheduled to make a key presentation. As you are reviewing your PowerPoint slides while you eat lunch at your desk, you get a call from your daughter’s day care center. Your daughter is not feeling well and has a slight temperature, and the day care center asks you to come pick her up. What do you do?
Chapter 6: Social Groups
1) Explain how Asch’s line test illustrates group conformity.
2) How did Stanley Milgram’s Shock Test illustrate group conformity and group pressure?
3) The Zimbardo Prison Experiment shocked many Americans after seeing how far group pressure could push individuals toward violence. Explain your interpretation of this experiment in regards to group conformity and group leadership.
4) Explain an example of group think you’ve seen taking place in society
5) What are formal organizations? What are the different types of formal organizations? Explain your involvement in any of these.
6) Identify the dysfunctional characteristics of bureaucracies that influence your life the most.
7) Do you think an employee for a corporation has the responsibility to become a whistle-blower if the corporation is engaging in illegal and/or harmful behavior? Explain your answer
8) Briefly describe an example of when one of your social networks proved helpful to you (or describe an example when a social network helped someone you know).
9. Suppose that in 2025 you are working as a middle-level manager at a U.S. corporation that makes baby products. You and four other managers in your unit begin to hear reports from parents that two of your company’s products, one particular crib and one particular stroller, have apparently caused injuries to their children after both products collapsed as toddlers were bouncing in them. There have been a dozen reports so far, eight for the stroller and four for the crib. The other four managers and you suspect that a hinge in both products might be to blame, but you also realize that several thousand cribs and strollers have been sold in the last year with this particular hinge, with only a dozen apparent injuries resulting. The other four managers decide to keep quiet about the parents’ reports for two reasons. First, the number of reports is very few compared to the number of cribs and strollers that have been sold. Second, they worry that if they bring the reports to the attention of upper management, their jobs may be at risk. Having learned about groupthink in your introduction to sociology course, you recognize that groupthink may be operating in your present situation in a way that could lead to further injuries of toddlers across the country. Yet you also think the two reasons the other managers have for remaining silent make some sense. What, if anything, do you do? Explain your answer.
Chapter 7: Deviance and Crime
1) Explain Emile Durkheim’s arguments on deviance and crime. Do you agree? Why or why not?
2) According to the labeling theory, what happens to an individual when they are labeled deviant by society?
3) The differential association theory explains the process of learning deviance. How does this process work? Provide an example of this.
4) Conflict theorist assume deviance promotes inequalities in society? In what ways?
5) Imagine that you are a member of your state legislature. As a sociology major in college, you learned that the get-tough approach to crime, involving harsher criminal sentencing and the increased use of incarceration, costs much money and is not very effective in reducing crime. A bill comes before the legislature that would double the minimum prison term for several types of violent crime. You realize that this change in policy would probably do little to reduce the crime rate and eventually cost millions of dollars in increased incarceration costs, but you also recognize that if you vote against the bill, your opponent in the upcoming election will charge that you are soft on crime. Do you vote for or against the bill? Why? Regardless of your vote, what else would you do as a state legislator to try to reduce the crime rate? How would your efforts relate to a sociological understanding of crime and deviance?
6) Watch the Middle Ground: Anti death penalty vs death penalty video in this section under the contents tab. How does this video make you feel? Does the video change your beliefs about the death penalty? Why or why not?
