Chapter one: Culture, Part A

Multiple Choice

Real culture is a group's idea; values, norms, and goals whilst ideal culture is people's actual behavior, which often falls short of their cultural ideals.

• True

• False

Multiple Choice

We usually take our speech, our gestures, our beliefs, and our customs for granted. We assume that they are normal or natural, and we almost always follow them without question. This example means most characteristics of our own culture remain perceptible to us.

• True

• False

Multiple Choice

The following explain how culture usually influence people's lives, EXCEPT that:

• Culture penetrates deeply into our thinking, becoming a taken-for-granted lens through which we see the world and obtain our perception of reality.

• Culture provides implicit instructions that tell us what we ought to do and how we ought to think.

• Culture cannot provide a fundamental basis for our decision making.

• Culture also provides a moral imperative; that is, the culture that we internalize becomes the right way of doing things.

Multiple Choice

Although the particulars of culture differ from one group of people to another, culture itself is not universal. That is, all people have culture, for a society cannot exist without developing shared, learned ways of dealing with the challenges of life.

• True

• False

Multiple Choice

Which of the following does not describe "ethnocentrism"?

• A tendency to use our own group's ways of doing things as a yardstick for judging others

• The ways of our group are good, right, and even superior to other ways of life.

• Ethnocentrism has both positive and negative consequences.

• Ethnocentrism does not necessarily lead to discrimination against people whose ways differ from ours.

Multiple Choice

Which of the following does not describe "cultural relativism"?

• It does not counter our tendency to use our own culture as the standard by which we judge other cultures.

• It looks at how the elements of a culture fit together, without judging those elements as superior or inferior to our own way of life.

• Practicing cultural relativism can challenge our orientations to life.

• Applying cultural relativism is an attempt to refocus that lens so we can appreciate other ways of life rather than simple asserting "Our way is right."

Multiple Choice

Sociologists sometimes refer to nonmaterial culture as symbolic culture, because its central component is the set of symbols that people use. A symbol is something to which people attach meaning and that they then use to communicate with one another. Symbols include gestures, language, values, norms, sanctions, folkways, and mores.

• True

• False

Multiple Choice

The following are true about "gestures" except that....

• the movement of the body to communicate with others, are shorthand ways to convey messages without using words

• a gesture's meaning may change completely from one culture to another.

• gestures not only facilitate communication but also can lead to misunderstanding, embarrassment, or worse.

• gestures cannot elicit emotions; they are not closely associated with emotional messages.

Multiple Choice

Which of the following statements does not describe the significance of "language"?

• Language allows culture to develop by not freeing people to move beyond their immediate experiences

• Language allows people to develop a shared past and future.

• Language allows people to establish a purpose for getting together.

• Language allows people to exchange ideas about events; thus, they are sharing perspective.

Multiple Choice

____ expresses approval for following a norm. Some examples can be material, such as a prize, a trophy, or money, but in everyday life they usually consist of hugs, smiles, a pat on the back, or even handshakes and "high fives."

• Value

• Sanction

• Positive sanction

• negative sanction

Multiple Choice

Other norms are taken much more seriously. We think of them as essential to our core values, and we insist on conformity. These are called ___. For example, a person who steals, rapes. or kills has violated some of society's most important norms.

• mores

• folkways

• taboos

• norms