sociology final exam

a related psychological process that might contribute to black underachievement especially in high-stakes testing situations is called strereotype threat.
stereotype threat occurs when members of a negatively stereotyped group are placed in a situation where they fear that they may confirm those stereotypes...for example when african american kids take the SAT they may unconsciously worry about that they will confirm some negative stereotype
this was proven in an experiment conducted by Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson where they took a group of Stanford undergrads both black and white separated them into two groups and gave them both the same verbal test. However one group was told it was a intellectual ability test and the other group was told that the test was just a problem solving test. As expected the afircan american students who were told it was a intellectual ability test scored the lowest of all groups. This is because of the activation of the stereotype threat another way to activate it is by asking students to fill in their race before taking exams.
bell curve hypothesis
Chareles Murray and Richard Harrensein came up with this idea that the same traits that makes adults economically successful are the same ones that make them good parents
-successful parents have good genes which give them higher IQs and make them more likely to be successful
so those with higher IQs are more successful and those with lower IQs there is not much that can be done for them because there genes are helping them out.
religion (growth of conservative churches)
Dean m, Kelley says that the conservative sects outpace mainline churches precisely because of their sects
-another way of thinking about it is that when a religious body has a lot of low-commitment members it will lose its highly committed members because of the problem of free riders....No body likes a free rider
religions take three major forms, theism, ethicalism, and animism
the worship of a god or gods as in christianity, islam, hinduism
the adherance to certain principles to lead a moral life as in Buddhism and Taoism
the belief that spirits roam the natural word as in totemism
groups of people that gather together especially for worship
big groups of congregations that share the same faith and are governed under one administrative umbrella
Emile Durkheim
Émile Durkheim argued that religions perform the social function of promoting solidarity by strengthening the collective conscience. He also felt that sacred symbols become powerful because people collectively invest them with power through their shared beliefs.
-french guy that wanted to understand the how society holds together and the ways that modern capitalism and industrialism have transformed how people relate to on another
wrote the Division of Labor in Society (division of labor refers to the degree to which jobs are specialized
society of farmers has low division of labor
today America has a high degree of division of labor
his work was considered sociology and not economics because he argued that the division of labor didnt just affect work and productivity but had social and moral consequences as well by determining its form of social solidarity or the way social cohesion among individuals is maintained

Durkheim sought to prove that suicide was not something that was caused by a persons individual physiological characteristics but that suicide is also a product of social forces it is an act of social deviance
is the general movement away from religiosity and spiritual belief toward a rational, scientific orientation, a trend observed in industrialized nations in the form of separation of church and state
Karl Marx
In accordance with his belief that all social facts of life are grounded in conflict, Karl Marx argued religion was used to keep workers from questioning their oppressed position in everyday life by promising them riches in the afterlife.
Max Weber
Max Weber argued that Protestantism was a prerequisite for the development of capitalism because it introduced the idea that a person fulfilled his duty to God through hard work and asceticism. Making money was not frowned upon, although spending that money on pleasure and personal enjoyment was.