Explanations to Discrete Practice Questions

1. C
   A status is a position in society used to classify a person and exists in relation to other statuses. The specific behaviors associated with this status, (B), best describe a role.
2. B
   An achieved status is one that is acquired through personal efforts. This is in contrast to an ascribed status, (A), in which the status is involuntarily given based on race, ethnicity, gender, family background, and so on. A master status, (C), is one that influences all aspects of an individual’s life. While being a college graduate is an important aspect of day-to-day life, it does not usually pervade every part of our lives.
3. C
   A bureaucracy is an example of an organization, specifically one with the goal of performing complex tasks as efficiently as possible. Immediate networks and primary groups, (A) and (B), are characterized by strong, intimate bonds, which are not commonly seen in bureaucracies. Reference groups, (D), are those groups to which we compare ourselves for various characteristics.
4. D
   Generally, bureaucracies are marked by six characteristics: paid officials on a fixed salary; nonelected officials who are provided rights and privileges as a result of making their career out of holding office; regular salary increases, seniority rights, and promotions upon passing exams or milestones, (C); officials who enter the organization by holding an advanced degree or training, (B); responsibilities, obligations, privileges, and work procedures rigidly defined by the organization, (A); and responsibility for meeting the obligations of the office one holds.
5. C
   Verbal communication uses words (whether spoken, written, or signed). Nonverbal communication uses other means of signaling emotions or ideas, such as gestures, body language, facial expressions, prosody, eye contact, and personal space.
6. C
   Aligning actions is an impression management technique in which one provides socially acceptable reasons for unexpected behavior. This may manifest as providing an excuse for poor performance or laughing off an inappropriate comment as a joke. Tension created from having conflicting thoughts or opinions, as mentioned in (B), refers to cognitive dissonance.
7. B
   Imposing a role on another person (in this case, “good friend”) is the hallmark of alter-casting. This example is also the opposite of ingratiation, (C), because the implication behind the statement is that one is a “bad friend” if he or she does not lend the bike; ingratiation is the use of flattery or conformity to win over someone else.
8. A
   A  Gesellschaft (society) is one in which individuals are working toward the same goal, such as a company or country.  Gemeinschaften (communities), on the other hand, are those that are bonded together by beliefs, ancestry, or geography.
9. B
   Display rules are those that dictate cultural expectations of emotion. In some cultures, sadness is considered personal and internal; in others, sadness is shared externally with the community.
10. C
    SYMLOG is a method for analyzing group dynamics and considers groups along three dimensions: dominant vs. submissive, friendliness vs. unfriendliness, and instrumentally controlled vs. emotionally expressive.
11. B
    If a candidate is “exposed,” then personal characteristics that are usually shielded from public view have been brought in front of the public. This would be pulling aspects of the back stage self to the front stage. It would not be considered removing the front stage self, (C), because the candidate still has a public image, even if it has been tarnished.
12. B
    The ought self is who others think we should be: the expectations imposed by others on us. This is most similar to the tactical self, which is the self we present to others when we adhere to their expectations. The presented self, (D), is a combination of the authentic, ideal, and tactical selves.
13. A
    The basic model of emotion, as proposed by Charles Darwin, states that emotions serve an evolutionary purpose, and thus are similar across cultures. The seven universal emotions have also been used as support for this theory. The social construction model states that emotions are always a product of the current social situation and does not posit any biological basis for emotions, implying a lack of a role for emotions in evolution.
14. D
    Intraspecific communication refers to communication between members of the same species. Interspecific communication, on the other hand, refers to communication between members of different species. Echolocation is not an example of intraspecific communication because the sender of the signal and the recipient are the same organism; this would be considered autocommunication.
15. C
    Primary groups have direct and close bonds between members, providing warm, personal, and intimate relationships to its members. Secondary groups, in contrast, form superficial bonds and tend to last for a shorter period of time.