All Free Sociology MCQs with Answers

• A. Both groups
• B. Secondary group
• C. Primary group
• D. None of these

Explanation: The primary group, especially the family, is the first setting in which a person learns language, norms, values and expected roles.

• A. Group activities
• B. Families
• C. Individual activities
• D. None of these

Explanation: Group activities teach people the norms, values, goals, and sentiments of their culture through interaction and participation.

• A. peers
• B. formal religion
• C. the family
• D. schools
• E. the media

Explanation: The family is usually regarded as the primary and most influential agent of early socialisation because it first teaches language, norms…

• A. maturational motivations
• B. activity norms
• C. continuity contingencies
• D. age grades
• E. disengagement techniques

Explanation: Age grades are socially recognised stages tied to age, each carrying expected behaviours and roles, such as childhood, adolescence, and…

• A. that men lacks a system of checks and balances in his life
• B. that psychology is the dominant theory the social sciences
• C. that biology/genetics explains everything
• D. that there is no such thing as a superego
• E. That culture rather than biology plays the biggest part in socialization

Explanation: Freud placed greater emphasis on biological drives, whereas Erikson explained personality development through psychosocial stages shaped…

• A. play
• B. preparatory
• C. game
• D. infancy
• E. maturation

Explanation: Mead called the earliest phase of role learning the preparatory stage, when children imitate others without yet understanding roles fully.

• A. our reflections on our own personal shortcomings
• B. our sense of knowledge from all of the agents of socialization
• C. our imagination of how others see us
• D. our self-concept both positive and negative
• E. our sense of individuality

Explanation: Cooley’s looking-glass self develops as we imagine how others see us and form feelings and self-judgments from that imagined response.

• A. maturational reform
• B. gerontocracy
• C. the maturational method
• D. gerontology
• E. global greying

Explanation: Gerontology is the scientific study of ageing and the physical, psychological and social changes associated with it.

• A. early childhood
• B. adolescence
• C. infancy
• D. later life
• E. young adulthood

Explanation: Erikson's psychosocial theory was later extended beyond childhood and adolescence to explain development in adulthood and later life…

• A. self
• B. personality
• C. ego
• D. the I
• E. the me

Explanation: Personality is the distinctive pattern of thoughts, feelings and behaviour that makes one individual different from others.

• A. Learning and growing
• B. Protection
• C. enculturation and socialization
• D. None of these

Explanation: Family is the child's first setting for enculturation, where cultural values are learned, and socialisation, where norms and roles are…

• A. the contact hypothesis
• B. reverse discrimination
• C. scapegoating
• D. a self-fulfilling prophecy

Explanation: This is a self-fulfilling prophecy: repeated expectations influence a person’s self-concept and behaviour until the expected outcome…

• A. interactionist perspective
• B. conflict perspective
• C. functionalist perspective
• D. anomie theoryAccess Government Careers

Explanation: The teacher-expectancy effect is an interactionist example of a self-fulfilling prophecy: teachers’ expectations can shape how they treat…

• A. mothers who are living in poverty cannot afford to give their children the resources that other children enjoy
• B. mothering is a socially constructed activity identified in the narratives of new mothers
• C. children deprived of an early secure attachment to their mother are prone to suffer physically intellectually and socially in later life
• D. deprivation is something children inherit usually through their mothers' side

Explanation: Bowlby argued that prolonged deprivation of an early maternal attachment could harm a child’s later emotional, intellectual and social…

• A. the unconscious mass of instinctive drives that may be repressed
• B. the self as a whole an unstable mix of conscious and unconscious elements
• C. the conscious part of the mind that regulates emotional drives on a practical rational level
• D. the neurotic part of the mind that longs for belonging and may suffer an inferiority complexPeople & Society

Explanation: In Freud’s model, the ego is the conscious, reality-oriented part of the mind that mediates between instinctive desires and practical…

• A. we internalize and take on social roles from a pre-existing framework
• B. we create and negotiate our roles through interaction with others
• C. social roles are not fixed or stable but fluid and pluralistic
• D. roles have to be learned to suppress unconscious motivations

Explanation: Role-learning theory treats roles as patterns that people acquire and internalise through an existing social framework.

• A. George Herbert Mead
• B. Charles Horton Cooley
• C. Erving Goffman
• D. Harry Harlow

Explanation: Charles Horton Cooley coined the idea of the looking-glass self, in which people develop self-image by imagining how others see and judge…

• A. sex
• B. preparation for death
• C. socialization
• D. love and work

Explanation: Middle adulthood commonly centres on maintaining intimate relationships and productive work, often expressed as the developmental tasks of…

• A. social comparisons
• B. self-ethnography
• C. introspective rejuvenation
• D. none of the above

Explanation: Self-esteem develops partly through social comparison, as people evaluate their abilities and worth against those of others.

• A. culture
• B. socialization
• C. social communication
• D. definition of the situation

Explanation: Socialization is the lifelong process through which people learn society’s knowledge, values, attitudes and behavioural expectations.