All Free Sociology MCQs with Answers

• A. Max Weber
• B. Emile Durkheim
• C. Karl Marx
• D. Erving Goffman

Explanation: Conflict theory begins chiefly with Karl Marx’s analysis of class conflict, exploitation and unequal control of economic resources.

• A. bourgeois consciousness
• B. false consciousness
• C. caste consciousness
• D. class consciousness

Explanation: Class consciousness means that workers recognise their shared exploitation and collective interests, enabling them to organise against…

• A. Karl Marx
• B. Erik Olin-Wright
• C. John Goldthorpe
• D. Max Weber

Explanation: Karl Marx defined class through people's relationship to the means of production: owners form the bourgeoisie, while those selling their…

• A. emotional labor
• B. symbolic interactionism
• C. social action
• D. symbiosis

Explanation: The Managed Heart applies symbolic interactionist ideas to how people manage feelings and present emotions during social encounters…

• A. Talcott Parsons
• B. Robert Merton
• C. Emile Durkheim
• D. Ralf Dahrendorf

Explanation: Parsons, Durkheim and Merton are major functionalist thinkers. Ralf Dahrendorf is associated with conflict theory, which stresses power…

• A. Functional theory
• B. Cyclical theory
• C. Conflict theory
• D. interactionist theory
• E. Evolutionary theory

Explanation: Standard classifications of social-change theories include evolutionary, cyclical, functionalist, and conflict approaches.

• A. clear
• B. explicit
• C. encouraged
• D. repeated
• E. vague

Explanation: Emergent norm theory applies to situations in which established expectations are unclear or vague, allowing participants to develop new…

• A. contagion
• B. convention
• C. group thinks
• D. expressiveness
• E. reformation

Explanation: Contagion theory treats crowd behavior as psychologically infectious, spreading through imitation and suggestibility until individuals…

• A. imitation suggestibility and circular reaction
• B. precipitating factors structural strain and structural conduciveness
• C. norms of the status quo emergent norms and new norms
• D. fashions fads and crazes

Explanation: Contagion theory explains the mob mind through imitation, suggestibility, and circular reaction, in which people copy one another and…

• A. presents three preconditions for collective behavior
• B. none of the above
• C. is of little use in understanding the complexity of collective behavior.
• D. states that each determinant expands the range of potential final outcomes

Explanation: The value-added model identifies several successive determinants of collective behavior, and each one narrows rather than expands the…

• A. Oswald Spengler
• B. Arnold Toynbee
• C. Pitirim Sorokin
• D. None of these

Explanation: Pitirim Sorokin proposed cyclical movement among the sensate, ideational and idealistic cultural systems.

• A. agriculture
• B. health care
• C. all of the above
• D. technology

Explanation: Lenski’s sociocultural evolution theory treats technology as the key force shaping production, inequality, institutions, and the…

• A. functionalist perspective
• B. conflict perspective
• C. interactionist perspective
• D. each of the above

Explanation: Functionalism views major institutions as interdependent parts that perform functions contributing to social order and stability, so their…

• A. Philip Zimbardo
• B. William I. Thomas
• C. Herbert Blumer
• D. Erving Goggman

Explanation: William I. Thomas argued that people act according to their definition of a situation, and those interpretations can shape conduct and…

• A. a response cries
• B. unfocused interaction
• C. interactional vandalism
• D. impression management

Explanation: Interactional vandalism occurs when a subordinate person disrupts the tacit rules governing everyday interaction, often challenging the…

• A. a restaurant kitchen
• B. a nightclub toilet
• C. a football ground dressing room
• D. a clothing store payment counter

Explanation: A front region is a setting where people perform expected public roles and manage their impressions, such as a clothing-store payment…

• A. gender is performative
• B. people, s biological sex underpins their gendered identity
• C. gender is about what we do not who we are
• D. there is no essential or biological basis to gender

Explanation: Butler rejects the idea that biological sex naturally determines gender identity; she argues that gender is produced through repeated…

• A. social structures
• B. social space
• C. social reality
• D. social inequality

Explanation: Social constructionism examines how interaction, language and institutions produce and maintain what people accept as social reality.

• A. social regions
• B. back regions
• C. public regions
• D. front regions

Explanation: Formal role performance takes place in a front region, where individuals follow the expected script of a social occasion and present…

• A. Harold Garfinkel
• B. Max Weber
• C. Erving Goffman
• D. Anthony Giddens

Explanation: Harold Garfinkel coined ethnomethodology to describe the study of the everyday methods people use to produce and understand social order.