Free Culture and Society MCQs with Answers

• A. Role playing
• B. Role sets
• C. Role adjustment
• D. None of theseTrace Family History

Explanation: A role set is the collection of different roles attached to one status, such as a teacher’s relationships with students, colleagues, administrators and parents. Role playing refers to performing a role, not the multiple roles linked to a status.

• A. Role
• B. Status
• C. Both a and b
• D. None of these

Explanation: A role is the behaviour and duties expected from someone occupying a particular status. Status identifies the social position, whereas role describes what the position-holder is expected to do.

• A. Broadening of role specification
• B. Plurality of moralities
• C. Increase in number of achievable positions
• D. None of these

Explanation: Broadening role specifications, competing moralities and the growth of achievable positions can all make expectations less clear and increase role confusion. Since none of the first three is an exception, “None of these” is the intended answer.

• A. a position
• B. a role
• C. a performance
• D. an impression

Explanation: A status is a recognised social position, while a role consists of the expectations and behaviours attached to that position. Thus, the expectations followed by a person occupying a status are called a role.

• A. adolescence and gender roles varied between societies and so were culturally determined
• B. gender roles in three New Guinea societies were identical and so must be biologically determined
• C. adolescence in the USA is a time of relative calm compared to the experience in Japan and Europe
• D. anthropological fieldwork can be problematic because the researcher's values affect the way they interpret their observations

Explanation: Mead’s studies in Samoa and New Guinea argued that adolescence and gender behaviour vary across cultures, so they are shaped substantially by cultural expectations rather than determined solely by biology.

• A. Actual behavior
• B. Supposed behavior
• C. Ascribed behavior
• D. None of these

Explanation: Role refers to expected behaviour, whereas role behaviour means what the person actually does in that status. The distinction is between normative expectations and observed performance.

• A. personality
• B. Phenomenon
• C. Situation
• D. None of these

Explanation: Status identifies a person’s position, while role identifies the behaviour expected from that position. They are therefore two related aspects of the same social phenomenon.

• A. sexual characteristics are the biological determinants of gender
• B. heterosexuality and homosexuality are essential opposing identities
• C. the tow-sex model replaced the one-sex model in the eighteenth century
• D. gender is performed through bodily gestures and styles to create sex

Explanation: Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity argues that gender is repeatedly produced through bodily acts, gestures, dress and styles rather than simply expressing fixed biological sex. The other options treat gender or sexuality as essential and unchanging.

• A. Religious ritual
• B. changelessness
• C. idealized ways of thinking and doing
• D. None of these

Explanation: Religious rituals are recurring, shared practices that express collective beliefs and reinforce group solidarity, making them highly pervasive social processes in this framework. “Changelessness” is not a social process, and option c describes an idea rather than a process.

• A. face-to-face interaction
• B. mediated interaction
• C. mediated quasi interaction
• D. mediated multiple -interaction

Explanation: Mediated quasi-interaction describes relationships created through mass media, where communication reaches an indefinite audience without direct mutual interaction. Face-to-face and ordinary mediated interaction involve more direct, reciprocal contact.