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Psych/Soc 9A: Understanding Social Structure

Six theoretical lenses turned on the same social fact one at a time, then every social institution the AAMC names, then culture itself.

29 topics · 113 questions

Each topic is a path, not a menu: work down it in order and every question builds on the one above. Click any of them to watch the answer draw itself.

9A. Microsociology vs Macrosociology

  1. How it worksHow does a microsociological question about one exam room differ from a macrosociological question about health care?
  2. Worked exampleFind which level of analysis a study of doctor-patient eye contact belongs to and which one a study of insurance coverage belongs to.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't macrosociology just microsociology added up across millions of people?
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to an explanation when a pattern visible at the macro level disappears at the micro level?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Team A videotapes 49 clinic consultations and codes how often the physician interrupts the patient. Team B links insurance claims for 7 million adults to county-level coverage rules. Which description of the two studies is correct?

9A. Functionalism

  1. How it worksHow does functionalism explain a social part by the job it does for the whole system?
  2. How it worksWalk me through Durkheim's picture of society as interdependent parts holding each other in equilibrium.
  3. Worked exampleFind the functionalist reading of why every known society has some form of family.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't functionalism able to explain a practice that harms most of the people living under it?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
A survey of 176 societies finds that 108 of them transfer property between families at marriage. What is the functionalist reading of that near-universality?

9A. Manifest and Latent Functions

  1. How it worksHow does a manifest function differ from a latent function and from an outright dysfunction?
  2. Worked exampleFind the manifest function, a latent function, and a dysfunction of a hospital emergency department.
  3. Going furtherWhat happens when a latent function turns out to be doing more work than the manifest one?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
An emergency department logs 75 thousand visits a year, of which 46 percent are for conditions a primary care clinic could treat. Which labelling fits Merton's scheme?

9A. Conflict Theory

  1. How it worksHow does conflict theory read a social structure as a contest over scarce resources and power?
  2. How it worksWalk me through Marx's split between those who own the means of production and those who sell their labor.
  3. Worked exampleFind the conflict reading of a private health insurance market with a fee-for-service payment structure.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't conflict theory limited to conflict over money?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Under fee-for-service a clinic's revenue rises with the number of procedures billed. In one system 69 percent of spending goes to procedures and 10 percent to primary care. What is the conflict reading?

9A. Symbolic Interactionism

  1. How it worksHow does symbolic interactionism build society out of meanings negotiated in face-to-face encounters?
  2. How it worksWalk me through the same object carrying two different meanings for two people in one conversation.
  3. Worked exampleFind the symbolic interactionist reading of a patient who calls a diagnosis a death sentence and a doctor who calls it manageable.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to a shared meaning when the two people negotiating it have unequal power?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
In 102 recorded consultations, 32 patients described a new diagnosis as a death sentence while their physicians described the same diagnosis as manageable. What does symbolic interactionism take as its object here?

9A. One Institution Through Functionalist, Conflict, and Interactionist Lenses

  1. How it worksHow does each lens reveal a different structure inside one identical social fact?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through a public school examined by functionalism, then conflict theory, then symbolic interactionism.
  3. Worked exampleWalk me through diabetes examined as a system function, as a resource conflict, and as a negotiated meaning.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to a policy recommendation when the lens used to analyze the problem changes?
  5. Ties togetherHow do the three lenses together explain a health disparity better than any one of them alone?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Diabetes prevalence is 20 percent in one district of a city and 7 percent in another. Which of these readings is the conflict-theoretic one?

9A. Social Constructionism

  1. How it worksHow does a social construction become real in its consequences without being real in nature?
  2. Worked exampleFind what is biological and what is socially constructed in the category of obesity.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't calling something socially constructed the same as calling it imaginary?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
In a sample of 1248 adults, 211 have a body mass index between 25 and 27. A guideline moves the overweight threshold from 27 down to 25. What has changed?

9A. Exchange and Rational Choice Theory

  1. How it worksHow does exchange theory run a relationship as a running balance of rewards against costs?
  2. How it worksWalk me through a rational actor comparing expected payoffs and picking the highest one.
  3. Worked exampleFind whether a patient adheres to a medication when the daily cost outweighs a benefit they cannot feel.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't rational choice theory refuted by people who behave altruistically?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A patient weighs a daily medication: it avoids 156 dollars a month of expected medical costs, costs 34 dollars a month in copays, and takes 29 dollars a month in bus fare to collect. What is the monthly net benefit in dollars?

9A. Feminist Theory

  1. How it worksHow does feminist theory treat gender as a structure of power rather than a demographic variable?
  2. Worked exampleFind the feminist reading of unpaid caregiving work being left out of national economic accounts.
  3. Going furtherWhat happens to a medical trial's conclusions when the entire sample is male?
  4. Ties togetherHow does feminist theory extend conflict theory's question of who benefits to the household?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
A national time-use survey finds adults doing unpaid care work 25 hours a week. If that time were paid at 18 dollars an hour, what would one caregiver's unpaid work be worth over 52 weeks, in dollars?

9A. Education: Hidden Curriculum and Teacher Expectancy

  1. How it worksHow does the hidden curriculum teach norms and values while the official curriculum teaches subjects?
  2. How it worksWalk me through a teacher's expectation reshaping attention, feedback, and finally the student's performance.
  3. Worked exampleFind the hidden curriculum in a school that seats students by reading level and calls the groups by color.
  4. Ties togetherHow does teacher expectancy turn the self-fulfilling prophecy into a mechanism of stratification?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
A school seats its 139 first-graders in 4 reading groups named by colour and keeps the groups fixed all year. Which part of this is the hidden curriculum?

9A. Educational Segregation and Stratification

  1. How it worksHow does funding a school from local property taxes wire neighborhood wealth into classroom resources?
  2. How it worksWalk me through tracking sorting students early and locking the sort in by graduation.
  3. Worked exampleFind the resource gap between districts with 12000 dollars and 22000 dollars of spending per student.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to educational stratification when school assignment is detached from residential address?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
One district spends 24 thousand dollars per student a year and a neighbouring district spends 13 thousand. For a classroom of 29 students, how many thousand dollars more does the first district's classroom command in a year?

9A. Family: Kinship and Diversity in Family Forms

  1. How it worksHow do kinship systems trace descent, residence, and obligation along different lines?
  2. How it worksWalk me through nuclear, extended, blended, and chosen family forms drawn as networks of ties.
  3. Worked exampleFind how a matrilineal descent system routes inheritance differently from a patrilineal one.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to household support networks when family size falls and life expectancy rises?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
In a matrilineal society a man dies holding 69 head of cattle. Who receives them, and how does this differ from a patrilineal rule?

9A. Marriage, Divorce, and Violence in the Family

  1. How it worksHow do monogamy, polygamy, endogamy, and exogamy each constrain who marries whom?
  2. Worked exampleFind the flaw in dividing this year's divorces by this year's marriages to get a divorce rate.
  3. How it worksWalk me through the cycle of family violence and the isolation that keeps it running.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to child outcomes when parental conflict is high and the marriage stays intact?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
A country records 1048 thousand divorces in one year in a population of 319 million people. What is the crude divorce rate, in divorces per 1000 population?

9A. Religion: Religiosity and Types of Religious Organization

  1. How it worksHow does religiosity get measured as belief, practice, and belonging rather than as one number?
  2. How it worksWalk me through the spectrum from church to denomination to sect to cult by tension with the surrounding society.
  3. Worked exampleFind where a breakaway congregation that rejects the parent church's authority falls on that spectrum.
Your turneasy1 of 3
In a national survey, 80 percent of adults name a religious affiliation, 40 percent attend services monthly, and 59 percent say religion is very important in their lives. How many percentage points separate belonging from practice?

9A. Religion and Social Change

  1. How it worksHow does secularization shrink religion's institutional authority without necessarily shrinking belief?
  2. How it worksWalk me through fundamentalism arising as a reaction to modernization rather than a survival of the past.
  3. Going furtherWhat happens to religious participation when a country's state religion is disestablished?
  4. Ties togetherHow does religion act as both a functionalist source of solidarity and a conflict-theory tool of control?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Over one generation in a country, weekly service attendance falls from 57 percent to 23 percent of adults while stated belief in God falls from 95 percent to 78 percent. How many percentage points larger is the fall in attendance than the fall in belief?

9A. Government: Power and Authority

  1. How it worksHow do traditional, rational-legal, and charismatic authority each convert power into legitimacy?
  2. Worked exampleFind which type of authority a hospital chief of staff, a monarch, and a movement founder each rely on.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't authority the same thing as coercion backed by force?
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to a movement built on charismatic authority when the founder dies?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Three people give instructions on the same day: a hospital chief of staff, a hereditary monarch, and the founder of a 7-year-old protest movement. Which authority types are these?

9A. Comparative Economic and Political Systems

  1. How it worksHow do capitalism and socialism place ownership and allocation in different hands?
  2. How it worksWalk me through democracy, authoritarianism, and monarchy differing in where sovereignty sits.
  3. Worked exampleFind how a single-payer system and a private insurance market split the same health spending differently.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to health outcomes when a country changes who pays for primary care?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
A country with a 748 billion dollar economy spends 12 percent of it on health care, and 89 percent of that health spending is publicly financed. How many billion dollars of health spending are public?

9A. Division of Labor

  1. How it worksHow does Durkheim's mechanical solidarity give way to organic solidarity as specialization grows?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through a pin factory where one worker does everything and then ten workers each do one step.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't a high division of labor automatically a sign of a stronger society?
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to solidarity when specialization outruns the shared norms holding people together?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Working alone, one pinmaker produces 26 pins a day. When 11 workers each take a single step of the process, the shop produces 5837 pins a day in total. By how many pins a day does output per worker rise?

9A. Medicalization

  1. How it worksHow does medicalization move a behavior from the moral or legal column into the medical one?
  2. How it worksWalk me through the same trait treated as sin, then as crime, then as illness across three eras.
  3. Worked exampleFind what medicalizing childbirth changed about where it happens and who holds authority over it.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to stigma when a behavior gets medicalized, and what happens to social control?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Over 32 years, a pattern of severe shyness moves from being described as a temperament to carrying a diagnostic code, a screening questionnaire and a licensed drug. What is this process?

9A. The Sick Role

  1. How it worksWalk me through Parsons' two rights and two duties that come with occupying the sick role.
  2. Worked exampleFind whether a patient with an untreated chronic illness fits the sick role as Parsons defined it.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't the sick role available equally to everyone who is actually sick?
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to the sick role when an illness is chronic and no recovery is expected?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
A worker with influenza stays home for 6 days, tells the employer, and books a clinic appointment. Which of Parsons' four elements is this person meeting?

9A. Delivery of Health Care and the Illness Experience

  1. How it worksHow does the gap between disease as pathology and illness as experience open up in an exam room?
  2. How it worksWalk me through a patient's path through primary, secondary, and tertiary care and where the leaks are.
  3. Worked exampleFind where access breaks down for a patient with no car, no paid leave, and a clinic open only on weekdays.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to the illness experience when a diagnosis carries a stigma alongside it?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Two patients match on all 7 laboratory values in a panel and carry the same diagnosis; one keeps working and one stops leaving the house. Which distinction does this illustrate?

9A. Social Epidemiology

  1. How it worksHow does social epidemiology trace disease patterns to social conditions rather than to individuals?
  2. How it worksWalk me through incidence and prevalence moving differently when a disease becomes survivable.
  3. Worked exampleFind incidence and prevalence in a town of 10000 with 200 existing cases and 30 new cases this year.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't a correlation between a neighborhood and a disease evidence that the neighborhood caused it?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A town of 16 thousand people records 46 new cases of a disease this year. What is the incidence, in new cases per 1000 people per year?

9A. Elements of Culture: Material and Symbolic

  1. How it worksHow do beliefs, language, rituals, symbols, and values assemble into a culture that members never state out loud?
  2. How it worksWalk me through material culture and symbolic culture pointing at the same wedding ring differently.
  3. Worked exampleFind which parts of a hospital are material culture and which parts are symbolic culture.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to a symbol when it is carried into a society that lacks its original meaning?
Your turneasy1 of 3
An inventory of a hospital ward lists 96 pieces of equipment and records 15 recurring practices such as handover rounds and the ritual of the white coat. Which split is right?

9A. Culture Lag and Culture Shock

  1. How it worksHow does culture lag open a gap between material culture racing ahead and norms catching up?
  2. How it worksWalk me through the stages of culture shock from honeymoon through crisis to adjustment.
  3. Worked exampleFind the culture lag created when genetic testing arrived before any rule about who may see the results.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to a returning traveler who experiences culture shock in their own home country?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Direct-to-consumer genetic testing becomes commercially available in year 9 of a timeline, and the first statute restricting who may see the results passes in year 26. How many years of culture lag is that?

9A. Assimilation and Multiculturalism

  1. How it worksHow does assimilation trade distinct group cultures for one shared culture, step by step?
  2. How it worksWalk me through multiculturalism keeping group boundaries while building a shared civic layer above them.
  3. Worked exampleFind which model describes a city that requires one official language and which describes one funding four.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens across three generations when assimilation pressure is high and group ties are strong?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Of 679 third-generation descendants of one immigrant group, 92 still speak the heritage language at home. What percent of the third generation still speaks it?

9A. Subcultures and Countercultures

  1. How it worksHow does a subculture sit inside the dominant culture while a counterculture sets itself against it?
  2. Worked exampleFind whether a group of medical residents with its own slang is a subculture or a counterculture.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't every group that looks different from the mainstream a counterculture?
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to a counterculture when the mainstream adopts its symbols?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A cohort of 69 medical residents develops its own slang, dress and internal hierarchy while training within the hospital's rules. Subculture or counterculture?

9A. Evolution and Human Culture

  1. How it worksHow does cultural transmission carry adaptations sideways at a speed genetic inheritance cannot match?
  2. How it worksWalk me through gene-culture coevolution using dairy farming and adult lactose tolerance.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't every widespread cultural practice an adaptation that increased fitness?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
In a population with a long history of dairy herding, 85 percent of adults digest lactose; in a neighbouring population without dairying, 11 percent do. How many times the second figure is the first?

9A. Transmission and Diffusion of Culture

  1. How it worksHow does transmission pass culture down generations while diffusion carries it sideways between societies?
  2. How it worksWalk me through an innovation diffusing through a population from innovators to laggards as a spreading curve.
  3. Worked exampleFind the diffusion path of a surgical technique moving from one teaching hospital to a national standard.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to diffusion speed when two societies trade heavily and share a language?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A new surgical technique is in use at 25 percent of a country's 237 teaching hospitals five years after it was first published. How many teaching hospitals have adopted it?

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