Deck 18: The Sociology of the Body: Health, Illness, and Sexuality

Question 1

Ancient Greeks considered the highest form of sexual love to be the love of:

A) a man for his wife
B) a man for his mistress
C) men for boys
D) women for boys

Answer 1

C

Question 2

The topic of eating disorders offers a good opportunity to apply the sociological imagination because it is:

A) purely a personal trouble
B) purely a public issue
C) a case in which what appears to be a personal trouble is part of a larger, public issue
D) a case in which what used to be social becomes natural

Answer 2

C

Question 3

Which of the following best describes the medical community's beliefs about gay or lesbian behavior?

A) No scientific research has proved that homosexuals as a group are psychologically less healthy than heterosexuals.
B) According to recent editions of the DSM, the primary reference for psychiatrists, homosexuality is a personality disorder.
C) In spite of a lack of research to support the idea, the American Medical Association continues to claim that nonheterosexual relationships are abnormal.
D) Although the medical profession has reluctantly acknowledged that lesbians do not necessarily have a psychological disorder, some physicians have not been willing to acknowledge the same tolerance for gay men.

Answer 3

A

Question 4

The most commonly found sexual orientation in all cultures is:

A) homosexuality
B) lesbianism
C) heterosexuality
D) bisexuality

Question 5

Sociology of the body refers to how:

A) different parts of society work together like a living body
B) and why bodies are affected by our social experiences
C) and why social life is disconnected from what goes on in the body
D) biological influences outweigh cultural influences in the study of the body

Question 6

An example of an "obesogenic environment" is:

A) a school that has milk and fruit snacks as well as soda and candy in its vending machines
B) a restaurant that offers a portion size of meat that is about 4 to 5 ounces
C) a fast-food restaurant that prices fresh produce like it does french fries
D) the fast-food sandwich that tends to be less expensive than healthy salads

Question 7

Gilbert Herdt found that more than 20 tribes in Melanesia and New Guinea participated in ritually prescribed same-sex encounters. Same-sex encounters were considered necessary for:

A) men because they have limited access to women during hunts
B) boys in order for them to "learn" how to participate in homosexuality
C) boys in order to develop masculine virility
D) girls in order for them to learn how to be sexual without damaging their "purity" through heterosexual intercourse

Question 8

A characteristic of health in medieval times was that:

A) major illnesses were unknown because poor medical records were kept
B) epidemics such as the plague were localized and had a minor effect on the population of Europe
C) the major illnesses such as bubonic plague were caused by terrible hygiene
D) the major illnesses such as tuberculosis and cholera were caused by infections

Question 9

An effect of colonialism on health was that:

A) entire native populations in the Americas were wiped out because of exposure to diseases to which they had no resistance such as smallpox
B) sexually transmitted diseases were introduced to Europe from Africa
C) nutrition for colonized peoples improved, which had a positive effect on their health
D) imports from colonies helped to improve both Western and Native American diets

Question 10

The number of sexual identities that Judith Lorber identified is:

A) one because all humans have essentially the same sexual identity
B) two, just straight male and straight female
C) four, including straight male, straight female, lesbian, and gay
D) 10, including straight male and female, lesbian, gay, bisexual male and female, transvestite male and female, and transsexual male and female

Question 11

We know that sexual responses are learned rather than inborn because:

A) all humans practice essentially the same sexual behaviors in different cultures
B) there is tremendous variation in what different cultures consider "natural" sexual behavior
C) all cultures enforce specific sexual norms and ignoring these is risky for the individual
D) all cultures value similar traits for sexual attractiveness, which are taught to them at a very young age

Question 12

In the United States, the major feature of the development of modern health care systems is:

A) centering the treatment of serious illnesses in the home and family
B) applying science to medical diagnosis and cure
C) focusing on the balance of psychological and physical aspects of the sick person
D) having an exclusive focus on preventative care and good nutrition

Question 13

Hilda is interested in studying the increasing separation of the body from "nature." What field would be most relevant to her interest?

A) homeopathy
B) epidemiology
C) reflexology
D) sociology of the body

Question 14

Hundreds of years ago, the highest death rates were among children. By the beginning of the twentieth century, that had changed in large part because of:

A) changes in child labor laws that restricted children's entry into the workplace
B) improvements in diet, sanitation, and water purity
C) dramatic improvements in medical care
D) the introduction of antibiotics that caused a reduction in the overall mortality rate

Question 15

Ritualized male-male sexual encounters were found to have been the norm in:

A) nearly every Western culture
B) several parts of Nigeria as recently as the 1990s
C) ancient Greece among highly educated men and boys
D) Native American cultures prior to colonization

Question 16

The percentage of adult women in the United States who are obese is ________ percent.

A) 78
B) 55
C) 38
D) 15

Question 17

Kai is romantically attracted to men. This direction of his romantic attraction is known as his:

A) sexual orientation
B) sexual preference
C) sexuality
D) gender role

Question 18

The main institution dealing with sickness in premodern societies was the:

A) hospital
B) doctor
C) family
D) government

Question 19

Karen experiences sexual attraction for men and women. She is a:

A) heterosexual
B) homosexual
C) transsexual
D) bisexual

Question 20

John uses a term that implies that sexual attraction is entirely a matter of personal choice. What is this term?

A) sexual orientation
B) sexual preference
C) homosexuality
D) gender role

Question 21

Studying the sexual behavior of white Americans in the 1940s and 1950s, Alfred Kinsey found that:

A) few differences between public standards and private practices existed
B) attitudes toward male and female sexuality were similar
C) few men and women had engaged in masturbation and oral sex
D) huge differences existed between public standards and private practices

Question 22

What is a characteristic of illnesses?

A) The sick role is even more applicable to chronic illness than acute illnesses.
B) There is no single formula for chronically ill people to follow.
C) Acutely ill persons (more than chronically ill persons) find that their symptoms fluctuate.
D) Everyone who suffers from misdiagnosed symptoms is allowed the sick role

Question 23

Differences in occupational status lead to inequalities in health and illness because:

A) those who work in offices are at less risk of exposure to hazardous materials than those who do not
B) white-collar workers have more stressful jobs than do blue-collar workers
C) in all societies, white-collar workers have better access to health care than do blue-collar workers
D) white-collar workers work longer hours, which results in poor health outcomes because they have little time to seek medical care

Question 24

Which of the following institutions has traditionally shaped people's attitudes about sexual behavior in Western culture?

A) the medical profession, which defines both illness and health
B) the school, which is where we first learn about and are taught about sex
C) the government, which tells us which forms of sexual practice are legal or illegal
D) the religious institutions, which teach that sex should be done for reproduction only

Question 25

One example of an illegitimate sick role would be:

A) irritable bowel syndrome
B) acne
C) chlamydia
D) fibromyalgia

Question 26

Epidemiology is the science that studies:

A) the distribution of disease within the organs of the body
B) how quickly a disease can cause moral panic
C) why certain illnesses are considered illegitimate
D) the distribution and incidence of disease and illness within a population

Question 27

The most effective policy to counter the effect of poverty on health would be:

A) health education
B) focusing health care on prevention
C) increasing access to health care
D) reducing or eliminating poverty

Question 28

In Victorian times and in some ways even today, men who visited prostitutes or kept mistresses were accepted in polite society, but women who engaged in similar behavior were shunned. This is known as a:

A) Gini coefficient
B) double standard
C) bisexual
D) universal moral standard

Question 29

Education is correlated with inequalities in health and illness because people with higher levels of education:

A) are more likely to have better health insurance plans
B) are more likely to exercise and less likely to smoke
C) like the taste of healthy food whereas people with less education do not
D) practice alternative medicine, which is associated with longer life spans

Question 30

What is a characteristic of the sick role?

A) It explains well illnesses that do not necessarily lead to a suspension of normal activity.
B) Adopting the sick role is always a straightforward process.
C) Young women with autoimmune diseases are readily granted sick role status.
D) Social factors such as race, class, and gender affect whether and how readily the sick role is granted.

Question 31

When people have diseases such as cancer, they receive comfort and compassion. People with diseases such as HIV/AIDS are stigmatized because:

A) HIV/AIDS is a more depressing condition
B) HIV/AIDS is more fatal than cancer
C) cancer results in fewer visible signs that the patient is sick in comparison with HIV/AIDS
D) HIV/AIDS patients may be seen as partially responsible for their condition

Question 32

The effect of colonialism on people's nutritional health was that the nutrition of:

A) the colonized people improved but the nutrition of the colonizers deteriorated
B) the colonized people suffered but the nutrition of the colonizers improved
C) both the colonized people and the colonizers improved
D) both the colonized people and the colonizers suffered

Question 33

Marco attempts to incorporate his diabetes into his life, make sense of it, and develop ways of explaining it to others. This is known as:

A) adopting the sick role
B) doing illness work
C) doing everyday work
D) doing biographical work

Question 34

Tonya is chronically ill and takes medications, does diagnostic tests, and undergoes physical therapy. These activities are considered ________ work.

A) illness
B) everyday
C) biographical
D) illegitimate

Question 35

According to Eliot Freidson's modification of Talcott Parsons's "sick role," someone with a terminal illness is categorized as:

A) conditional
B) unconditionally legitimate
C) illegitimate
D) lived experience

Question 36

Patterns of behavior that a sick person adopts to minimize the disruptive effect of illness are called:

A) lived experience
B) the sick role
C) health literacy
D) the biomedical model of health

Question 37

Like all roles, the sick role requires the person to accept the role and for others to acknowledge it. A person most likely granted the sick role would be a(n):

A) cancer patient who teaches elementary school
B) African American with AIDS
C) person who suffers from chronic fatigue
D) overweight man who is diagnosed with adult-onset diabetes

Question 38

There is a social class gradient in obesity in our society because:

A) high-fat food and supersized meals are cheaper and more accessible than more nutritious foods
B) upper-class individuals are more likely to smoke and smoking suppresses the appetite
C) people in lower socioeconomic strata are less concerned with body image
D) low-income individuals tend to be less likely to take on physically demanding jobs than high-income individuals

Question 39

The notion that the power of modern medicine will continue to result in improvements in public health indefinitely is unsatisfactory to sociologists because:

A) it overemphasizes the spiritual and psychological dimensions of health
B) the achievements have more to do with technology than science
C) it ignores social and environmental factors in patterns and trends of health and illness
D) there is more evidence that alternative medicine is the wave of the future

Question 40

For most of the past 2,000 years in the West:

A) masturbation was encouraged as an alternative to sexual intercourse
B) most early writings by doctors ran counter to religious teachings about sexuality, leaving people confused about their sexuality
C) sexual fulfillment was the primary goal of marriage
D) attitudes toward sexuality were shaped by Christianity

Question 41

In 2017, the proportion of the population in support of gay marriage was _____ percent.

A) 22
B) 42
C) 62
D) 82

Question 42

According to the National Health and Social Life Survey (NHSLS):

A) 45 percent of women reported ever having had an extramarital affair
B) 83 percent of men reported ever having had an extramarital affair
C) 45 percent of Americans had one or no sexual partners in the preceding year
D) 83 percent of Americans had one or no sexual partners in the preceding year

Question 43

The current global wave of gay and lesbian civil rights movements initially grew out of:

A) movements to legalize marijuana in Amsterdam
B) the 1960s social movements in the United States
C) liberation theology
D) the International March on the United Nations

Question 44

A likely consequence of the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa is that:

A) governments will divert substantial resources to the health care of their poorest citizens
B) the level of social unrest will rise sharply
C) parents will lose their children to the disease, creating an imbalance in the age demographics
D) children orphaned by AIDS will have to leave their communities to spend an increased amount of time in school

Question 45

Reporting poor health might be associated with longer life expectancies because:

A) longer life and aging bring more health problems
B) older people are less likely to seek medical care
C) healthy behaviors are not correlated with life expectancy
D) people with bad health may not see a doctor and are not included in life span statistics

Question 46

AIDS orphans in sub-Saharan Africa have become targets for:

A) Western pharmaceutical companies seeking volunteers for experimental drugs to treat AIDS
B) gangs and armies seeking easy new recruits
C) deportation because government officials seek to lower the official AIDS rates in sub-Saharan Africa
D) sterilization to make sure they do not spread AIDS to the next generation

Question 47

Reproductive technologies could affect family structure because:

A) most women seeking fertility treatment are single and want to have children but avoid marriage
B) it is much easier to have children and thus fewer people are childless in Western societies
C) it is currently possible for parents to select the sex of their babies
D) the number of twins and triplets or more has increased

Question 48

The "socialization of nature," the phenomenon that what used to be natural processes are increasingly socially controlled, reflects the changed relationship between:

A) science and technology and the body
B) social technologies and the body
C) sexual behavior and the media
D) doctors and childbirth

Question 49

The gender gap in life expectancy between men and women increased during the twentieth century because:

A) women are more likely to have health insurance than men
B) women have lower rates of illness from chronic conditions such as arthritis and osteoporosis
C) infectious diseases, the leading cause of death, are more likely to strike men than women
D) the major causes of death changed to those influenced by behavior and women tend to engage in fewer life-shortening behaviors than men

Question 50

The group that has the highest life expectancy at birth is composed of:

A) black females
B) white females
C) Hispanic males
D) Hispanic females

Question 51

Women have longer lives on average, and they also report poor health more often and are twice as likely to report:

A) symptoms of depression
B) symptoms of menopause
C) problems with nutrition
D) more chronic conditions

Question 52

Which of the following is an example of procreative technology?

A) CAM
B) childbirth
C) rhythm method
D) genetic engineering

Question 53

Josiah has an aversion to homosexuals and their lifestyles. This aversion is known as:

A) sexism
B) homophobia
C) sadomasochism
D) sexual preference

Question 54

An example of the socialization of nature is:

A) epidemiology
B) the sick role
C) the AIDS epidemic
D) the medicalization of pregnancy and childbirth

Question 55

In 2015, _____ billion people lacked access to basic sanitation.

A) 1
B) 2.3
C) 3.6
D) 5.2

Question 56

One significant conclusion that can be drawn from the recent research on sexuality in the United States such as that by Lillian Rubin (1990) and Edward Laumann et al. (1994) is that:

A) sexual behavior is generally more liberal than most people would have thought
B) sexual infidelity is common among both men and women
C) young people are more sexually active before marriage than was true in the past
D) masturbation is more common among women than men

Question 57

Studies by Alfred Kinsey (1948, 1953) and Edward Laumann (1994) are influential works in understanding sexuality, but they also demonstrate that the research process itself:

A) can be very sensitive and that people often lie when it comes to their sexual habits
B) is very convoluted and can easily negate any research findings
C) can be as important as the actual research findings
D) does not need to be considered when examining the findings

Question 58

One of the significant findings of Lillian Rubin's study of sexuality among Americans in the late 1980s was that:

A) men reported greater difficulty finding female sexual partners, leading to higher incidents of sexual assault
B) women were even less interested in their own sexual satisfaction than they were in Kinsey's 1940 study
C) the sexual practices of youth-those under age 18-are nearly as varied as those of adults
D) attitudes toward sexuality had changed very little since Kinsey's original study of sex

Question 59

In the United States, which group accounted for the most new HIV infections in 2015?

A) gay men
B) intravenous drug users
C) heterosexual women
D) heterosexual men

Question 60

One likely reason for the differences between the findings on sexual behavior in the United States of Alfred Kinsey and Edward Laumann is that:

A) Americans have become much more sexually conservative since the 1940s
B) Kinsey's team lied about its findings
C) Laumann's study focused less on sexual activity than Kinsey's study did
D) their methods-specifically their samples-were quite different

Question 61

A recent study revealed that when white women are diagnosed with breast cancer, their tumor is in a more advanced stage than those of their black peers.

Question 62

Which of the following people is most likely to have an eating disorder?

A) a college man doing workouts every day
B) a woman in her third year of medical school
C) a teenage girl who feels inadequate
D) a college woman who does workouts every day

Question 63

In general, active lesbian and gay social movements thrive in countries that emphasize collectivity over individual rights.

Question 64

Genetic engineering is perhaps the ultimate expression of:

A) human selfishness
B) the socialization of nature
C) complementary and alternative medicine
D) the biomedical model of health

Question 65

Today, a person with an illness can seek assistance from both a medical doctor and a homeopath. This is why some sociologists call unorthodox techniques:

A) alternative medicine
B) complementary medicine
C) illness work
D) orthodox medicine

Question 66

Biological explanations for homosexuality have focused on:

A) why gays and lesbians seem to have more psychological problems than heterosexuals
B) race because more white men tend to be gay than those of any other race
C) the absence of a mother or father in the child's life
D) brain characteristics

Question 67

Sick role theory does not account for instances when doctors and patients disagree about a diagnosis or have opposing interests.

Question 68

Richard Wilkinson bases his arguments on findings that clearly demonstrate the clear relationship between:

A) mortality and income distribution
B) health care and mortality
C) social integration and mortality
D) mortality and lack of adequate nutrition

Question 69

According to Richard Wilkinson, the healthiest societies in the world are those with the most:

A) egalitarian distribution of health care
B) egalitarian distribution of income
C) unequal distribution of income
D) unequal distribution of wealth

Question 70

Conditions for which most people seek alternative medical treatment are often the result of:

A) dissatisfaction with modern health care systems
B) dissatisfaction with modern health insurance
C) globalization and the widespread knowledge of other forms of health care
D) the ability to travel easily to places where alternative medicine is commonplace

Question 71

Anorexia was first identified as a disorder in the United States in 1992.

Question 72

The 15 percent weight decrease between a fashion model of today and one of 25 years ago reflects the growing increase of what in the world?

A) Western influences over food consumption
B) the use of smaller, thinner models in developing nations
C) Western images of feminine beauty
D) Internet access and the ability to view images of others

Question 73

Twin studies by Bailey and Pillard (1991) suggest that homosexuality is a result of:

A) personal choice
B) biological factors
C) social learning
D) a complex interplay between biology and social factors

Question 74

The rise of eating disorders in non-Western societies coincides with the globalization of:

A) technology
B) food production
C) Western medicine
D) the fashion industry

Question 75

Sociologists are concerned that due to the cost, unequal access to genetic engineering could lead to:

A) a biological underclass
B) increased power within the medical profession
C) genetic mishaps that science is not aware of yet
D) weakened immune systems

Question 76

The healthiest countries in the world are the countries with the highest gross national income (GNI).

Question 77

Anorexia and other eating disorders have their origins in the:

A) increasing scarcity of food
B) larger body type of the modern human
C) declining power of men in modern societies
D) changing body image of women in modern societies

Question 78

One serious ethical consequence of the technological changes in childbirth is that:

A) women must decide whether they want to deliver their babies at home or in the hospital
B) pregnant women must understand and select from various technologies involved with childbirth
C) physicians and nurses decide the relevance of amniocentesis, so the mother will not have any options
D) the parents can learn of any abnormalities in their child before birth and then decide on their options

Question 79

Norma was recently diagnosed with skin cancer. She has been seeing her doctor at regularly scheduled visits but is still in a great deal of pain. At a friend's suggestion, she visited an acupuncturist who specializes in pain management. By using Western medicines as well as unorthodox medical practices, Norma is practicing:

A) biomedical health practices
B) modern medicine
C) complementary medicine
D) alternative medicine

Question 80

The most comprehensive way to explain that if one identical twin is gay or lesbian, there is a 50 percent probability that the other twin is also gay or lesbian is that:

A) homosexuality is genetically established in the hypothalamus within the brain
B) there are some biological factors along with social ones that contribute to sexual orientation that could affect a twin's sexuality
C) identical twins copy the behavior of each other, and if one is gay or lesbian, the other often tends to be just like him or her
D) identical twins often wish to distinguish themselves, which means that sometimes a twin will "follow" the other twin who comes out as gay or lesbian, but the other twin also could repress homosexual desires to be different from the openly homosexual twin