SOC 138/ECO 148 Exam 3 (SAMPLE ONLY)
Carter T. Butts
Spring Quarter, 2015

Note: This sample exam contains 20 questions, but is otherwise of the same form as Exam 3. TAs will provide solutions to this sample exam during discussion section. Study this exam carefully – some questions may return!
The following applies to questions 1–3 below. Consider the following network:
5
1

3
2
4

1. Which of the numbered positions provides the best example of a hub?
A. 1
B. 2
C. 3
D. 4
E. 5

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2. Which of the numbered positions provides the best example of a clique member ?
A. 1
B. 2
C. 3
D. 4
E. 5
3. Which of the numbered positions has the highest betweenness centrality?
A. 1
B. 2
C. 3
D. 4
E. 5
4. Fill in the blank: The basic abandonment mechanism investigated by Strang and Macy is
—————.
A. elimination by aspects
B. rational optimization
C. failure to meet a given aspiration level
D. the imitation of currently successful firms
E. legitimacy maintenance
5. Imagine that you are interested in identifying persons within your organization who act as
“gatekeepers” with respect to information flow. If you could use only one of the following in making such an identification, which would best further the above goal?
A. Maximum betweenness
B. Position is a pendant
C. Maximum closeness
D. Maximum degree
E. Position is an isolate
The following applies to questions 6–7 below. Consider the following scenario. A health care organization has hired you to do a marketing study regarding new doctors’ incomes in your region for the following year. Your data indicates that 100,000 new doctors will be entering your regional market in the next year, and that each will become either an oncologist or a general practitioner.
Your income projections for members of each group are as indicated in the following figure:

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Doctors’ Incomes by Specialty, as a Function of the Number of New Oncologists

150
100
50

Income per Doctor (in $1000s/year)

200

Oncologists
General Practitioners

0

20

40

60

80

100

Doctors Becoming Oncologists (in 1000s)

6. Imagine that, due to special incentives, 10% of the new doctors in your area were recruited as general practitioners (with the rest left to choose freely). Given that, what fraction of all new doctors in the area would be predicted to become oncologists?
A. 50%
B. 0%
C. 100%
D. 80%
E. 20%
7. Imagine that a given doctor believed that 60% of his or her peers were going to become oncologists. If he or she had your study in hand, what would you predict that he or she would choose?
(Assume that the doctor cares only about maximizing income.)
A. He or she would be indifferent to becoming an oncologist or a GP
B. He or she would become a general practitioner
C. He or she would not be able to compare the options
D. It is impossible to predict this, given the data
E. He or she would become an oncologist

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8. In a series of studies relating group size to helping behavior, Latan´ and colleagues obtained e what general result?
A. Helping decreased with group size
B. Group size had no overall effect on helping
C. Small groups and large groups both generated less helping than medium-sized groups
D. Helping increased with group size
E. Small groups and large groups both generated more helping than medium-sized groups
9. Fill in the blank: The typical effect of group size on individual helping behavior is known as
———-.
A. Social loafing
B. Social facilitation
C. The “risky shift”
D. Mobilization
E. Groupthink
10. Under Affect Control Theory, what would the boldface element in the event “An angry manager yells at a lazy worker in the boardroom.” be called?
A. A transient state
B. An actor
C. A behavior
D. A setting
E. An object

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11. Consider the following five networks:

1

2

3

4

5

For these questions, indicate which numbered network best illustrates the indicated subgroup type.
Star
A. 1
B. 2
C. 3
D. 4
E. 5
12. Which of the following is not a conclusion drawn by Strang and Macy?
A. Market stratification promotes faddish cycles by making it more difficult for emulators to recognize effective innovations
B. Even worthless innovations can spread in a population of performance-driven actors
C. Adaptive emulation generates faddish cycles
D. Faddish vicissitudes are most robust not when innovations are worthless but when they have identifiable but modest merit
E. Skepticism always improves organizational performance
13. Under Affect Control Theory, what would the boldface element in the event “An angry manager yells at a lazy worker in the boardroom.” be called?
A. An object
B. An actor
C. A behavior
D. A transient state
E. A setting

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14. Imagine that you have critical information which must be spread throughout your organization as rapidly as possible, by word of mouth. If you have to choose exactly one of the following criteria in deciding whom to tell first, which would best further the above goal?
A. Position is an isolate
B. Maximum closeness
C. Maximum betweenness
D. Maximum degree
E. Position is a pendant
15. Fill in the blank: Primacy effects tend to occur when —————-.
A. a short list of response options is provided
B. an initial question can serve as an anchor for subsequent responses
C. respondents have just been informed about the topic at hand
D. questions are independent of one another
E. a long list of response options is provided
16. Which of the following institutional practices was identified by Oldman as contributing to regular roulette players’ belief in the “skill-based” nature of the game, in the casino where he was a participant-observer?
A. Offering deep discounts for repeated play
B. Refusing service to patrons with expertise in decision theory
C. Switching croupiers away from losing tables
D. Ensuring that all casino workers believed the game to be skill-based
E. Only opening the casino on certain evenings
17. Fill in the blank: For students in this class, the EPA baseline impression for “profit” is ———
——, —————, and —————.
A. good; powerful; inactive
B. good; powerful; active
C. good; powerless; active
D. bad; powerless; inactive
E. bad; powerful; inactive

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18. Fill in the blank: Recency effects tend to occur when —————.
A. previous questions are highly salient
B. a long list of response options is provided
C. a short list of response options is provided
D. respondents have just been informed about the topic at hand
E. questions elicit strong emotional reactions
19. Fill in the blank: DeGroot’s “stock market scam,” in which multiple predictions are sent to different potential victims, works because of —————.
A. network externalities
B. selection effects
C. the regression effect
D. the endowment effect
E. the ideomotor effect
20. Fill in the blank: In making behavioral attributions, ego tends to see alter’s behaviors as
————— while viewing his or her own behaviors as ————— in origin.
A. dispositional; random
B. situational; random
C. situational; dispositional
D. dispositional; situational
E. random; situational

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