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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How does Schelling describe a critical-mass behavior?
(a) Something that becomes self-sustaining once a certain number of people start to do it.
(b) Something that cannot be stopped once it begins.
(c) Something that has to be restarted after a certain interval.
(d) Something that can only take place if there is a large audience to watch it.

2. What does Schelling say individuals react to?
(a) The collective unconscious.
(b) The desire of the mass.
(c) The fear of the mass.
(d) Their own stimuli.

3. How does Schelling describe daylight savings time?
(a) As a self-fulfilling prophecy.
(b) As a critical mass.
(c) As a self-enforcing convention.
(d) As a self-displacing prophecy.

4. What example does Schelling use to show discrimination in an atypical light?
(a) Shopping in a store that has fresh produce.
(b) Taking a friend of another race to dinner.
(c) Buying a foreign car because it has good gas mileage.
(d) Driving home the long way to avoid the highway.

5. What does Schelling say about Christmas cards?
(a) They do not follow any laws of distribution.
(b) Sometimes they are sent out of guilt.
(c) They make a map of social relations.
(d) There is generally a balance between how many each person receives.

6. Why might segregation result without discrimination?
(a) Areas might be historically aligned with one group or another.
(b) Areas might have been populated during successive waves of immigration.
(c) A city might have built housing for foreign refugees of war or famine.
(d) Either of two groups might want to be the majority in an area.

7. What does Schelling say the measles story is an example of?
(a) A public-health process.
(b) A paradoxical process.
(c) A critical-mass process.
(d) A counter-intuitive process.

8. What is the second thing Schelling says a social behavior model can be?
(a) An actual biological or mechanical system that embodies a certain relationship.
(b) A theory that explains a preponderance of evidence.
(c) A dialogue about the nature of the evidence in a certain system.
(d) A piece of evidence from which an entire system can be deduced.

9. What does Schelling say is the term for a situation where two people hurt themselves and each other by making self-interested decisions?
(a) The lemon model.
(b) The Spanish prisoner.
(c) Prisoner's dilemma.
(d) The tipping-point/critical-mass model.

10. What does Schelling say people feel in a "bounded-neighborhood" model?
(a) Happy if they are the vast majority.
(b) Happy if members of another race do not outnumber them.
(c) Trapped among people similar to themselves.
(d) Apprehensive about the future if there is a chance that other ethnicities might take over.

11. How many calls does the individual receive, in the aggregate, in Schelling's analysis?
(a) It depends on his personality.
(b) As many as others make.
(c) As many as he makes.
(d) It depends on how many people he knows.

12. When does Schelling say social behavior can be considered a critical mass?
(a) When the behavior matches with models that were based in the physics of nuclear fission.
(b) When the number of people exhibiting behavior is the most important factor.
(c) When the behavior has to do with things sold by the pound.
(d) When social criticism is essential to defining the problem.

13. What does Schelling say about balance in individual cases?
(a) It does not exist.
(b) It is evidence of the collective unconscious.
(c) It defines the nature of human beings.
(d) It is a transcendent law.

14. What does Schelling say about the frequency of pairs?
(a) Pairs are common if your criteria are simple.
(b) Pairs are rare in nature but common in society.
(c) Many phenomena occur in pairs.
(d) Pairs are a human construct.

15. What does Schelling say social scientists will replace the aspects of a system with in order to understand the system?
(a) Colors.
(b) Mathematical symbols.
(c) Numbers.
(d) Pet names.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Schelling say social scientists consider in behavior modeling?

2. What does Schelling say is the result if aggregate behavior results from a small number of variables?

3. Why does Schelling say people tend to sit in the back of a theater?

4. What does Schelling say race discrimination is caused by?

5. What does Schelling say is the key to predicting whether there will be a critical mass?

(see the answer keys)

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