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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Schelling say is the goal of his model for describing segregation?
(a) A preservation of tensions between ethnic groups.
(b) An end to the tensions between ethnic groups.
(c) An acceptable equilibrium between racial groups.
(d) An equitable division of resources between racial groups.

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

3. What does Schelling say constrains the social scientist's model for race segregation?
(a) Historical analysis.
(b) Political analysis.
(c) Qualitative analysis.
(d) Quantitative analysis.

4. What does Schelling say the "tipping" critical-mass model first described?
(a) The boom-bust cycle in economics.
(b) Political change.
(c) New ethnicities moving into neighborhoods.
(d) Dust being drizzles onto scales.

5. What does Schelling say distinguishes the sociologist from other scientists?
(a) He is involved in the life he is studying.
(b) He publishes in different journals.
(c) He uses non-mathematical data.
(d) He studies himself as well as his subject.

6. How does Schelling say the success of society is evaluated?
(a) In the welfare of the least successful individuals.
(b) On the aggregate, not the individual level.
(c) In the health and success of individuals.
(d) In the success of the leaders and superior individuals.

7. What do the laws visible in the human behavior Schelling describes lead you to expect in other cyclic processes?
(a) Latent resistances.
(b) Hidden variables.
(c) Unexpected results.
(d) Lag time.

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

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

10. What does Schelling say race discrimination can lead to?
(a) Economic discrimination.
(b) Race hatred.
(c) Violence.
(d) Harmful segregation.

11. What else does Schelling say social scientists consider in behavior modeling?
(a) Religious history.
(b) Collective results.
(c) Philosophical preferences.
(d) Ethnic conflicts.

12. What does Schelling say individual behaviors have in economic analysis?
(a) Randomness.
(b) Statistical insignificance.
(c) Statistical predictability.
(d) Mathematical equality.

13. What part of a heating system does Schelling use as a metaphor for human behavior?
(a) A heating fan.
(b) A pipe.
(c) A boiler.
(d) A thermostat.

14. What does Schelling say social scientists hope to describe by characterizing a system?
(a) Heuristics with which to judge behavior in nature.
(b) A mathematical model that accounts for all microbehavior within the phenomenon.
(c) An explanation for other phenomena that fit the same pattern.
(d) Information about the difficulties of modeling social behavior.

15. Schelling says that it is hard to draw the line between "individually motivated" segregation and what?
(a) Institutional or economic discrimination.
(b) Religious aversions.
(c) Ethnic aversions.
(d) Historical discrimination.

Short Answer Questions

1. What example from human psychology does Schelling contrapose to conscious choice?

2. What does Schelling say the defines independent variable in a behavioral system?

3. What example does Schelling use to show discrimination in an atypical light?

4. What case does Schelling use to illustrate the difficulty of making an economic proposition?

5. What does Schelling say the processes of separation, segregation, sharing, and mixing have in common?

(see the answer keys)

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