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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What form does Veblen say the pressure to change takes?
(a) Pecuniary exigencies.
(b) The threat of war.
(c) Emergencies.
(d) Crises.

2. According to Veblen, what effect does education have on the leisure class?
(a) It preserves the values of the leisure class from the its own apostasy.
(b) It opens the leisure class to the new rich in each generation.
(c) It teaches the leisure class the middle class values it will need to survive.
(d) It teaches the values of the leisure class and hands them down.

3. According to Veblen, there is a natural selection among what?
(a) Production techniques.
(b) Ethnic types.
(c) Forms of wastefulness.
(d) Forms of consumption.

4. How does Veblen say contestants in sporting events demonstrate their belief in luck?
(a) By saying prayers to fortune.
(b) By wearing talismans.
(c) By performing rituals.
(d) By offering sacrifices.

5. What does Veblen see as evidence of the martial spirit in the leisure class?
(a) Lawsuits.
(b) Dueling.
(c) Competitive business practices.
(d) Monopolies.

6. What kind of value does Veblen say gambling has?
(a) A predictive value.
(b) A spiritual value.
(c) A direct economic value.
(d) An evolutionary value.

7. What does Veblen say the act of worshiping appeals to?
(a) The need to be dominated.
(b) The sense of communal devotion.
(c) The sense of status.
(d) The desire for order.

8. According to Veblen, women in the leisure class are partially exempt from what?
(a) Pecuniary pressures.
(b) Cultural pressures.
(c) Spiritual pressures.
(d) Familial pressures.

9. How does Veblen describe sports?
(a) As nonproductive labor.
(b) As vicarious leisure.
(c) As decorous recreation.
(d) As dishonorable waste.

10. Why, according to Veblen, do the leisure class's traits survive?
(a) Because the leisure class is an open society.
(b) Because the leisure class is resistent to adaptation.
(c) Because the leisure class is cosmopolitan.
(d) Because the leisure class is sheltered.

11. What, in Veblen's description, does education accomplish?
(a) It forms habits and thoughts.
(b) It drives the expansion of the leisure class.
(c) It opens the leisure class to newly wealthy people.
(d) It lays the foundation for inventions.

12. What is the term Veblen uses for the belief that a sports event can be influenced by outside factors?
(a) Animism.
(b) Mysticism.
(c) Hamartia.
(d) Hamingia.

13. What does Veblen say happens to the anthropomorphic cult as time goes by?
(a) It loses adherents.
(b) It disintegrates.
(c) It evolves into democracy.
(d) It becomes rigid.

14. Which stage of culture does the antepredatory variant correlate to?
(a) Primitive savages.
(b) Settled agricultural savages.
(c) The ancestors of the primitive savage stage.
(d) Early townsfolk.

15. What does Veblen mean by exoteric knowledge?
(a) Knowledge of social status and tradition.
(b) Knowledge of the industrial process.
(c) Knowledge of skeletons and underlying structures.
(d) Knowledge of geology and planetary physics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Veblen consider education to be?

2. What is it that forces the resistant social classes to adapt to new conditions?

3. What effect does Veblen say gambling has on industrial efficiency?

4. Whose traits does Veblen say the leisure class propagates?

5. What does Veblen say is the reason for gambling?

(see the answer keys)

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