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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What additional reason does Schelling give for the desire to sit in the back of a theater?
(a) People want to be prepared to flee.
(b) People want to watch people arrive.
(c) People want to be far from the stage.
(d) People want to feel safe in the dark.

2. How does Schelling explain blacks and whites being excluded from each other's churches?
(a) Jim Crow laws.
(b) Reciprocal behavior.
(c) Race hatred.
(d) Historical guilt.

3. What does Schelling say is the key to predicting whether there will be a critical mass?
(a) Articulating the fears that surround the decision in the collective unconscious.
(b) Knowing why people delay their decisions.
(c) Defining the number that will constitute the critical mass.
(d) Modeling the undesirability of the decision being weighed.

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

5. What does Schelling say about human desire?
(a) It changes from childhood to teen years to adulthood.
(b) It seeks mathematically-predictable levels of stability.
(c) It is torn within itself and it is split from its own language.
(d) It is torn between irreconcilable desires for different states.

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

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

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

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 Spanish prisoner.
(b) Prisoner's dilemma.
(c) The tipping-point/critical-mass model.
(d) The lemon model.

10. What does Schelling compare to the process of tracking the circulation of money in an economy?
(a) Musical chairs.
(b) Water's movement from the ocean to clouds to rivers to the ocean.
(c) Rumors circulating.
(d) The development and use of language.

11. Which example does Schelling say complicates the prospect of arriving at a definitive proposition?
(a) A business with a number of different product lines.
(b) A population spread out over a wide geographical area.
(c) A commodity whose price is volatile.
(d) A college with an unequal distribution of male and female students.

12. What does Schelling say about economic systems that allow unequal distribution of wealth?
(a) That they are pernicious.
(b) That they compel amazement, but not admiration.
(c) That they are admirable.
(d) That, based on human nature, they are inevitable.

13. What consequence does Schelling say might affect people sitting closer to the stage?
(a) They are will be last to leave.
(b) They are forced to be watched by the others.
(c) They can see and hear better.
(d) They are socially outcast.

14. 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 success of the leaders and superior individuals.
(d) In the health and success of individuals.

15. What example does Schelling use as an example of discrimination?
(a) American and European.
(b) Boys and girls.
(c) Individual and mass.
(d) Fish and fowl.

Short Answer Questions

1. In Schelling's analysis, what behavior governs the people filling the theater?

2. How does Schelling describe a critical-mass behavior?

3. What does the heating-system-like aspect of human behavior seek, in Schelling's analysis?

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

5. What does Schelling say about the underlying motivation for segregation?

(see the answer keys)

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