Psychology 490

October 21, 1997

Hour Exam

Instructions: This exam consists of two parts. Answer both parts. In each part, you have a choice of questions to answer. (You do not need to use a separate bluebook for each answer.)

Part I: Answer either question 1 or question 2.

1. Over the past four years, Hillary Rodham Clinton seems to have elicited strong reactions - positive and negative - from many Americans. Compare and contrast the explanation for this that would be given by MacKinnon with any one of the following: Domhoff, Freud, Ruddick, Weber, and the psychological research on leadership presented in the course.

2. Consider the following quotation from the psychologist Edward Sampson:

"Existing arrangements of power and domination within a society are served when people accept a change in their subjective experience as a substitute for changes in their objective reality."

Comment on this quotation from Domhoff's perspective of ruling class interests. Then analyze any one of the following phenomena in terms of the quotation and your commentary:

· The concern, in education and pop psychology, about maintaining and increasing people's "self-esteem"

· Home football games at the U-M

· Increased use of drugs to treat what is called "mental illness" of "psychological problems"

· The "Promise Keepers," an all-male religious mass movement with the goal of reversing "the moral and social deterioration caused by men abandoning their family responsibilities"

Part II: Answer either question 3 or question 4.

3. "In the end, charismatic leadership usually leads to violence and war." Do you agree? Why, or why not? Discuss in terms of course concepts of (a) power motivation and (b) the "alternative" conceptions of Gandhi, King, and/or Ruddick.

4. As you read this, there is growing concern that in the Serbian province of Kosovo (part of what is left of Yugoslavia), discontent may lead to a secessionist war between ethnic Albanians and Serbs. Assume that you have been hired by the CIA as a political psychology consultant, to predict the likelihood of such a war over the next 6-12 months, so as to help U.S. policy planners. Drawing on the concepts and theories of this course, what information and materials would you want to have, and why, in order to carry out this assignment, and why?