Chapter 4
Socialization
The Role of Socialization
• Socialization: lifelong process in which people learn appropriate
attitudes, values, and behaviors
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEG2NqIuK1E
• Personality: person’s typical patterns of attitudes, needs,
characteristics, and behavior
Social Environment:
The Impact of
Isolation
• Interaction of heredity and
environment shape human
development
• Extreme Isolation: Genie
Studies by Harry Harlow (1971)
• What happened to monkeys raised away from their
mothers?
• Fearful and easily agitated
• Did not mate
• When artificially inseminated, they turned out to be
aggressive mothers.
Artificial mothers - need for warmth, comfort, intimacy led
to greater social attachment among the infants
Extreme Neglect: Romanian Orphans
Primate Studies
Social attachments develop from need for warmth,
comfort, intimacy
The Influence of Heredity – if twins were raised in
totally different social environments, will they have the
same IQ?
• Minnesota twin family study (137 sets of identical twins)
• Twins have similar intelligence test scores when reared
apart in roughly similar social settings
• Different scores when reared in different social settings
The Self and Socialization through the Life
Course
• View of ourselves comes from contemplation of personal qualities
and impressions of how others perceive us
• Self: distinct identity that sets us apart from others
• Not a static phenomenon
• Interest in how individual develops and modifies sense of self as a result of
social interaction
• We develop and modify the sense of self as a result of social interaction.
• This self concept continues to develop and change throughout our life course.
Sociological Approaches to the Self
• Cooley: Looking-Glass Self
• View of ourselves comes from contemplation of personal qualities
and impressions of how others perceive us
• Looking-glass self: the self is product of social interactions with other
people
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CC5o1-wealw
Sociological Approaches to the Self
• Mead: Stages of the Self
• Preparatory stage: children imitate people around
them
• As they grow older, become more adept at using
symbols
Play stage: children develop skill in communicating
through symbols, and role taking occurs
Sociological Approaches to the Self
• Mead: Stages of the Self (continued)
• Game stage: children of about 8 or 9 consider several actual tasks
and relationships simultaneously
Generalized other: attitudes, viewpoints, and
expectations of society as a whole that a child takes into
account in his or her behavior
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIrrvYCjiSs
Sociological Approaches to the Self
• Mead: Theory of the Self
• Self begins as privileged, central position in a person’s world
• As the person matures, the self changes
and begins to reflect greater concern about
reactions of others
• Significant others: individuals most
important in the development of the self
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDhe48mLFmQ
Socialization throughout the Life Course
Rites of passage: means of dramatizing and validating changes in status
• Life course approach: looking closely
at social factors that influence people throughout their lives
• Terms youth-hood, emerging adulthood, and not quite adult coined to describe the prolonged ambiguous status that young
people in their 20s experience
Anticipatory Socialization and Resocialization
• Development of self is lifelong process – 2 types of socialization
occur at many points in life.
1.Anticipatory socialization: person “rehearses” future occupations and
social relationships. Example – high school students start working part-time
2.Resocialization: discarding former behavior (unlearn) patterns and
accepting new ones during transitions in one’s life. Examples – joining
military, unemployment
Anticipatory Socialization and Resocialization
• Total institution: regulates all aspects of a person’s life
under a single authority
• Degradation ceremony: ritual in which individual
becomes secondary and rather invisible in overbearing
social environment
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgCfWw-Z1AY
Agents of Socialization
• Continuing and lifelong socialization process involves many
different social forces
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vv2IXBrahjc
• Family
• Gender roles: expectations
regarding proper behavior, attitudes,
and activities of males and females
Agents of Socialization
• School
• Teaches values and customs of larger society (Functionalism)
• Can also reinforce divisive aspects of society (Conflict perspective)
Agents of Socialization
• Peer Group
• As children grow older, peer groups increasingly assume role of Mead’s
significant others
• Gender differences are noteworthy among
adolescents
• What makes you popular?
Agents of Socialization
• Mass Media and Technology
• Media innovations are important agents
of socialization
• Role of technology
• 12-17 age group 95% use
Internet
• Age of use is dropping
• Concerns about teen use of Internet; however, use of technology not always negative
• New communication technologies in developing countries
Agents of Socialization
• Workplace
• Learning to behave appropriately within occupational setting is a fundamental
aspect of human socialization
• US – highest number of teen age children working (developed countries)
• Religion and State
• Government and organized religion impact life course by reinstituting some
rites of passage
