AGENTS OF SOCIALIZATION
SECTION 3
THE SOCIAL SELF
1.The Family: most important agent of socialization in
almost every society
 First interact with others and first learn values, norms,
and beliefs of society through their families
 Can be both deliberate and unintended
 Deliberate:


Teaching a child the difference in right and wrong
How to spend money and save money
 Unintended:


Teach child to be polite, but child sees adult being impolite
Maybe more of an influence than deliberate
THE SOCIAL SELF
 Socialization differs from family to family
 Differences occur in type of household or subgroup of the
family: race, ethnic, social class, religious group and
geographic region
2.The Peer Group:
 Primary group composed of individuals of roughly equal
age and similar social characteristics
 Friends
 Classmates
 Coworkers
 Winning acceptance among peer groups is very important
and a powerful force in the lives of young people
THE SOCIAL SELF
3.The School
Spend on average 30 weeks a year in school
between the age of 5 and 18
Deliberate socialization
Attempt to transmit cultural values,
responsibility, and good citizenship
THE SOCIAL SELF
4. The Mass Media
 Instruments of communication that reach large audiences
with no personal contact between those send and
receiving the information
 Forms:
a) Books
b) Films
c) Internet
d) Magazines
e) Newspapers
f) Radio
g) Television
 Cell phones?
THE SOCIAL SELF
Television is the most influential
Over 98% of American households have TV's,
with an average of more than two sets per
home
Children watch about 28 hours of TV per week
Television is the primary after-school activity
for children between ages 6-17 year olds
Twice as much time watching TV as they do in
school
THE SOCIAL SELF
 Argument continues over too much TV and what is
being watched
 By 18: 200,000 fictional acts of violence and 16,000
murders
 Connection between violence and TV
 Argument: presents an image of white middle-class
values; other races and ethnicities are ignored or
portrayed negatively
 Can expand the viewers world; bring worlds together
 See things that they may never have gotten to see
without TV
THE SOCIAL SELF
Resocialization
A break with past experiences and the learning of new
values and norms
 Directed toward changing an individuals personality
and social behavior
 Total institution-setting in which people are isolated
from the rest of society for a set period of time and are
subject to tight control
1)
2)
3)
4)
Prisons
Juvenile homes
Work camps
Monasteries
THE SOCIAL SELF
Strips down or breakdowns the individual
1. Hair-cuts
2. Uniforms
Denied the freedoms of the outside world
Persons sense of self had been weakened, it is
easier for those in power to convince that
person to conform to new patterns of
behavior