Agents of Socialization
5.3
Agents of Socialization
 Specific Situations that shape socialization.
 Describe the specific individuals, groups, and
institutions that enable socialization to take place.
Primary Agents of Socialization
 Family
 Peer Groups
 School
 Mass Media
 Resocialization
The Family
 Most important agent of socialization in almost every
society.
 The principal socializer of young children
 Values, norms, & beliefs are first taught among the family.
 Socialization can be both deliberate and unintended.

Deliberate


A father may teach importance of: telling the truth, being considerate of
others.
Unintended

Suppose a father is teaching his child to be polite and the child sees
several situations where the father is impolite.
The Peer Group
 A primary group composed of individuals of roughly
equal age and similar social characteristics.
 As children grow older, forces outside of the family
increasingly influence them.
 Children begin to relate more to their peer groups.
 Most influential during pre-teenage and teenage
years.
Peer Groups cont…
 Winning peer acceptance is a powerful force.
 Without peer acceptance children are often labeled
as misfits, outsiders, etc…
 To win acceptance, young people willingly adopt
the values and standards of the peer group.
 They shape themselves into the kind of person they
think the group wants them to be.
The School
 Plays a major role in socialization. Between the ages
of 5 and 18 you spend 30 weeks a year in school.
 Much of school socialization is deliberate.
Teaching: reading, writing, math, and other skills.
 Extracurricular: clubs, sports, dances.

 A large amount of unintended socialization occurs.

Teachers may become models for students:
 Manners, styles of speech, styles of dress, etc..
The Mass Media
 Instruments of communication that reach large
audiences with no personal contact between those
sending the information and those receiving it.
 Books, films, internet, magazines, newspapers, and
television.
Mass Media cont…
 Television has the most influence on the
socialization of children.
 98% of the homes in the US have an average of at
least two TVs.
 Children watch an average of 28 hrs/week of
television.
 Television is the primary after-school activity for 617 year olds.
 Most children spend almost twice as much time
watching TV as they spend in school.
Resocialization
 Resocialization involves a break with past
experiences and the learning of new values and
norms.
 Directed towards changing an individuals
personality and social behavior.

Accomplished by stripping away all identity with:


Uniforms, standard haircuts, individual freedoms.
Once your sense of self is broken they can re-mold you and help you
conform to new patterns of behavior.
Resocialization
 Total Institution – is a setting in which people are
isolated from the rest of society and are subject to
tight control.

Prison, Boot Camp, Monasteries, Psychiatric Hospitals.
The End
S.R.V.C.W.H.N.W.S.A.S.U.Y.C.P.G.Y.T.P.G.
Super Ridiculous Video Clip Which Has
Nothing to do With Sociology or the
Agents of Socialization Unless You
Consider the Peer Group
Influence…Yeah, That’s it, Peer Group.
Trough Diving
Prison Dancing