The Importance of Socialization
Sociology: Chapter 4, Section 1

Section Preview
• Socialization is the cultural process of learning to participate in group life
• Without group life, our human character would be quite different
• Animals and human infants who are deprived of intensive social contact are stunted in their emotional and social growth

Socialization and Personality
• Nearly all human social behavior is learned
• It is natural in the
United States for a husband and wife to walk side by side, while in India and other places, it is natural for a wife to walk slightly behind her husband

Socialization and Personality
• When a human is born, it doesn’t know anything about society’s values or norms
• This process of learning his or her society’s ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving is called socialization
• With socialization, we learn how to participate in a group
• This learning takes place through cultural transmission
• Cultural transmission is how the culture is passed down from generation to generation

(A kind of fish)

Socialization and Personality
• Socialization begins at birth and continues throughout life
• Socialization is necessary for people as they adjust to different situations throughout their life
• People need socialization as they transition from middle school to high school, as they transition from college to a job, or from one job to another

On the Job Training is a form of socialization, where a new employee not only learns the skills necessary for the job, but also how he or she should act while in the workplace

Socialization and Personality
• The most important learning occurs early in life
• Without early social contact, children have more trouble learning how to walk, talk, or love

Socialization and Personality
• How do we know socialization is important?
• An experiment could be set up to have one control group of infants that has normal socialization, and an experimental group that is given little or no human contact.
• Would that be a good experiment?

Socialization and Personality
• While it’s not ethical to deprive a child from human contact just for experimental purposes, unfortunately there are socially isolated children that can be studied
• Psychologists have run such tests on monkeys, however

Socialization and Personality
• Harry Harlow conducted a famous experiment where he separated infant monkeys from their mothers and gave them the choice between a wire “mother” with food and a soft terry cloth
“mother” with no food.
• Which do you think the monkeys preferred?
• Harlow's Monkeys https://youtube.com/watch?v=_O60TYAIgC4

Harlow’s Monkey Experiments
• Despite the wire
“mother” on the right containing a bottle, the baby monkeys still preferred to stay with the soft, terry cloth “mother.”
• What conclusion can we draw from this?

Socialization and Personality
• Harlow showed that infant monkeys need intimacy, warmth, physical contact, and comfort
• Infant monkeys raised in isolation became distressed, apathetic, withdrawn, and hostile
• As mothers, they rejected, ignored, and even abused their babies, thus continuing a cycle
• If we could generalize this to humans, what does this say?

Case Studies on Isolated Children
• Read the introduction to the chapter on page
109, and report what you know about Genie
• Next read about Anna on page 113, and summarize what you learn about her situation
• Now read about Isabelle on page 114. What was her situation?
• Compare/ contrast what you know about these three
• Genie (Secret of the Wild Child) https://youtube.com/watch?v=hmdycJQi4QA

Assessment
• Complete #1-4 on page 114