Socialization Process and
Development of Self
What is Socialization?
⮚Socialization is the process through which people learn attitudes, values
and actions appropriate for members of a particular culture.(life long
experience)
⮚According to Robertson, Socialization is the process of social interaction
through which people aquire personality and learn the way of their
society.
⮚It affects the overall cultural practices of a society; it also shapes the
images that we hold of ourselves.
⮚Heredity and environmental factors interact in influencing the
socialization process.
The process of socialization
1. Instrumental conditioning
2. Direct teaching
3. Observational learning
4. Identification
The Self and Socialization
A) Sociological Approaches to the Self
1. Cooley: Looking glass self
• learn interacting with others
• Self: product of social interaction
• Three phases
a) Imagine how we are presenting ourselves
to others
b) Imagine how people are evaluating us
c) Develop opinions about ourselves
2. Mead: Stages of the self
a) Preparatory stage: learn imitate
b) Play Stage: use of symbol & communicate;
role taking
c) The Game Stage: understanding self & other
position; multiple role
3. Goffman: Presentation of Self
Impression management: individual learns to
slant presentation of self to create distinctive
appearances and satisfy particular audiences
Also known as dramaturgical approach
Face-work: need to maintain proper image of
self to continue social interaction
The Self and Socialization
B) Psychological Approaches
1. Freud: Development of Personality
Self is a social product of natural
impulsive instincts in constant conflict
with societal constraints
Personality influenced by others
(especially one’s parents)
a) Id- biological instincts
b) Ego- Match with social reality
c) Super-ego- Sophisticated thought
2. Piaget: cognitive theory of
development
a) Sensorimotor: use of senses (touch)
b) Preoperational: use words/symbols
c) Concrete operational: logical
thinking
d)Formal operational: sophisticated
abstract thought
Agents of Socialization
1. Family
✔Learning of feeding,
cleaning, caring
✔Gender roles: expected
behavior from male and
female
✔Feminine and masculine
norms
✔Both positive & negative
2. School
✔ where did we learn national
anthem?
✔ 1952, 1971
✔ tested our knowledge
✔ competition: rewards or
punishment (conflict)
✔ Income vs education
✔ teaching values, custom
(functionalism)
✔ girls faced sexual violence &
harassment (feminist)
Agents of Socialization (Continue…
3. Peer group
✔ teenage (family vs friends)
✔ same age or similar social
status
✔ terrorist group
4. Mass media and technology
✔ radio, motion pictures, recorded
music, television, internet
✔Books
✔ email, web
✔ new media
✔ learn lifestyle & culture (self &
other)
✔Globalization
Agents of Socialization (Continue…
5. Workplace
✔ professional behavior
✔ transition from education to
occupation
✔ learn time management,
hardworking, skills
✔Division of labor
7. Economic and Political
Institutions
6. Religion and the state
✔ religious norms and values,
morality
✔ concept of justice, human
rights
✔ family’s role transferred to
outside agencies
✔ hospital, mental health clinics,
child care center (run by state,
or groups affiliated with certain
religion)
Christian Mission Hospital
Primary Socialization
❖ Primary Socialization
✔ It takes place in the early years of the newborn individual.
✔It concentrates on the teaching of language and cognitive skills, the
internationalization of cultural norms and values, establishment of
emotional ties, and the appreciation of the other roles and perspectives.
✔The socializing agents reinforce the child’s learning by rewards and
punishment or by means of approval and disapproval.
❖Developmental Socialization
Anticipatory & Re-socialization
❖ Anticipatory Socialization
✔ The process in which a person rehearses for
future positions, occupations and social
relationships.
✔Preparation for many aspect of adult life
during childhood
✔Continues process of taking new responsibility
✔High school-> what college-> website-> virtual
class
✔New social/occupational position= unlearn
previous orientation
❖ Re-socialization
✔Process of discarding formal behavior
pattern
✔Violate socially accepted behavior
✔Reform school, therapy group, prison,
religious conversion setting
✔Effectively occurred within total
institutions
✔Prison, military, mental hospital,
✔Regulate all aspect of person’s life
Importance of socialization
a) Socialization convert Man, the biological being to social being
b) Contributes to the development of personality
c) Helps to become disciplined
d) Helps to enact different role
e) Provides the knowledge of skills
f) Helps to develop right aspiration in life
g) Contributes to the stability of the social order
h) Helps reduce social distance
i) Provides scope for building bright future
j) Helps the transmission of culture.
Self is distinctive identity that sets us apart from others
Sociological Approaches to the self
⮚In the early 1900s, Charles Horton Cooley advanced the belief that we
learn who we are by interacting with others, a phenomenon he called
the looking-glass self.
⮚George Herbert Mead, best known for his theory of the self, proposed
that as people mature, their selves begin to reflect their concern about
reaction from others- both generalized others and signifies others. The
attitudes, viewpoints, and expectations of society as a whole that a child
takes into account in his or her behavior. And significant others an
individual who is most important in the other development of the self,
such as a parent, friend, or others.
G. H Mead and the development of self
Symbolic interactionism emphasizes that interaction between human
beings takes place through symbols and the interpretations of meaning.
Stages of the self
a) The preparatory stage: develop a social being by imitating the actions of
those around them.
b) The play stage: child achieves an understanding of themselves as
separate agents-as a ‘me’-by seeing themselves through the eyes of
others.
c) The game stage: they begin to understand the overall values and
morality according to which social life is conducted.
Jean Piaget and the stages of cognitive development
a) Sensorimotor stage: infants learn mainly by touching objects, manipulating them, and physically
exploring their environment.
b) Preoperational stage: Children acquire a mastery of language and become able to us words to
represent objects and images in a symbolic fashion.
c) Concrete operational stage: children master abstract, logical notions. They become capable to
carrying out the mathematical operations of multiplying, dividing and subtracting.
d) Formal operational stage: becomes able to grasp highly abstract and hypothetical ideas. Able to
review every possible ways of solving problem and go through them theoretically in order to
reach in a solution. According to Piaget, the first three stages of development are universal; but
not all adults reach the third, formal operational stage. The development of formal operational
thought depends in part on processes on schooling.
Gender and socialization: it begins virtually as soon as an infant is born.