Chapter 4
Socialization
Socialization

A process by which people develop their
human capacities and acquire a unique
personality and identity and by which
culture is passed from generation to
generation.
Internalization

The process in which people take as their
own and accept as binding the norms,
values, beliefs, and language needed to
participate in the larger community.
Coming to Terms


How do members of a new generation
learn about and come to terms with the
environment they have inherited?
How is conflict between groups passed
down from one generation to another?
Nature and Nurture



The process of socialization involves both.
Nature is the human genetic makeup or
biological inheritance.
Nurture is the environment or the
interaction experiences that make up every
individual’s life.
Social Contact


Meaningful social contact with and
stimulation from others are important at any
age.
Cases of extreme isolation prove that
development is impeded.
Individual and Collective Memory


Engrams are chemically formed entities in
the brain that store in physical form a
person’s recollections of experiences.
Collective memory is the experiences
shared and recalled by significant numbers
of people.
Groups
1.
2.
3.
Share a distinct identity.
Feel a sense of belonging.
Interact directly or indirectly with one
another.
Primary Groups


A primary group is a social group
characterized by face-to-face contact and
strong emotional ties among its members.
Families are key example.
Other Agents of Socialization

School



Has a mandate to socialize children to societal
norms
Functionalists indicate schools fulfill function of
socialization leading to social cohesion
Conflict theorists suggest schools reinforce
divisive aspects of social classes (e.g. Teachers
praising boys may reinforce sexist attitudes)
Polling Question
Which agent of socialization do you think is the most
responsible for gender differences in how males and
females are socialized?
50%
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
The Family
Religion
The Peer Group
Education
Mass Media
38%
13%
1
2
0%
0%
3
4
5
Other Agents of Socialization (cont)

Media




Example: Television
Peer Groups
Workplaces
Religion
Ingroups and Outgroups


An ingroup is a group with which people
identify and to which they feel closely
attached, particularly when that attachment
is founded on hatred from or opposition
toward an outgroup.
An outgroup is a group toward which
members of an ingroup feel a sense of
separateness, opposition, or even hatred.
Suicide: Severing Group Relations


Durkheim defined suicide as the severing
of relationships.
Durkheim identified four types of
problematic social relationships: egoistic,
altruistic, anomic, and fatalistic.
Problematic Social Relationships


Egoistic social relationships involve a
state in which the ties attaching the
individual to others in the society are weak.
Altruistic social relationships involve a
state in which individuals have no life their
own and strive to blend in with the group to
have a sense of being.
Problematic Social Relationships


Anomic social relationships involve a
state brought on by dramatic changes in
economic circumstances.
Fatalistic social relationships involve a
state in which there is no hope of change
and thus an environment of oppressive
discipline against which there is no chance
of appeal or release.
Self-Development


The emergence of a sense of self depends
on our physiological capacity for reflexive
thinking.
Reflexive thinking is the process of
stepping outside the self and observing and
evaluating it from another’s viewpoint.
Significant Symbols


Significant symbols and gestures are the
mechanisms that allow an individual to
interact with others and, in the process, to
learn about the self.
A significant symbol is a word, gesture, or
other learned sign used to convey a
meaning from one person to another.
Symbolic Gestures

Nonverbal cues, such as tone of voice and
other body movements, that convey
meaning from one person to another.
Role Taking

The process of stepping outside the self
and imagining how others view its
appearance and behavior imaginatively
from an outsider’s perspective.
Stages of Role Taking


Children learn to take the role of others
through three stages: preparatory, play, and
games.
Each of these stages involves a
progressively more sophisticated level of
role taking.
The Preparatory Stage


In this stage, children have not yet
developed the mental capabilities that allow
them to role-take.
They may mimic or imitate people in their
environment but have almost no
understanding of the behaviors that they
are imitating.
The Play Stage


Mead saw children’s play as the
mechanism by which they practice role
taking.
Play is a voluntary and often spontaneous
activity, with few or no formal rules, that is
not subject to constraints of time.
The Play Stage


In the play stage, children’s role taking
comes from what they see and hear going
on around them.
In the play stage, children pretend to be
significant others —people or characters
who are important in their lives, in that they
have considerable influence on a child’s
self-evaluation or encourage the child to
behave in a particular manner.
The Game Stage


Games are structured, organized activities
that usually involve more than one person
and a number of established constraints
concerning roles, rules, time, place, and
outcome.
Games teach children to follow established
rules, take the roles of all participants, and
see how their position fits in relation to all
other positions.
The Game Stage

Through playing games, children learn to
organize their behavior around the
generalized other —that is, around a
system of expected behaviors, meanings,
and viewpoints that transcend those of the
people participating.
The Looking-Glass Self

The looking-glass self is a process in
which a sense of self develops such that
people see themselves reflected in others’
imagined reactions to their appearance and
behaviors.
Cognitive Development


Piaget believed that learning and reasoning
form an important adaptive tool that helps
people to meet and resolve environmental
challenges.
He developed the theory of active
adaptation, which is a biologically based
tendency to adjust to and resolve
environmental challenges.
Cognitive Developmental Stages




Sensorimotor stage - birth to about age 2
Preoperational stage - about ages 2 to 7
Concrete operational stage - about ages 7
to 12
Formal operational stage - the onset of
adolescence onward
Resocialization

The process of discarding values and
behaviors unsuited to new circumstances
and replacing them with new, more
appropriate values and norms.
Total Institutions

Institutions in which people surrender
control of their lives, voluntarily or
involuntarily, to an administrative staff and
carry out daily activities with others
required to do the same thing.
Social Interactions

Everyday events in which at least two
people communicate and respond through
language and symbolic gestures to affect
one another’s behavior and thinking.
Context and Content

When sociologists study social interaction,
they seek to understand and explain the
forces of context and content.
Context

The larger historical circumstances and
social forces that bring people together for
social interaction.
Content

The cultural frameworks (norms, values,
beliefs, material culture) that guide social
interactions, specifically behavior dialogue,
and interpretations of events.
Social Status


Social status A position in a social
structure.
Social structure Two or more people
occupying social statuses and enacting
roles.
Social Roles



A role is the behavior expected of a status
in relationship to another status.
People occupy statuses but they enact
roles.
A role set is an array of roles.
Rights and Obligations



Role expectations include both rights and
obligations.
Rights are the behaviors that a person
assuming a role can demand or expect
from others.
Obligations are the relationship and
behavior that the person enacting a role
must assume toward others in a particular
status.
Role Strain and Conflict


Role strain is a predicament in which
contradictory or conflicting expectations are
associated with a single role that a person
is enacting.
Role conflict is a predicament in which the
expectations associated with two or more
roles in a role set contradict one another.
The Dramaturgical Model

A model in which social interaction is
viewed as though it were theater, people as
though they were actors, and roles as
though they were performances presented
before an audience in a particular setting.
Impression Management

The process by which people in social
situations manage the setting and their
dress, words, and gestures to correspond
to the impressions they are trying to make
or the image they are trying to project.
Staging Behavior

The division between front stage and back
stage is found in nearly every social setting.
Front Stage

The region where people take care to
create an maintain the images and
behavior an audience has come to expect.
Back Stage

The region out of an audience’s sight
where individuals can do things that would
be inappropriate or unexpected on the front
stage.
Quick Quiz
The last of Piaget’s cognitive
developmental stages is:
25% 25% 25% 25%
a)
b)
c)
d)
Sensorimotor
Preoperational
Concrete operational
Formal operational
a
b
c
d
Answer: d

The formal operational stage is the last of
the cognitive developmental stages that
Piaget defined.
If you are viewing social interactions as
though they were theater, you are practicing:
25% 25% 25% 25%
a)
b)
c)
d)
Attribution Theory
Dramaturgical Model
Solidarity
Role Strain
a
b
c
d
Answer: b

If you are viewing social interactions as
though they were theater, you are
practicing the Dramaturgical Model.
Role expectations are socially prescribed and
include both:
25% 25% 25% 25%
a)
b)
c)
d)
front and back stage
behavior
conflict and strain
rights and obligations
context and content
a
b
c
d
Answer: c

Role expectations are socially prescribed
and include both rights and obligations.
The process of discarding values and
behaviors and replacing them with more
appropriate values and norms is:
25% 25% 25% 25%
a)
b)
c)
d)
socialization
self-development
role-taking
resocialization
a
b
c
d
Answer: d

Resocialization is the process of
discarding values and behaviors and
replacing them with more appropriate
values and norms.
Which stage of role-taking teaches
children to follow rules?
25% 25% 25% 25%
a)
b)
c)
d)
preparatory
play
games
preoperational
a
b
c
d
Answer: c

The games stage of role-taking teaches
children to follow rules.