 Maturation: the physical development of the body.
 Socialization: the process of becoming human, i.e. learning
and habitualizing social norms and values in order to
develop a unique personality.
o Question: is a person born with the biological infant,
or does one become human through socialization?
o Cf. Tarzan, Anna, Isabelle, Genie. p. 100 Box 5.1
 Personality: the complex whole of an individual’s
consistent behavioral and emotional traits. It includes such
things as actions, habits, attitudes, dispositions, beliefs,
values, goals. It changes in response to interaction with
new events and experience. It forms a circular relationship
with the social environment: the roles an individual must
perform affect its personality, and its personality frame,
inform, color the way those roles are perceived by the
individual. It is a function both of hereditary traits and of
life experiences. The mutual shaping of the two make an
individual’s personality distinctive.
o Question: nature, or nurture? That is, how much of
personality is due to biological heredity, and how
much is learned behavior?
o Humans, unlike animals, do not have strong instincts:
a bee is hard-wired (instinctively “knows” how) to
build a honeycomb; humans must learn how to build a
house, which they may construct in a variety of ways.
Thus, even though humans have biological drives (for
food, drink and sex), how these drives are to be
satisfied is determined by cultural alternatives open to
the individual. Culture therefore represents the
accumulated experience of generations of people.
o Humans also have a biological need for loving human
contact: to form emotional bonds with fellow humans.
 Cf. the experiment with rhesus monkeys: foodprovider machine is neglected in favor of soft and
cuddly cloth, which does not provide food.
(Harlow, 1966)
 Grooming practices in apes.
 “The study provides strong evidence that the
same brain chemicals that control physical pain
also regulate the psychological ache of loss and
separation” (Carey, 2004, D7). p. 103
 Question: to what extent are personality traits
such as intelligence, sociability, timidity, and
temperament are biologically inherited like eye
color, hair type, and body length?
 Why do siblings differ? Genes—50 percent
shared—and the role of the environment.
o  biology does not in and of itself determine an
individual’s personality; rather, the way in which a
society and culture interpret inherited traits shapes the
values and images which go into shaping an
individual’s character. Eg. It is not whether X is
skinny or fat which matters in the final analysis, but
how a given society values these traits: the individual
will have formed his character either in response to a
socially reinforced positive or negative self-image.
o Modal personality: the set of personality traits which a
given culture is said to shape through common social
experiences: Latin lover, the hard-drinking Irish,
arrogant French.
 The emergence of the self:
o Infant starts out as an indeterminate field of drives
with no recognition of a separation between itself and
other objects in its environment.
o The awareness of one’s distinctiveness, of one’s self
as separate from other objects presupposes interaction
with other subjects (i.e. other selves).
o The process whereby a distinct self capable of
performing various roles is called socialization.
 This process transmits the skills necessary for
survival in society; it encourages and makes
possible cooperation toward socially desirable
goals; it teaches social norms and roles; it
provides individual’s with their identity.
o Theories of socialization:
 Interactionist theories: the self is the result of
interaction between the individual and those
around him.
 The looking-glass self (Cooley)
 Those around the individual are as if a
mirror in which the individual sees his
image as others see it.
 First the family, then the peer groups, and so
on: the individual gets a sense of how he
stands in particular relationships to others,
how they feel about him.
 Others = Society in general. Thus the
emergence of the self presupposes the
internalization of society.
 Symbolic interactionism (Mead)
 A well-defined sense of self requires
symbolic interaction.
o At first nonverbal: you cry  your
parents respond.
o With language, ideas replace direct
actions and mind and self become
possible: the child internalizes the
attitudes of others through linguistic
communication.
o Self-awareness (self-consciousness) as
thinking about one’s self becomes
possible when you can make your own
self the object of your thoughts.
 Self-control and self-criticism is
how society controls individuals;
but they also establish the
individual as a definite self,
capable of independent thought
and action as distinct from others.
o Role-playing: children learn, in the
course of playing games, the essential
competence to step outside themselves,
view themselves as others do, by taking
on different roles.
 Initially: the roles of family
members are taken on and
imitated. (Significant others.)
 Later: individuals take on the role
of society as a whole, Mead’s
name for which is the generalized
other.
 Hence the development of a
mature self corresponds to
the process whereby we go
from “Mom/Dad says I must
do X” to “It’s not right to do
X.”
 The internalization of the
generalized other is how an
individual makes the norms,
values, mores, etc. of society
a part of himself.
 Mead also distinguishes “the
I” (as the creative,
spontaneous elements of the
individual) from “the me” (as
the socialized elements that
more strictly reflects the
attitudes of others in society).
The I is unique to each
individual; the me is
conventional and
representative of shared
societal expectations and
values.