Socialization
Gene/heredity or Society?

What is important?
Isabelle:
The Story of a Child Kept in Extreme Isolation
 Why
I brought her here?
It
took her five more years to
become able to attend a
school by special training..
Children
need socialization in
the form of love , care,
affection..
Learning Objectives
• Basic Concepts
– Learn about how the four main agents of socialization
contribute to social reproduction
– similarities and differences among cultures
• Theories of Socialization
– Learn the theories of child development according to
Mead, Piaget, Freud.
• Unanswered Questions about Socialization
– Learn more about the debate over the influence of media
on gender role socialization
5
If a child does well on a
crossword puzzle, the best
response is:
You
are so smart
You worked so hard!
How did you do that?

85% of American parents think it is important to tell their kids
that they are smart

However, it’s too simplistic to assume that all praise produces
same result.

Socialization is really important…
Socialization
…………………is a Process

In which people learns the attitudes, values, and
behaviors appropriate for members of a particular
culture

In which the helpless infant gradually becomes a selfaware, knowledgeable person, skilled in the ways of
her culture

Through which people become member of a given
society
•
Socialization
–
•
Lifelong process through which
people acquire norms and values
and develop a sense of self
Social reproduction
–
Passage of norms, values, and
social practices from one
generation to another through
socialization
Basic Concepts
• Primary socialization
– Socialization from infancy to early
childhood
• Secondary socialization
– Socialization from early childhood
through adult life
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0
Agents of Socialization

Groups or social context within which
processes of socialization takes place.
• The family
• Schools
• Peer relationships
• The mass media
• Work
Single parent
joint
Family

It varies from society to society

In the US, children grow up within a domestic unit
containing mother, father, and perhaps one or two
other children…

Even within American society there are variations..

Mother everywhere is important

Children are influenced by parents’ outlook

Parents play a critical role
School

Schools have explicit
mandate to socialize
people , esp. children

Quiet in class, punctual
at lessons, and observe
rules of discipline,
accepting authority

Peer groups often forms
in school
Peer relations

Peer group consists of individuals of a
similar age

Although family’s influence is obvious, in
Western societies peer groups are
significant

People spend a great deal of time in the
company of friends

Given the high proportion of women in
the workforce whose children play
together in day-care..

It is important even after childhood in
shaping
Mass Media
Mass Media
 Forms
of communication,
such as newspapers,
magazines, radio, and
television, designed to
reach mass audience
 Enormous
influence..
Work

Religion and the State

Online Socializing
Other related concepts..

Social roles
 Socially
defined expectations of an
individual in a given status and social
position ( Ex- Social role of a doctor)

Identity


The distinctive characteristics of a person’s
group’s character that relate to who he is and
what is meaningful to him( gender, sexual
orientation, nationality , ethnicity )
Social Identity
 The
characteristics that are attributed
to an individual by others
Socialization through life
course

Childhood

The Teenager

Young Adulthood

Mature Adulthood

Old Age

When Does it End?
Anticipatory Socialization

Anticipatory Socialization
 Process
of socialization
in which a person
rehearses for future
positions, occupations,
and social relationships.

It refers to preparation
for status changes and
role transition
Resocialziation

Resocialziation
 Process
of discarding
former behavior patterns
and accepting new ones
as a part of a transition in
new social life

The process of learning
new attitudes and norms
required for a new social
role
Theories
C.H. Cooley:
Looking-Glass Self
 We
imagine how we appear to
others
 We
imagine the judgment of
that appearance
 We
develop our self through
the judgment of others
Development of self
- we appear
we are being judged
we receive evaluation
we develop our self

SELF IS THE PRODUCT OF OUR SOCIAL INTERACTIONS

SELF RESULTS FROM AN INDIDVIDUAL’S IMAGIANTION OF HOW OTHERS
VIEW HIM OR HER . BUT, IT IS ALSO IMPORTANT WHO IS EVALUTINGF
US!
George H. Mead:
Role-taking Process

Mead is the founder of symbolic interaction; one
of the founders of Pragmatism

In Mind, Self and Society (1934), Mead describes
how the individual mind and self arises out of the
social process.

Mind, according to Mead, arises within the social
process of communication and cannot be
understood apart from that process.

Infants and young children develop as social beings
by imitating the actions of those around them.
 “ Role Taking” ( is a process of mentally
assuming the perspective of others and
responding from that imagined viewpoint)
George H. Mead: Role-taking Process


The Preparatory stage

Children began to understand symbols

Develop communication
The Play Stage


They began pretend to be other people ; Having seen an
adult cooking, children make mud pie; Having seen their
parents staring at them, they stare at dolls
The Game Stage

he/she not only imitates role, but he understands
“position” ; Children begin to become able to function
in organized groups and most importantly, to determine
what they will do within a specific group

The game, then, is the stage of the social process at
which the individual attains selfhood
Role-taking Process

Social Self


Significant Others



Those individuals who are most important in the
development of the self..(parents in early childhood)
Generalized Others

The general values and moral rules of the culture in which
they are developing..

As a whole, attitudes, viewpoints, and expectations
“Me” as a Self


The self, like the mind, is a social emergent…
Seeing themselves through the eyes of others (Object)
“I” as a self

Seeing themselves through the eyes of own? (Subject)
Significant vs General
“I” and “Me”, again




The self is a reflective process
Although the self is a product of sociosymbolic interaction, it is not merely a
passive reflection of the generalized other.
The individual’s response to the social
world is active; she decides what she will
do in the light of the attitudes of others;
but her conduct is not mechanically
determined by such attitudinal structures.
Mead defines the “me” as “a conventional,
habitual individual,” and the “I” as the
“novel reply” of the individual to the
generalized other (Mind, Self and Society
197)
Theories of Socialization
• Jean Piaget
– Stages in childhood
•
•
•
•
Sensorimotor stage—birth to age 2
Preoperational stage—age 2 to 7
Concrete operational stage—age 7 to 11
Formal operational stage—age 11 to 15
Touch---Language/words(egocentric)----Less
Egocentric(abstract ideas)----All abstractions
and reality
35
Theories of Socialization
• Nancy Chodorow
– Emotional attachments with parents
– Break the attachment in order to develop
self
– Boys break from mothers more than girls
– Development of masculine and feminine
character traits
36
Erving Goffman
Theories of Social Interaction

“As You Like It”
“ All the world's a stage
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,”
Managing Impression
Goffman:
Impression Management
“The Presentation of the Self”
 Goffman describes the Theatrical
performances that occur in face-to-face
interactions
 Dramaturgical Approach:
 when an individual comes in contact with
another person, he attempts to control or
guide the impression that the other
person will form of him, by altering his
own setting

More..
 Goffman
stated that people
could be seen as performers in
a theater.

Actors in a play portray a certain
image to the audience, and so people
in society also put forth, in their
behavior, a certain image or
impression to other people.
Sociologically
(People as fragile and vulnerable to
embarrassment and humiliation)
• The World as a Stage
– Roles (Set of expectations how people are supposed to behave)
– Status or social position
– Impression management
4
1
Thus
• Audience Segregation
– front region
– back region
[For
example, in church we may be quiet, respectful, and
reverent; at a party, we may be more outgoing and relaxed.
Or, In
a restaurant..]
4
2
• Civil Inattention
– Acknowledgement of strangers in our
environment
– Make quick eye contact or give other nonverbal
cues to acknowledge a stranger’s presence
without being either rude or intrusive
4
3

who break the rules of civil inattention
disrupt the social order of the crowded
train

we constantly need to learn the rules as
we go about our day.
• Focused Interaction
– expressions people “give”
– expressions people “give off”
• Unfocused Interaction (people are aware of the
others around them and may engage in civil inattention.)
• Encounters
Focused interaction occurs when one is directly attending to what others say or do.
Goffman called this an encounter.
45
• Time-space dimension of social
interaction
• Regionalization(temporal and spatial)
• Clock time
*All social interaction is situated in terms of time and space.
Interactions occur in a particular place and have a duration
*each room has a particular use at a particular time of the day
46
Ted talk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks-_Mh1QhMc
• Harold Garfinkel
– Ethnomethodology
• Study of how people make sense of what
others says and do in the course of daily
social interaction
• Taken-for-granted or assumed information
• But, the social context in which the interaction occurs
48
“A: I have a 14-year-old son.
B: Well, that’s all right.
A: I also have a dog.
B: Oh, I’m sorry.”
The conversation doesn’t make sense until you know
that it takes place between a landlord and a
prospective tenant.
Research on Social Interaction
• Interactional Vandalism
– When a person of lower status breaks
rules of everyday social interaction that
are of value to the more powerful
50
Sigmund Freud:
Psycho-sexual development


Society is against individual’s sexual
desire
Stages:

Oral

Anal

Phallic

Latency

Genital
Freud’s Stages


Oral Stage

from birth to 18 months

focused with receiving oral pleasure(through breast or bottle
feeding or sucking a pacifier )

What if an infant receives too much or too little oral
stimulation?
Anal Stage

between 18 months and three years

pleasure through controlling and eliminating feces


Phallic Stage

three to six years of age.

Oedipus or Electra complexes

“Penis Envy”- girl realizes that she has no penis..it is an anxiety
upon realization that they do not have a penis..

These feelings naturally resolve once the child begins to identify
with their same sex parent
Latency Stage

age of six until a child enters puberty

named so because, Freud believed, there weren't many overt
forms of sexual gratification displayed

Most children throughout this age form same sex friendships and
play in a manner that is non-sexual.

Unconscious sexual desires and thoughts remain repressed.

Genital Stage

Freud believed that after the unconscious, sexual desires
are repressed and remain dormant during the latency
stage,

they are awakened due to puberty. This stage begins at
puberty and develops with the physiology changes brought
on through hormones.

focus on the genitals as a source for pleasure and teens
develop and explore attractions to the opposite sex.

The genital stage is the last stage of the psychosexual
development theory.
Three parts of human
personality: Freud
ID-
instincts
Ego
Reality
Superego
Morality
Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0Xm6RdLakA
Concept Quiz
What is social reproduction?
(a) the process through which any given society ensures its
continuance through appropriate mate selection and family
building
(b) the process through which the cultural artifacts of one
culture are adopted and employed by another, thereby losing
their original meaning and significance
(c) the process through which children develop personalities
similar to those of their parents
(d) the process of perpetuating values, norms, and social
practices, which leads to structural continuity
59
Concept Quiz
Socially defined expectations for a person in
a given social position are called ______.
(a) social roles
(b) social norms
(c) social identities
(d) agents of socialization
60
Concept Quiz
After school, Sandra often has to go help her
grandparents with chores and grocery shopping.
On these days, Sandra always bring a change of
clothes to avoid appearing at her grandparents’
house in the punk-rock outfits she likes to wear
to school. This is an example of ___ .
(a) audience segregation
(b) impression management
(c) civil inattention
(d) social posturing
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