Chapter 6
Socialization and Social
Roles
Chapter Outline
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Human Development
Cognitive Development
Emotional Development
Culture and Personality
Differential Socialization
Sex-Role Socialization
Suppressing Development
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Monkeys raised in isolation fail to develop
normal monkey skills.
 They show acute maladjustment when placed
with normal monkeys.
 Cases of child neglect have supplied
comparable data.
 Despite a normal biological heritage, infants
who were unattended and unstimulated in
orphanages failed to develop normally.
Accelerating Development

Two reasons to doubt claims about
accelerating the development of infants
and young children:
– In most societies, nearly all infants receive
adequate stimulation to achieve normal
development.
– Children cannot develop faster than their
physiological development will permit.
Stimulus Response (S-R)
Theory
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Proposes a simple model of learning in
which humans play only a passive role.
Maintains that behavior is a response to
external stimuli.
Humans whatever behavior has been
reinforced by their environment in the
past.
Stimulus Response (S-R)
Theory
Example: Language
 Dismisses the idea that people acquire
grammatical rules while learning to talk.
 Instead, it postulates that we acquire
language word by word and sentence
by sentence as we repeat what we
hear.
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive
Stages
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Piaget was convinced that the human
mind develops on the basis of cognitive
structures.
He administered IQ tests to youngsters
and found consistent patterns of wrong
answers to open-ended questions.
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive
Stages
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Piaget concluded that the children were
applying the same, but incorrect, rule to
a problem.
Piaget set out to discover basic rules of
reasoning and the ages at which normal
children acquire them.
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive
Stages
Cognitive development passes through
four fundamental stages:
1. sensorimotor
2. preoperational
3. concrete operational
4. formal operational
Sensorimotor stage
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Begins at birth and lasts until around
two years.
Infants discover and develop their
senses and their motor skills.
A major discovery during this stage is
that objects continue to exist even when
they are out of sight.
Preoperational Stage
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Begins at about age 2 and ends at about 7.
 Earliest years of this period are devoted to
language learning.
 The other major task during this stage is to
learn to take the role of the other.
 Until they pass through this stage, children
cannot solve problems that require them to
put themselves in someone else’s place.
Concrete Operational Stage
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Begins at about 7 and ends at about 12
(although many people never progress
beyond this stage).
 Children develop a logical principles that
permit them to deal with the concrete world.
 One principle is the rule of conservation,
which states that a given amount of material
does not increase or decrease when its
shape is changed.
Formal Operational Stage
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Generally begins at about age 12.
 At this stage, people can formulate and
manipulate theories and deduce from these
theories that certain things are likely to be
true or false.
 With this comes the ability to ask “What if ?”
 Researchers have concluded that perhaps
half of all adults do not reach this stage of
cognitive development and are limited to
literal interpretations of the world.
Chomsky: Three Key Aspects
of Language
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Language does not consist of a set of
learned words and sentences stored in
a mental “hard drive”.
Children develop complex programs or
grammars rapidly and at a very young
age.
Infants learn one language as easily as
another.
Chomsky: Universal Grammar
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Chomsky dismissed the seemingly immense
variety in human languages as “superficial”.
 The same underlying principles are observed
in each language.
 Universal Grammar is an instinctive
awareness of nouns and verbs and how they
can be combined.
 When infants begin to observe the world and
hear language, they instinctively distinguish
between things and actions relating to things.
Personality
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Personality is a consistent pattern of
thoughts, feelings, and actions.
No two people ever have identical
biographies, and therefore, no two
people ever have the same personality.
External Pressures and Socialization in
Premodern Societies
Societies somewhat
isolated from other
societies
Societies with
other societies
close by
Rarely engage in wars
44
5
Prefer male infants
17
44
Parents often hit kids
31
55
Emphasis on aggression
and competitiveness in
males.
35
70
Emphasis on aggression
and competitiveness in
females.
12
50
Stress virtues of inflicting
violence on outsiders.
39
39
Melvin Kohn: Occupational
Roles and Socialization
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People with self-directed personalities are
more likely to obtain jobs with opportunity for
individual initiative.
 Less self-directed people gravitate toward
structured, more supervised occupations.
 People in highly structured jobs become less
self-directed, people in less-structured jobs
become more self-directed.
Child-Rearing Values: Importance
of Good Manners to Independence
1.1 and above = good manners more important
1.0 = equal importance
0.9 and below = independence more important
Nigeria
6.1
Ireland
1.8
Turkey
4.8
South Korea
1.7
Slovak Republic
4.4
Canada
1.7
Portugal
4.0
Mexico
1.6
Romania
3.8
United States
1.5
India
3.1
Japan
1.3
Great Britain
2.2
Germany
0.9
Russia
2.0
China
0.6
“Do you think a woman has to have
children in order to be fulfilled?”
Necessary
Nation
Total (%)
Men (%)
Women (%)
Russia
India
92
89
91
89
92
89
Japan
Italy
Mexico
76
64
52
79
64
52
74
65
52
Switzerland
Canada
United States
34
24
20
36
27
22
33
20
19
Sex-role Socialization
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Most societies have sharp distinctions
between male and female roles.
 To the extent that a culture defines gender
roles as distinctly different, parents will raise
boys and girls so they will be different.
 These boys and girls will grow up wanting to
be different, believing these differences in sex
roles are not only normal but necessary.