Socialization

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Socialization

• Social Experience The Key to our Humanity
• Understanding Socialization
• Personal Development
• Agents of Socialization

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Social Experience The Key to our Humanity

• Socilaization- the lifelong social experience by
  which individuals develop their human potential
  and learn culture.
• Personality- A persons fairly consistent
  patterns of acting, thinking, and feeling.

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Human Development Nature and Nurture

• Charles Darwin
• He explained how species evolve over thousands of
  generations. He discovered that animals develop
  certain traits for survival, through an emergence
  of nature.

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The Social Sciences The Role of Nature

• Behaviorism- A theory that holds that behavior is
  not instinctive but learned. Rooted in the
  nurturing we receive not form nature.
• Social Isolation Studies of Non-human Primates-
  Studies show that after three months of isolation
  recovery was possible, six months of isolation
  monkeys development was seriously damaged.

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Understanding Socialization

• Sigmund Freud The Elements of Personality
• id- the human beings basic drives.
• ego- is a persons conscious efforts to balance
  innate pleasure-seeking drives with the demands
  of society.
• superego- is the cultural values and norms
  internalized by an identity.

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Jean Piaget Cognitive Development

• Studied human cognition-how people think.
  Developed four stages of cognition.
• The Sensorimotor Stage- The level of human
  development at which individuals experience the
  world only through their senses.

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• The Pre-operational Stage- the level of human
  development at which individuals first use
  language and other symbols.
• The Concrete Operational Stage- the level of
  human development at which individuals first
  perceives causal connections in their
  surroundings.
• The Formal Operational Stage- the level of human
  development at which individuals think abstractly
  and critically.

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• Critical evaluation- not all societies have the
  capacity for such abstract thought. Even in our
  society perhaps 30 percent of people never reach
  the formal operational stage.

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Lawerence Kohlberg Moral Development

• Built on Piagets work studying moral reasoning,
  the ways in which individuals judge situations as
  right or wrong.

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Carol Gilligan The gender Factor

• Claims the males have a Justice perspective,
  relying on formal rules to define right and
  wrong. Girls have a care and responsibility
  perspective, judging a situation with an eye
  toward personal relationships.

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George Herbert Mead The Social Self

• Social behaviorism to explain how social
  experience creates individual personality. Mead
  focused on inward thinking, humanitys defining
  traits.

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• The Self- it part of an individuals personality
  composed of self-awareness and self image. Mead
  saw the self as the product of social experience.
• For Mead, self develops only as the individual
  interacts with others.
• Social experience- is the exchange of symbols.
• Only people use words, a wave of the hand or a
  smile creates meaning.

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Taking the role of the other.

• The Looking-Glass Self - What we think of
  ourselves depends on what we think others think
  of us.
• A self image based on how we think others see us.
• The I and the Me- By taking the role of the other
  we become self aware.

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Self

• The self has two parts. As the self is active
  and spontaneous. Mead called the active side of
  the self the I. But the self is also an object,
  as we imagine ourselves as others see us. Mead
  called the objective side of the self me. We
  initiate an action and then we continue the
  action based on how others respond to us.
• The I and the Me are always working together.

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• Development of the Self- The key to developing
  the self, then, is learning to take the role of
  the other.

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• Significant other- are role models such as
  parents, teachers, older siblings.

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• The final stage in the development of self
  involves taking the role of the other. Social
  life demands that we see ourselves in terms of
  cultural norms as anyone else might.

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• Generalized other- the widespread cultural norms
  and values we use as a reference in evaluation
  ourselves.
• Critique- Meads view is strictly social and does
  not take into account biological elements.

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Erik H. Erikson Eight Stages of Development

• Stage 1-Infancy the challenge of trust (versus
  mistrust)
• Birth and eighteen months. Establish a sense of
  trust.
• Family members play a key role in how the child
  meets this challenge.

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• Stage 2-Toddlerhood the challenge of autonomy
  (versus doubt and shame)
• Eighteen months to age three. Learn skills to
  cope with the world in a confident way. Failure
  to gain self-control leads children to doubt
  their abilities.

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• Stage 3-Preschool the challenge of initiative
  (versus guilt)
• Four and five year olds must learn to engage
  their surroundingsincluding people outside the
  familyor experience guilt at failing to meet the
  expectations of parents and others.

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• Stage 4-Preadolesence the challenge of
  industriousness (versus inferiority)
• Between ages six and thirteen, children enter
  school, make friends, and strike out on their own
  more. They feel proud of their accomplishments,
  or fear that they do not measure up.

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• Stage 5-Adolescence the challenge of gaining
  identity (versus confusion)
• During the teen years, young people struggle to
  establish their own identity. In part teenagers
  identify with others, but they also want to be
  unique. Almost all teens experience some
  confusion as they struggle to establish identity.

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• Stage 6-Young adulthood the challenge of
  intimacy (versus isolation)
• The challenge for young adults is to form and
  maintain intimate relationships. Falling in love
  (as well as making close friends) involves
  balancing the need to bond with the need to have
  a separate identity.

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• Stage 7-Middle adulthood The challenge of making
  a difference (versus self-absorption)
• The challenge of middle age is contributing to
  the lives of others in the family, at work, and
  in the larger world. Failing at this, people
  become stagnant, caught up in their own limited
  concerns.

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• Stage 8-Old age the challenge of integrity
  (versus despair)
• Near the end of our lives, people hope to look
  back on what they have accomplished with a sense
  of integrity and satisfaction. For those who
  have been self-absorbed, old age brings only a
  sense of despair over missed opportunities.

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Agents of Socialization

• The Family
• Research suggests, nothing is more likely to
  produce a happy, well-adjusted child than being
  in a loving family.

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• The School
• Schooling enlarges childrens social worlds to
  include people with backgrounds different from
  their own. School teaches children a wide range
  of knowledge and skills, and also conveys lessons
  that value success and competition.
• The school day runs on impersonal rules and a
  strict time schedule. Schools also socialize
  children into gender roles.

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• Peer Groups
• A social group whose members have interests,
  social position, and age in common.

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The Mass Media

• Impersonal communications aimed at a vast
  audience.
• Conservative critics charge that the television
  and film industries are led by a liberal
  cultural elite.
• Another concern charges that the mass media
  involves too much violence.

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The mass media shapes how we think.

• Socialization and the Life Course
• An overview of the life course reveals that our
  society organizes human experience according to
  age childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and
  finally, old age.

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Childhood

• Childhood has special importance in the
  socialization process, learning continues
  throughout our lives.

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Adolescence

• Just as industrialization created childhood as a
  distinct stage of life, adolescence emerged as a
  buffer between childhood and adulthood.

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Adulthood

• Begins between the late teens and early thirties,
  depending on social background. After completing
  schooling people embark on careers.
• Early- till about 40, people learn to manage
  day-to-day affairs.
• Middle- 40-60, people have a sense of their life
  circumstances.

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Old Age

• The later years of adulthood and the final stage
  of life itselfbegins about the mid-sixties.

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Dying

• People talk about and plan for death. This
  openness may ease somewhat the pain of the
  surviving spouse, a consideration for women who,
  more often than not outlive their husbands.

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The Life Course An Overview

• Societies organize the life course according to
  age, but other forces such as class, race
  ethnicity, and gender also shape peoples lives.