Chapter 5 Socialization

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Chapter 5 Socialization
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Socialization

• Socialization (defined) the social interaction
  process through which individuals acquire
  personality and learn the way of life of their
  society.
• Socialization is the link between the individual
  and society neither can survive without it.
• Primary socialization the initial socialization,
  lasting roughly 6 years, in which the infant
  acquires a personality. This is the most
  important phase.
• Secondary socialization all additional
  socialization after primary socialization,
  lasting the rest of ones life.

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Personality

• Personality (defined) an individuals typical
  patterns of thought, feeling and action.
• Initially emerges via primary socialization.
• 3 components of personality
• 1. Cognitive thoughts, beliefs, memories, etc.
• 2. Emotional or Affective feelings like love,
  pride, guilt, anger,etc.
• 3. Behavioral patterns of physical behavior,
  skills, etc.
• The norms and value of a culture influence the
  socialization process as well as the personality
  traits we exhibit.

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Nature versus Nurture

• Is social behavior the product of heredity or
  learning?
• We are the products of the interaction between
  heredity and learning.
• Genetic factors provide the basic potentials of
  an individual. Social experience may develop or
  discourage these potentials.
• Similar to seeds and soil. Both need each other,
  and the same seed grows differently in different
  soils.

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Effects of Childhood Socialization

• Children raised in childhood isolation.
• The case of Anna (1932-1938) 5 years in near
  total isolation. Raised in a storage room in a
  Pennsylvania farm house by an unstable mother
  from a strict family where illegitimate children
  were taboo.
• When rescued by a social worker, she was a zombie
  unresponsive to the social world.
  Re-socialization helped her a little she
  learned to smile - but she was permanently
  retarded in virtually every way cognitive,
  affective and behavioral.

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Conclusion

• Children raised in near total isolation suffer
  retardation along all three dimensions of
  personality.
• Long term isolation the duration of the primary
  socialization period - seems to produce permanent
  or irreversible retardation.
• Short term isolation perhaps a few years during
  primary socialization produces initial
  retardation, but these effects may be reversible
  with effective re-socialization.

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Children Raised in Total Institutions

• Total Institution residence where inmates are
  cut off from society, under the control of a
  hierarchy of official.
• Examples prison, boarding school, asylum, boot
  camp, bureaucratic orphanage.
• Many orphanages in the 1950s were total
  institutions. Personality studies revealed that
  some of these children did not have a chance to
  establish close emotional ties with specific
  others.
• The result was slight physical, social, and
  emotional retardation for some, particularly in
  emotional empathy skills. They were a bit more
  emotionally aloof or cold than other children.

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Monkeys raised in total isolation

• Harry Harlows rhesus monkey experiments revealed
  that even in monkeys, social behavior is largely
  learned, not inherited.
• Isolated monkeys didnt know how to mate.
• Female mothers who are artificially impregnated
  treat their offspring in an unloving and abusive
  manner, or simply ignore them.
• This suggests there may not be a maternal
  instinct.
• Infant monkeys, if given a choice, prefer a
  cuddly cloth doll with no feeder bottle to a
  wire doll that has a feeder bottle attached,
  suggesting an instinct for emotional/physical
  contact.

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The Harlow Research - Conclusions

• 1. Isolated monkeys become asocial.
• 2. Infant monkeys seem to derive emotional
  benefits with physical contact/hugs.
• 3. Social contact not necessarily with the
  mother is the key.
• 4. Short periods of isolation (3 months or less)
  produce damages which can be reversed, but long
  term isolation produces irreversible damage to
  the monkeys.

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Implications for Humans

• Humans, lacking the complex instincts that guide
  behavior in most other species, can become fully
  human only by learning in social interaction with
  other people.
• Intimate contact appears to be a critical need,
  especially during primary socialization.

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The Emergence of the Self

• The self (defined) an individuals conscious
  experience of a distinct personal identity
  separate from all other people and things.
• Humans are capable of thinking about themselves
  as objects to be reflected upon.
• In other words, humans are self-aware.
• At birth we have no self, or self-awareness. It
  is learned and it emerges during primary
  socialization.
• The self is a social product. It is created and
  modified via social interaction.
• Research such as the Who am I test suggests
  that the social statuses we acquire influence how
  we perceive and feel about ourselves.

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Theories About the Self
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Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

• The conventional view of self and personality was
  that they were the products of heredity.
• Freud was influenced by Victorian patriarchy and
  the dominance of biology at that time.
• Freud believed that, while biological forces were
  paramount, cultural forces did play a (small)
  role.
• This represents a slight shift in the thinking of
  that era. This new thinking concedes a role for
  culture.
• Recall Durkheims revelations about the origins
  of suicide this, at about the same time.

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Freud Elements of Personality

• Freud argued there are 3 components of
  personality
• 1. The id. Rooted in biology, it represents the
  persons basic needs or drives. It exists at
  birth.
• It reflects the needs of the individual.
• 2. The ego. The persons conscious attempt to
  balance the id-drives with the demands of
  society. The ego develops out of the awareness
  that society exists apart from the id. A healthy
  ego successfully manages the opposing forces of
  the id versus the superego.
• 3. The superego. Developed during socialization.
  The superego reflects the presence of societys
  mores, internalized into the self as our
  conscience.
• It reflects the needs of society.

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Charles Cooley The Looking-Glass Self

• Basic insight we develop a self-image based on
  how we think others perceive us.
• Three steps in the formation of self-concept
• 1. We observe how others react to us.
• We want to know whether we are loved, attractive,
  etc.
• 2. We interpret others reactions.
• We note whether others reactions are consistent
  with what we imagine ourselves to be.
• 3. We develop a self-concept based on that
  interpretation.
• Based on how we perceive others reactions, we
  form a self-opinion. We may like ourselves, or we
  may hate ourselves.

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George Herbert Mead (1863-1931)

• Mead distinguished between the I and the me
  components of the self.
• The me component refers to the self as object -
  or the self as seen by society (or at least how
  the individual thinks they are seen). This is
  similar to Cooleys Looking-Glass self.
• The I component refers to the self as subject.
  The I is the response of the organism to how it
  is viewed by society. We are constantly reacting
  against society and the I is the dynamic
  component of the self that does this reacting.
• To Mead, the self is dynamic. It is constantly
  interpreting and acting in context of society.

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George Herbert Mead, continued

• Mead developed the theoretical paradigm of
  symbolic interactionism.
• Social interaction occurs between individuals via
  symbols (gestures, signs, language, etc).
• Language is a crucial symbolic system. To Mead,
  without language there cannot be a mind. The mind
  is essentially a symbol processor.
• All symbols including language - are socially
  constructed.
• Therefore, to Mead, the mind itself is a social
  product.

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Meads Theory of Role-Taking

• Mead argued that socialization occurs through the
  process of role-taking. In this process the child
  learns to take the roles of others so that they
  can view the world from their perspective.
• Role-taking occurs over 4 stages
• 1. Imitation. The infant simply mimics the
  particular others around it. This lasts about 2
  years.
• 2. Play. Age 2-6. The child pretends to take the
  roles of specific others by playing doctor, or
  playing mommy.
• 3. Games. By roughly 6 years old, the child is
  capable of taking the roles of many others in one
  situation, such as grasping how a baseball
  infield will react to a fly ball. Here there are
  multiple roles, but there is only one social
  situation.
• 4. Generalized Other. Soon after, the young boy
  or girl becomes capable of grasping the nature of
  how roles operate across different social
  situations. They can generalize about what
  society expects of people across different social
  situations.

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Learning to Think Jean Piaget

• Piaget (1896-1980) was interested in mental
  development and is one of the influences behind
  the discipline of cognitive psychology.
• He emphasized that social life is needed for the
  individual to become conscious of their own mind.
• Cognitive development occurs across a series of
  stages.

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Four Stages of Cognitive Development

• 1. Sensorimotor stage. (0-2 years). The infant
  experiences the world only via sensory contact.
• Reliance upon physical/sensory contact with the
  environment.
• World is seen as a shifting chaos in which
  objects have no permanence. Out of sight is out
  of mind.
• Rooted in the here and now.
• Infant is egocentric, incapable of much empathy.

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Four Stages of Cognitive Development

• 2. Pre-operational stage. (Roughly 2 7 years
  old).
• Child acquires language.
• Child acquires object permanence.
• Awareness of the results of ones actions.
• Inability to do simple mental operations.
  Example the larger object must be heavier to
  the child.
• Still egocentric. Still has difficulty taking the
  views of others.

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Four Stages of Cognitive Development

• 3. Concrete operational stage. (Roughly 7-12
  years).
• Child can reason about concrete situations, but
  has trouble with abstract ideas.
• First use of logic to understand events, such as
  grasping cause-effect relationships.
• Able to simultaneously juggle multiple roles.
• No longer egocentric. Child is able to take
  others views into account. They are now
  empathetic and show real concern for the plight
  of others.

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Four Stages of Cognitive Development

• 4. Formal operational stage. (Roughly 12 years
  old).
• The individual is able to think abstractly and
  critically and can learn highly abstract theories
  and concepts.
• The individual is no longer tied to the concrete
  environment.
• While the stage process is universal, not
  everyone reaches the formal operational stage.
• This stage is more common in developed societies
  and appears to be affected by exposure to
  high-level education.
• Industrial societies encourage formal operational
  thinking for many members, but agrarian societies
  only encourage it among elites.

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Learning to Feel

• Socialization includes learning how to develop
  emotional capacities.
• Social scientists know relatively little about
  emotions, largely because they are so difficult
  to operationalize.
• Basic findings
• 1. The process of learning emotions is the same
  in all humans. Feelings develop in an orderly
  sequence as building blocks beginning with
  simple emotions like pleasure and pain and
  progressing toward complex emotions like joy and
  angst.
• 2. The expression of emotions differs across
  societies, and even by gender. Social factors
  influence what, when, and how emotions are
  expressed (as well as how we learn to interpret
  emotions).
• In our patriarchal society men learn to hide
  their expression of grief, but not anger while
  women learn to hide their expression of anger,
  but not grief.

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Lawrence Kohlberg Moral Development Occurs
Across 3 stages

• 1. Pre-conventional stage. (Young children).
• What is right is that which is pleasurable to me
  what is wrong is that which is painful to me.
  Note the egocentrism.
• 2. Conventional stage. (Many teens and adults).
• What is right is what society says is right. Note
  the absence of egocentrism. Many people
  (especially conformists) remain in this stage.
• 3. Post-conventional stage (Some teens and
  adults).
• What is right is that which is consistent with
  ethical principles, regardless of what society
  says. Many never reach this level, but certainly
  independent thinkers like Rosa Parks and Martin
  Luther King did.

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Carol Gilligan The Gender Factor

• Moral development is influenced by gender
  socialization.
• Boys tend to be taught a justice perspective.
  They are taught to rely upon formal rules.
  Therefore something is wrong if it is illegal.
• Girls tend to be taught a care and responsibility
  perspective. They are taught to judge a situation
  by how it relates to personal relationships. An
  illegal act may not be wrong if the act was
  intentioned to help people.

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Agents of Socialization
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1. The Family

• The most significant agent of socialization.
• A primary group, and therefore very powerful.
• Responsible for primary socialization.
• Much family socialization is unconscious and
  unintentional.
• The family provides an immediate ascribed status
  for the infant.
• Social class
• Ethnic identity

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The Family, continued

• Research suggests there are social class
  differences in family socialization messages that
  help perpetuate the social class structure..
• Working class families actions speak louder than
  words.
• Emphasis is on conformity to rules and staying
  out of trouble, with strict punishment for
  deviant behavior.
• This tends to reinforce working class job
  culture, as many working class jobs are
  order-taker jobs where conformity to rules is
  important.
• Middle class families words speak louder than
  actions.
• Curiosity and taking initiative or risk is
  encouraged in the child. Discipline is less
  strict.
• This tends to reinforce middle class job culture,
  as many middle class jobs are order-giver jobs
  requiring independent thinking.

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2. School

• A form of anticipatory socialization learning
  that helps a person achieve a desired position.
• Functions to socialize people into certain forms
  of knowledge.
• Functions to socialize people into core values
  and belief systems. Schools may indoctrinate.
• Primary school is often the childs first
  experience with formal organizations,
  specifically, the bureaucracy.
• Most schools are secondary groups (formal, task
  oriented).
• Given the changes in the family toward 2-parent
  workers, school functions have changed to offer
  more day-care.
• School provides a setting for the child to
  develop peer group friendships.

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3. Peer Groups

• Peer groups are people with similar social
  characteristics who hang out with each other.
  Members treat each other as relative equals.
• They are primary groups with typically high
  levels of solidarity.
• They are particularly powerful during late
  childhood and adolescence.
• Identity formation during adolescence is in
  context of peer group subcultures, which may
  offer different values, beliefs, and tastes than
  parents.
• Among teens, short term style preferences, sexual
  activity, popular culture taste, and other teen
  behaviors are shaped mainly by peer groups.
• Peer pressure brings norms of conformity within
  the in-group.

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4. The Mass Media

• The mass media impersonal communications
  directed toward a vast audience.
• Relatively new and controversial agent of
  socialization.
• Unlike the family, school, church, and peer
  groups, the commercial mass media does not have
  the childs interests as their main goal.
• Capitalist media prioritize private profit above
  most other considerations. Their primary goal is
  to make money for their stockholders.

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The mass media, continued

• The commercial mass media serve 2 interests
• 1. The private interest.
• Because they operate for profit, capitalist media
  tend to offer lots of sex and violence. While
  profitable, excessive sex and violence generally
  does not serve the public interest.
• 2. The public interest.
• The commercial mass media offer entertainment and
  information that serves the public interest.

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The mass media, continued

• The most powerful mass media today is television.
  
• The average American has the TV turned on for 7
  hours each day, and actually watches it for 2 to
  3 hours per day.
• Children watch TV an average of almost 3 hours
  per day.
• Commercial TV socializes the child to become a
  consumer and to prioritize materialism,
  competition, status consciousness, and other
  consumer-capitalist values.
• Often the values on commercial TV contradict the
  parents values.
• Heavy TV watchers are more likely to develop a
  mean world syndrome a sense that the world is a
  mean and dangerous place.
• The mean world syndrome has social and
  psychological consequences.
• While commercial TV does well at entertaining,
  many think it does poorly at educating Americans
  about important issues necessary for our
  democracy.

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The mass media, continued

• The mass media are not objective. They present a
  distorted reality to their audience.
• Excessive sex and violence.
• Emphasis on stereotypes. Sexism, classism and
  other group superiority values are common in the
  commercial mass media.
• Normalcy, according to the commercial mass media
  is the upper middle class lifestyle something
  available to only 15-20 of the population.
• The commercial mass media emphasize the beauty
  myth for women.
• This myth says that women should remain young and
  physically attractive at all costs. The result is
  a decline in self-esteem among American female
  teens, who cannot live up to the thin Eurocentric
  runway-model ideal promoted by the commercial
  media. This false ideal is highly profitable, but
  does not serve the public interest.

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Resocialization

• Resocialization refers to deliberate
  socialization aimed at radically altering the
  self. It is re-creating the self, and it involves
  an abrupt break from the former self.
• Resocialization is often done within a total
  institution.
• Total institution residence where inmates are
  cut off from society, under the control of a
  hierarchy of officials.
• Examples prisons boot camp, asylum, boarding
  school.

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Brainwashing

• Brainwashing is persuasion or indoctrination,
  often by force, to get someone to adopt a
  particular set of beliefs and values. It is a
  type of resocialization.
• Brainwashing is most effective under the
  following 4 conditions
• 1. The person is isolated from their former
  surroundings, people, and self. Total
  institutions serve this purpose.
• 2. They are subjected to peer pressure to conform
  to the new reality.
• 3. They are subjected to legitimate authority,
  which tells them what to think.
• 4. The person is willing to change.

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The Life Course

• Both a biological and a social construction.
• Society imposes its own conception of a life
  course upon the physical process of aging.
• Society slices up the aging process arbitrarily
  into a series of stages.
• The number, length and content of these stages
  varies across societies.

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The Life Course

• Traditional societies have only a few stages
• Infancy(immaturity)-adulthood-death
• Adulthood is usually defined by acquiring key
  roles, like craft-worker or parent.
• These roles are acquired at a very young age in
  traditional cultures.
• Industrial societies have more stages
• Infancy-childhood-adolescence-adulthood-old
  age-death

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Childhood

• Childhood was constructed by industrial cultures
  - around 1850 in the U.S. - as public schools
  emerged for children.
• The child was expected to go to school by 1850
  to learn literacy skills necessary to industrial
  societies and to engage in re-creative
  activities. Playgrounds, schools, and child
  clothing styles emerged around this time.
• Children were innocent and loveable almost
  the opposite of adults. Now, children were
  exempted from adult roles.
• Families had become child-centered and were now
  expected to nurture the child.
• The mother was also sentimentalized by now and
  was expected to be the primary nurturer of the
  children, giving them love.

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How was the child seen before industrialization?

• Most agrarian cultures did not recognize
  childhood because they attached adult roles to
  children beginning around 8 or 9 years old.
• Farming families needed as much labor as they
  could get, so the child was quickly given
  economic roles and was expected to learn skills
  in an apprenticeship system.
• Agrarian families were work-centered and used
  strict physical discipline upon the child.
• Spare the rod, spoil the child.
• In Puritanical America adults were expected to
  beat the devil out of the child when they
  misbehaved.
• The original Grimms Fairy Tales were quite dark
  and graphic, but as childhood emerged they were
  softened and sweetened with happy endings.

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Adolescence

• Emerged around 1880, as it was necessary to
  postpone adulthood even more in order to further
  educate the population.
• The college system became available to an
  expanding middle class around this time.
• Industrial societies require a mass workforce
  that delivers professional, specialized services.
• Adolescence is a new stage in a rapidly changing
  society. It is a relatively anomic stage and can
  be confusing to teenagers.
• Contradictory demands and mixed messages
• Physically, the teen is an adult capable of
  reproduction but socially, the teen is treated
  as a dependent.
• American society poorly equips individuals for
  the challenges of adolescence.

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Mature adulthood

• This is the stage where anticipatory
  socialization is basically completed, and the
  individuals core identity is formed.
• Responsible roles (career, marriage, parenthood)
  demand a responsible, stable self.
• However, modern rapidly-changing society poses
  problems for adults. Rapid social change
  destabilizes jobs and marriages, threatening the
  stability of the self.
• Generally this is the most enjoyable life stage
  because one is most socially productive during
  this period.
• Suicide rates are relatively low for this life
  stage.

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Old Age

• Modern society is less successful at facing old
  age than traditional societies. Our society
  worships youth.
• Traditional societies show respect for senior
  citizens.
• Traditional (slow-change) cultures allow seniors
  to have wisdom experiential knowledge relevant
  to young people. They also place seniors within
  the extended family system and the community,
  giving them visibility.
• In rapidly changing modern cultures, the
  knowledge of seniors may be obsolete and
  irrelevant to young people.
• They also tend to disappear due to the emphasis
  on the nuclear family in Western cultures.
• Finally, in modern societies seniors have fewer
  constructive or productive roles.
• Hence, there is an increase in ageism in modern
  societies.

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Death

• Industrial societies postpone death an additional
  20 years beyond the life expectancy of agrarian
  societies.
• The life expectancy of the typical middle-class
  American is almost 80 years today.
• American culture does not socialize people to
  deal with death.
• Consequently, death is a taboo subject.
• We use euphemisms like passed away.

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What explains the death taboo?

• 1. Individualism. Americans see themselves as the
  tree, not the leaf on the tree, so death means
  the end of everything. Also, we stress being in
  control, yet death is beyond our control.
• 2. Faith in technology to conquer everything,
  even death. We learn that death is something to
  conquer rather than accept the naturalness of
  death.
• 3. Decline of religious influence that defines
  death as heaven. If there is a heaven, one can
  look forward to it.
• 4. Institutional differentiation has created
  specialized institutions like hospitals and
  nursing homes that hide the dying process. It
  becomes more mysterious.
• 5. Rising sentimentalism and emotional intensity
  of the family experience makes a family death
  more painful.

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The history of death perception Source is
Philippe Aries

• 1. Until the 12th century, people didnt perceive
  themselves as individuals. Rather, they were part
  of nature, society, and the collective destiny.
  Ones own death did not mean a lot.
• 2. From the 12th to the 15th century, people
  began to see themselves as individuals. This led
  to the beginning of wills, tombs, and a death
  anxiety.
• 3. Beginning in the 18th century through the
  Victorian Era, the intensity of the family
  experience led people to fear the loss of a
  family member more than their own death. Mourning
  took on hysterical tones.
• 4. By the 20th century death became a taboo
  subject and people tried to avoid the emotions it
  caused. Death cut into happiness. Hushed up
  procedures in hospitals replaced home deaths.
  Death was hidden from children. Fear of death
  increased.

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The dying process

• Today it is excluded from our lives. Death occurs
  not within the family environment but often in a
  bureaucratic hospital or nursing ward, surrounded
  by strangers.
• What is the role expectation attached to the
  dying? We expect the dying to keep it to
  themselves. This is harmful.
• Research reveals that people seem to die more
  happily if death is openly discussed beforehand.
• Yet the death taboo prohibits this discussion in
  many families.
• Talking about death frankly with others
  encourages our acceptance of it as a natural
  process.

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Erik Erikson

• According to Erik Erikson, human development does
  not end at age 6 or 7. It continues over the
  lifetime.
• Erikson presented a social-psychological
  examination of life challenges across 8 stages.

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Erik Erikson 8 stages of life challenges

• 1. Infancy (0-1.5 years old). The challenge of
  trust versus mistrust of others.
• 2. Toddlerhood (1.5 - 3 years old). The challenge
  of autonomy and confidence versus doubt and
  shame.
• 3. Pre-school (3-5). Initiative vs. guilt from
  not pleasing parents expectations.
• 4. Pre-adolescents (6 13). Industriousness to
  make friends vs. inferiority and failure to
  measure up to school and social standards.
• 5. Adolescents (teens). To establish ones own
  identity vs. identity confusion.
• 6. Young adulthood. Maintaining intimacy vs.
  social isolation.
• 7. Middle adulthood. Making a difference vs.
  self-absorption and complacency.
• 8. Old age. Integrity and satisfaction vs.
  despair and regret.

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Conclusion

• Socialization is never fully successful.
• We retain a measure of free will that makes our
  choices in life unique to ourselves.

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End of Chapter 5