Socialization and Social Roles

1
Chapter 6

• Socialization and Social Roles

2
Socialization is

• Humans learning to be humans
• To be made social
• Socialization is developmental stages
  learning/exposure
• Potty training, reading, playing soccer
• My wife vs. me reading interesting example

3
Suppressing Development

• Humans raised in isolation fail to develop into
  humans feral (untamed) children
• Famous Skeels and Dye study of orphanage infants
  (1939)
• Experiment some orphanage kids removed
  parented by mildly retarded
• 4 years later, showed improvement
• Conclusion infants who were unattended and
  unstimulated in orphanages failed to develop
  normally.

4
Accelerating Development

• Reasons to doubt claims about accelerating
• Mozart effect?
• 1993 Nature article received national attention
• Classical music and IQ? short term effect?
• Was an experimental design
• Likely a statistical fluke no studies could
  replicate

5
Theories of Socialization

• Developmental psych issues important in
  socialization
• Brief intro of 3 theories
• 2 psychologists (Freud, Piaget)
• 1 sociologist (Mead)

6
Freud

• Id drives and instincts
• Superego culture, values. Internalized
  expectations of others
• Ego reconciliation between the two management
  of the two opposing forces

7
Piaget discovered basic rules of reasoning and
the ages at which normal children acquire them.

• Sensorimotor 0 to 2
• senses and motor control
• Object permanence around 10 months
• Preoperational 2-7
• Language, overcoming egocentrism
• Put themselves in place of another (Mead)
• Concrete operational 7-12
• Rule of conservation
• Empirical reasoning
• Formal operational
• Abstract thoughts
• Not everyone progresses

8
George Herbert Mead

• Self self awareness and self image
• Taking the role of the other
• Looking glass self
• Self is ever changing

9
For sociologist, socialization is a lifelong
process

• For Freud early years ego emerges
• For Mead, self changes as other changes

10
Agents of Socialization

• Family
• School
• Peers
• Media

11
Media no question it is a powerful force

• TV is on 7 hours per day in US homes
• Americans spend one-half of free time in front of
  TV
• 2-18 average 5.5 hours per day (tv plus video
  games)

12
As agent of socialization, what does media teach
us Examples

• Friends and sexual behavior
• Sensationalism fear
• Glorification of drugs?
• Media and violence?
• Most studies correlational (some experiments show
  short term effects)
• Numerous longitudinal come closer to cause and
  effect
• Rap music taken heat (correlated with variety of
  behaviors)
• Eminem and Grand Theft Auto Vice City

13
Resocialization

• Culture and subculture
• Lofland and Stark Moonie research
• Conversion is resocialization
• Beliefs form after attachments
• Sociologists reject notion that someone is
  brainwashed
• Military also resocializes
• video

14
Biological determinists vs Cultural determinists
(Nature vs. Nurture)

• Chap 5 discusses sociological challenge to bio
  determinists
• Pendulum swings too far with anthropologists
  Frank Boaz and Margaret Mead?
• Sex Roles great example

15
Pink world vs. Blue world

• How much cultural vs. biological?
• Mead research in New Guinea both men and
  women..
• Arapesh cooperative, unaggressive, sensitive,
  feminine
• Mundugumor headhunters aggressive, selfish,
  violent
• Mead cultural determinist (childrearing)
• Stark offers social evolutionary theory (nobody
  wanted Arapesh land, everyone wanted Mundugumor
  land)
• Mead severely criticized

16
Other issues discussed in Chap 6

• Melvin Kohn on occupational roles and
  socialization
• Working Class parents more likely in jobs where
  obeying rules, accepting authority, dont
  question
• MC parents jobs of self expression,
  independence, personal initiative
• Children raised to be ready for the world parents
  envision
• Cultural factor in intergenerational class
  patterns
• Irving Goffman
• Live is a stage. Impression management role
  performance