SOC 100 - 7. Socialization (1): The Self

SOC 100 - Richard Westernman - University of Alberta

Individuals play roles…

defined socially; each of us expresses ourselves through these roles, and constructs an identity out of a role set.

Society itself is structured…

• as a series of rule-governed relationships between these roles

  • Social structures set the rules of any given situation, telling us how people in these roles are supposed to interact.

  • Social institutions preserve and advance these roles.

Individuality therefore expressed within…

terms set by society, and through social & cultural models.

Oxana Malaya

severe childhood neglect in Ukraine, where she was abandoned by her alcoholic parents at three years old and lived with dogs in a kennel for about five years. Discovered by authorities at approximately age eight, she exhibited extreme dog-like behaviours, including walking on all fours, barking, and eating like a dog. Despite years of therapy and rehabilitation to learn human behaviours, she remains intellectually impaired and unsuited for full integration into normal society

Socialisation

Various life-long processes of learning undergone by individuals that develop them in to adults capable of participation in their social environment.

Sociobiology

• Attempt to explain individual personality and structures of society by reference to genetic inheritance.

• Emphasis the role of genetics

• theoretically social structures should be explained by genetics

• Compares humans to other animals.

Identical twins are good test of social influence: same genes

– Twins brought up in similar environments very similar…

–those brought up in different backgrounds turn out very differently, as sociologists expect.

Psychology 

focuses on the internal mental/emotional aspects of the self, i.e. what goes on inside individuals’ minds.

Sociology 

concentrates on the situational aspects of development of the self, i.e. interactions between people.

Deferred gratification

• You put off getting what you want till later, because that gets you more in the long run.

• E.g. you want to sleep & drink beer – but you delay that till you have done your work.

Libido

• Freud’s term for our inner store of desires & energy (not just sexual); source of all our drives & impulses.

• Chaotic, disordered, often self-contradictory.

Pleasure principle 

• The basic principle of seeking gratification and avoiding pain that guides our drives.

• The libido and unconscious drives are shaped by the pleasure principle.

Reality principle

• The principle of adaptation to the demands of reality, including denying ourselves pleasure for now.

• The conscious mind limits our drives in recognition of brute necessity.

Id (‘the It’) 

• Unconscious store of our deepest desires, charged by libidinal energies.

• Ruled by pleasure principle: seeks only fulfillment of desires.

Ego (‘the I’)

• Largely-conscious way the individual operates, helping find way in real world

• Governed by reality principle: governs the boundary between Id and real world.

• Ego emerges to moderate and guide the expression of desires and drives

Sublimation

Redirection of surplus libidinal energy from dangerous desires towards safer objects – e.g. re-focusing your energy on work or making art, not sex.

• society can’t allow us to gratify all our desires directly: we still have surplus libidinal energy that isn’t satisfied to manage this, we redirect or sublimate these desires, by turning the libidinal energy in them to something else

• Civilization often a product of sublimated desires

Super-ego

• Freud’s term for ‘conscience’: the introjected image of authority, turned against our own drives.

• Powered (ironically) by the hate we have for authority

• uses our own libidinal energy to enforce social standards on our own Id/Ego, ‘punish’ us, as guilt, for desiring things authority figure doesn’t want us to do

Repression

• Forcible denial of deep libidinal instincts, due to overstrict socialisation.

• The libidinal drives repressed in this way don’t disappear: they’re bottled up, causing pressure.

• Repression often causes neuroses

• Repression of a desire may lead to projection

Authoritarian Personality

• Tendency to admire ‘strong leaders,’ value discipline & obedience, and to feel threatened by ‘difference.’

• Product of excessively-strict socialization.

Theodor Adorno

• The Authoritarian Personality

• used Freud to explain the rise of Fascism

• certain set of personality traits common amongst those who were pro-Fascist, including: belief in standard social values, uncritical attitude to leaders, aggressive attitude to ‘deviants,’ emphasis on strength, seeing world as hostile, & focus on sex lives of others.

Those from strict/disciplinarian families forced as youths to appear…

strong, to avoid debate, to control libidinal impulses. In consequence, they had too much stored-up aggression, & no way to let it out: leads to fear, hatred, & fascist tendencies

those from more free homes were accustomed to…

debate & being proved wrong: less need to unleash aggression

I & Me

• Mead’s concept to describe dual nature of the ‘self.’

• The ‘I’ is my internal perspective: my desires, my spontaneous, creative, inner self; how I see world.

• The ‘Me’ is my picture of how others view me: affects how I behave.

George Herbert Mead (1863-1931) sees 3 stages in child’s play

• preparatory

• play

• game

Playing roles at Play stage requires us to be aware of others’ expectations of this role: leads to bifurcated self: the I & the Me.

Preparatory stage

children imitate family members around them without understanding what they’re doing (e.g. banging on wood if parent is doing carpentry).

Play stage

children play certain roles, e.g. ‘nurse’;: teaches us how to think of perspective of other people.

Game stage

children take part in complicated games governed by sets of rules. Becomes aware of social system as a whole.

Generalised Other

• Mead’s term for an imaginary ‘average’ observer of our actions, embodying standard beliefs & values of society.

• As we mature, we act so as to impress this fictional viewer, and thus learn social norms.

• Rule-governed Games teach us the importance of the opinion of society at large

Game stage teaches us about universal standards that should guide our behaviour:

– We start to view selves by this objective standard.

– Opinions of individual others no longer as weighty.

Cognitive development

• Process by which infants learn to control bodies and manipulate objects in world.

• Learning occurs through a process of experimentation.

• Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget

• observed how children develop from babies who try to assimilate the world by sucking it, to adults capable of manipulating different materials, abstract thought.

• describes child as ‘little scientist’: not brainwashed or imprinted by parents; active learning through trial & error, in four major stages

Piaget’s stages for cognitive development

– 0-2 Sensorimotor Stage: manipulates objects, distinguishes self from world, control of body

– 2-7 Preoperational Stage: uses symbols & language, but with limited logic. Still egocentric, unable to see others’ perspective

– 7-11 Concrete Operational Stage: thinks logically with physical aids, and uses symbols (e.g. math). Capable of inductive logic.

– 11-16 Formal Operation Stage: Full development of abstract thought, deductive logic; aware of perspective of others.

0-2 Sensorimotor Stage

manipulates objects, distinguishes self from world, control of body

2-7 Preoperational Stage

uses symbols & language, but with limited logic. Still egocentric, unable to see others’ perspective

7-11 Concrete Operational Stage

thinks logically with physical aids, and uses symbols (e.g. math). Capable of inductive logic.

11-16 Formal Operation Stage

Full development of abstract thought, deductive logic; aware of perspective of others.

Constructivism

Theoretical approach to cognitive development. Argues that we construct picture of world ourselves, through interaction and experiment; we’re not imprinted with whatever parents say.

Structural functionalists believe that socialisation of children is top-down

we force children to believe certain things in order to ensure the smooth functioning of society

• Piaget’s research suggests this is too simplistic: it assumes that children simply ‘receive’ commands of society like blank slates.

– Instead, we should look at the way child constructs its own world view out of interactions with world and other people.

Symbolic interactionist perspective shows us how children build up picture of world for selves…

as they learn from interaction

Psychosocial development

Development of the individual’s ego and sense of autonomy as an individual throughout life, based around existential questions at each stage

• Erik Erikson (1902-94)

Erik Erikson (1902-94)

we continue through eight stages across our entire life span

– Each stage is characterised by overcoming certain challenges

– Each challenge may take the form of existential questions.

For example:

– at age 0-2, child may be uncertain whether it can trust the

world while struggling with fear of abandonment by parents;

– in adolescence (13-19), the teen may ask ‘who am I? What

should I be?’ while struggling over social relationships.

– In early adulthood (20-39), people struggle with romantic

relationships and ask what it means to love.

Moral reasoning

The ability to use reason to justify and explain one’s moral decisions (and to understand the authority of the parents who punish you!)

• Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-87)

Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-87)

• children mature through six stages of moral reasoning

• Punishment avoidance’ (“I would do this so I don’t get hit”),

  through ‘authority’ (“I would do this because it’s the rule”) to

  ‘universal ethical principles’ (“Everyone shares these rights.”)

• universal standards of morality

• as we mature, we all inevitably develop same beliefs, regardless of society

feminist Carol Gilligan

initially worked with Kohlberg, critical theorist who critiqued his work

– She identified flaws in Kohlberg’s methods.

– She argued that his focus on rational justice ignored other moral values such as caring.

Freud’s model of id, ego, superego helps us think about

the way humans learn to control their inner desires

Piaget’s four-stage theory of cognitive development pinpoints

the key ways social interaction helps us learn to think.

Mead and Piaget show importance of play in child development through…

interaction with the world and one another, the way we see reality is changed.

Sociologist & psychologists examine the problem of how a baby grows into…

a rational, self-limiting, moral individual with a distinct sense of itself

– Some elements of personality may be explicable through genes, but much also requires explanation by social forces.