Ch 4 - Socialisation

• Socialisation: how much of a person’s characteristics come from “nature” (hereditary) and “nurture” (social environment, interactions with others)

  → learned behaviour and adhering to society’s norms leads people to be fully socialised members in society

• Internalisation: occurs when behaviours and assumptions are learned so thoroughly that people no longer question, but simply accept them as correct

→ This occurs when people adopt a culturally wrong idea or mindset, and believe it to be normal due to their assumptions that other people believe the same thing

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Background to Socialisation:

• Identity: how one defines themselves. Identity is often lifted from culture, or how one was raised, and preferences

• Personality: a person’s relatively consistent pattern of behaviour, feelings, predispositions, and beliefs

  → this is not set for life, it can change according to your surroundings, location, or group of friends

• Feral children: children assumed to have been raised by animals, in the wilderness, isolated from humans

• Isolated children: children who were so deprived of interaction that they did not become socialised

→ Charles Horton Cooley concluded that the self is part of how society makes us

→ our sense of self develops from interactions with others

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• Looking-glass self: process by which this unique aspect of “humanness” develops

3 elements of looking-glass self:

→ Imagining how we appear to those around us Interpret others reactions

→ Develop a self-concept

→ George Mead used the term “generalised other” to refer to our perception of how people in general think of us

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• Agents of Socialisation: people who influence our orientation in life

- family: may be the first source of socialisation

- peer groups: people who we interact with on equal terms, and can affect our behavior the most

- mass media: channels of communication which affect our ideologies and are able to influence a major change in personality

• Social control: process by which groups are brought into conformity with dominant social expectations.

→ extreme conformity leads to people acting out and rebelling against social norms

• Roles: expected behaviour associated with a given status in society
• Social class: social location people hold based on their income, education, and occupational prestige → influences our behaviour, ideas, and attitudes
• Status: position that someone occupies

1- Ascribed: involuntary, inherited at birth and cannot be changed. Example: family

2- Achieved: voluntary, can be accomplished, can be either positive or negative. Example: Job, spouse, kids

• Status Symbol: objects to elicit recognition of status

→ signs that identify status

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• Social learning Theory: considers the formation of identity to be learned response to external social stimuli

→ emphasizes the societal context of socialisation, and looks at how external issues affect our behaviour whether it be conscious or subconscious

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• Resocialization: the process by which existing social roles are radically altered or replaced

  → especially likely when people enter institutional settings where the institution claims enormous control over the individual

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