Sociology Unit 4: Socialization & Adolescence

Socialization: The process through which individuals learn basic skills, values, beliefs, and behavior patterns of society.

Nature v. Nurture

• Personality results from a blending of hereditary and environmental influences

  • Heredity: The transformation of genetic characteristics from parents the children. Physical characteristics and aptitudes.

  • Birth Order: Our personalities are influenced whether we are brothers, sisters, neither, or both. As well as oldest, middle, youngest, or only child.

  • Parental Characteristics: Age of parents can have an impact on the child’s personality.

  • The Cultural Environment: Each culture gives rise to a series of personality traits -model personalities- that are typical of members of the society.

Institutionalization

• Sociologist have studied the development of children living in institutions (orphanages, hospitals, etc)

• In a 1945 study in an orphanage children were given food and medical care but had little human interaction

• Results - within 2 year

  • 1/3 had passed

  • Fewer than 25% could walk, dress themselves, or use a spoon

  • Only one could talk in sentences

This study highlighted how important human interaction is to the development of children. Kids need that interaction and that attention, this helps teach them the basic skills that they will carry and use throughout their whole life.

Resocialization: A break with past experiences & learning new values & norms.

• Voluntary Resocialization: Individuals that choose to assume a new status.

  • ex: going off to college, moving to a new home, etc

• Involuntary Resocialization: When resocialization occurs against a person’s wishes.

  • ex: prisons, military boot camp, etc

The Development of Self

Self: Your conscious awareness of possessing a unique identity that separates you & your environment.

John Locke

• Every newly born individual is a tabula rasa, or clean slate on which just about anything can be written.

  • this meaning that when you are just born or young, you are impressionable and easily influenced.

Charles Horton Cooley

• We imagine ourselves how others perceive us. The looking-glass self.

  • we imagine how others see us and we then apply that to determine whether others view us the same way we view ourselves.

George Herbert Mead

• We anticipate what others think of us. Role-taking.

  • we try to predict what others do and will think of us, taking this and internalizing it into who we are as people.

Gender Socialization

Gender: Compromises of the behavioral and psychological traits considered appropriate for men and women.

Gender Role: The specific behaviors and attitudes that society establishes for men and women.

Gender Identity: The awareness of being masculine or feminine as those traits defined by society.

• Individuals can learn certain gender-roles and behaviors through socialization.

• Gender socialization typically begins at birth and then follows through life.

Adolescence: The period between the onset of puberty & the beginning of adulthood. Roughly 12-19.

• It is not universal

• Some cultures have “puberty-rites” that mark a kid’s entrance into adulthood

• The term did not exist before the Civil War

  • known as “small adults”

Biological Growth & Development

• Going through puberty

  • growth spurts

  • acne

  • voice changes

Undefined Satus

• Expectations are often vague for adolescents

  • age restrictions: voting at 18 but can’t drink till 21

Increased Decision Making

• Making many of your own choices

  • classes

  • college

  • career

Increased Pressure

• Pressure comes from many different sources

  • parents

  • peers

  • school

The Search for Self

• Teens beginning to determine their own values & establish personal norms

  • one’s hobbies

  • preparing for the future

Dating

• Is not universal

• Most commonly found in societies as a way to find one’s marriage partner

Courtship: A social interaction that has sole intent of marriage

Chapter 4

Personality: The behaviors, attitudes, and values that make up someone.

Socialization: The process through which individuals learn basic skills, values, beliefs, and behavior patterns of society.

Self: Your conscious awareness of possessing a unique identity that separates you & your environment.