unit 3 socialisation

• Socialization

  • Process of learning group characteristics

  • Includes knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, norms, and actions

  • Essential for understanding culture

• Personality

  • Sum total of behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs

  • Changes over time based on experience and genetics

• Nature vs. Nurture

  • Nature: Genetic factors and heredity

  • Nurture: Human environment and interactions with others

  • Both essential for human characteristics and culture development

• Sociobiology

  • Study of biological basis of social behavior

  • Nature plays a crucial role in human characteristics

• Natural Factors in Personality Development

  • Heredity, aptitude, instinct, parental characteristics

  • Examples like inherited mental illness and innate talent

• Cultural Environment

  • Determines basic personality types in society

  • Examples include competitive, collaborative, perfectionist, etc.

• Deprived Animals

  • Harlow's study on baby monkeys in isolation

  • Lack of social resources leads to disordered behavior

• Effects of Lack of Caring Cultural Environment

  • Correlates with learning delays, lower IQ, substance abuse, etc.

• Feral "Wild" Children

  • Raised by animals, lack social skills

  • Examples like Victor of Aveyron

• Development of Self

  • Self develops through interactions with others

  • Monitoring reactions from others is part of socialization

• Self

  • Conscious awareness of distinct identity

  • Linked to theory of mind and morality

• Theories of Self

  • John Locke, Charles Horton Cooley, George Herbert Mead, Erving Goffman

• Looking-Glass Self

  • Self develops from interactions with others

  • Includes imagining how we appear and interpreting reactions

• Role-Taking

  • Understanding others' feelings and thoughts

  • Promotes cooperation in human groups

• Impression Management

  • Social interaction as a drama on a stage

  •  The ‘self’ projected fits the context, such as in class, meeting friends for dinner, at a job interview, in da club 😎, making cringy GenX presentations, etc.

Structural functionalists

would say that socialization is essential to society, both because it trains members to operate successfully within it and because it perpetuates culture by transmitting it to new generations.

A conflict theorist

might argue that socialization reproduces inequality from generation to generation by conveying different expectations and norms to those with different social characteristics.

A symbolic interactions

studying socialization is concerned with face-to-face exchanges and symbolic communication.

Agents of Socialization:

The specific individuals, groups, and institutions that enable socialization to take place

The Family

the most important agent of socialization in almost every society (primary socialization)

The School Secondary socialization

is the process through which children become socialized outside the home, often starts with……

Peer Groups:

Primary group composed of individuals of roughly equal age and similar social characteristics (pre-teenage and early teenage years)

Mass Media: Instruments of communication that reach large audiences with no personal contact between those sending the information and those receiving it (movies, internet, apps, radio, television, printed, other electronic media)

Roles:

Behaviors expected from a certain status;

Role Conflict

occurs when the roles associated with one status clash with another status one fulfills; e.g. being employed and being a parent

Role Strain

occurs when roles associated with a single status clash with itself; e.g. student has to study for test A and test B at the same time

Resocialization:

The process of learning new norms, values, attitudes, and behaviors

Total Institution:

Place where people are cut off from the rest of society and where they come under almost total control of the officials who are in charge