Chapter 5:Socialization(Social Experience is The Key To Our Humanity)

Socialization: The lifelong learning experience by which individuals develop their human potential.

Humans need social experience to learn their culture.

Personality: A person’s fairly consistent patterns of acting, thinking, and feeling.

Human Development(Nature and Nurture)

Charles Darwin’s study of evolution lead to the “nature” argument.

Traits that enhance survival emerge as a species “nature”.

John Watson developed a theory called behaviorism.

Behavior is not instinctive, but learned.

Social scientists are cautious about describing behavior as instinctive.

Social Isolation

Harry and Margaret Harlow discovered that infant monkeys left in isolation suffered emotional and behavioral damage.

Three children, Anna, Isabelle, Genie were left in isolation and suffered emotional damage.

Social experience performs a crucial role in forming personality.

Seven TheoristsOn Understanding Socialization

1. Sigmund Freud 2. Jean Piaget 3. Lawrence Kohlberg 4. Carol Gilligan 5. George Herbert Mead 6. Charles Horton Cooley 7. Eric Erickson

Sigmund Freud(The Elements of Personality)

Sigmund Freud believed that biology plays a major role in human development.

Humans have two basic needs:

1. Need to bond 2. Need to be

aggressive

Freud’s model of personal has three basic parts:

1. The Id. 2. The Ego. 3. The Superego.

Culture, in the form of the superego represses selfish demands.

Jean Piaget(Cognitive Development)

Jean Piaget studied human cognition; how people think.

He identified four stages of cognitive development:

1. The Sensorimotor Stage. 2. The Preoperational Stage. 3. The Concrete Operational Stage. 4. The Formal Operational Stage.

Jean Piaget’sFour Stages of Cognitive Development

Stage 1: Sensorimotor: the level of human development at which individuals experience the world only through their senses.

Stage 2: Preoperational: the level of human development at which individuals first use language and other symbols.

Stage 3: Concrete Operational: the level of human development at which individuals first perceive causal connections in their surroundings.

Stage 4: Formal Operational: the level of human development at which individuals think abstractly and critically.

Lawrence Kohlberg(Moral Development)

Kohlberg studied moral reasoning, the ways individuals judge situations as right or wrong.

Young children experience the world in terms of pain and pleasure.

Teenagers lose their sense of selfishness as they become familiar with various cultural norms.

Individuals begin to think about ethical principles beyond society’s norms.

Carol Gilligan(The Gender Factor)

Gilligan compared the moral development of boys and girls.

The two sexes use different standards of rightness.

Boys use a justice perspective, relying on formal rules.

Girls use a care and responsibility perspective, relying on personal relationships.

George Herbert Mead(The Social Self)

Mead believed social behaviorism explains how social experience creates personality.

Mead’s central concept is the self: the part of the individual’s personality composed of self-awareness and self-image.

The self only develops with social experience.

Building On Social Experience

Charles Horton Cooley(The Social Self)

Cooley used the term the looking-glass self: a self- image based on how we think others see us.

Others represent a mirror in which we can see our self.

What we think of ourselves depends on what we think others think of us.

Eric H. Erikson(Eight Stages Of Development)

Erikson felt we face eight challenges throughout the life course.

Success at one stage prepares us for meeting the next.

He assumes all people meet these challenges at exactly the order presented.

Eric Erikson’s Eight Stages of Human Development

Theoretical Perspective Crisis Favorable Outcome

Stage 1: (1 year) Trust vs. mistrust Faith in the environment and in others

InfancyStage 2: ( 2-3 years) Autonomy vs. Shame and doubt Feelings of self-control and

adequacy ToddlerhoodStage 3: ( 4-5 years) Initiative vs. guilt Ability to begin one’s own

activities PreschoolStage 4: (6-12 years) Industry vs. inferiority Confidence in productive skills; Preadolescence learning how to work

Stage 5: (12-18 years) Identity vs. role confusion Integrated image of oneself as a Adolescence unique person

Stage 6: (18-35 years) Intimacy vs. isolation Ability to form bonds of love and Early Adulthood friendship with others

Stage 7: (35-60 years) Generativity vs. stagnation Concern for family, society, and future Middle Adulthood generations.

Stage 8: (Over 60 years) Integrity vs. despair Sense of dignity and fulfillment; Late Adulthood willingness to face death

Whom Do You Trust

Agents of Socialization

The family has the greatest impact on socialization.

Schooling enlarges children social world’s to include people with different backgrounds.

Peer groups: social groups whose members have interest, social positions, and ages in common.

Mass media: Impersonal communications aimed at a vast audience.

Television Ownership in Global Perspective

Socialization and the Life Course

Learning continues throughout our lives.

Childhood is currently becoming shorter.

Adolescence is often a period of social and emotional turmoil.

Adulthood is characterized by early goal setting and later reflection.

Old age begins in the mid-sixties in the United States.

Old Age

The later years of adulthood and the final stage of life itself begins about age 65.

One in eight people is over age 55, and the elderly outnumber teenagers.

“By the year 2030, the number of seniors will double to 70 million, and almost half the country’s people will be over age 40” (Macionis, 2006).

Gerontology: the study of aging and the elderly.

Death And Dying

“85 percent of the people in the United States die after age 55” (U.S. National Center for Health Statistics. 2002).

Kubler-Ross described death as an orderly transition involving five stages.

Stage 1. Denial Stage 2. Anger Stage 3. Negotiation Stage 4. Resignation Stage 5. Acceptance

Resocialization:Total Institutions

Two million people experience being confined in prisons or mental hospitals.

Total institution: a setting in which people are isolated from the rest of society and manipulated by an administrative staff.

Total institutions only serve one purpose:

Resocialization: radically changing an inmate’s personality by carefully controlling the environment.

Their identity is broken down, and a new self is re-built.