Chapter 4 Flashcards
Socialization
lifelong learning process that involves figuring out or being taught how to be a social person in a given society. It brings changes in an individual’s sense of self.
Type of socialization
- Primary socialization is the socialization that occurs during childhood
– Secondary socialization is the socialization that occurs later in life
Socialization two contentious topics
– Determinism versus free will
– Biological determinism ( nature) vs social or cultural determinism (nurture)
Determinism
the degree to which an individual’s behaviour, attitudes, and other personal characteristics are determined or caused by something specific (e.g. genetic makeup)
Biological determinism
states that the greater part of who we are is determined by our roughly 26,000 genes
– E.g., if we are good at sports, music or art it is because we are somehow genetically predisposed to be so
Freud: Balancing the Biological
and the Socio-Cultural argued
both biological and social factors shape human personality
The human mind has three parts: the id, the superego, and the ego:
Id
represents our unconscious instinctive drives
Appetite learning, it response to appetite, desire driven. “I want this” “give me”
Eros
dedicated to pleasure seeking
Part of Id
Thanatos
the instinct for
aggression and violence
Ego
is the main agent of personality, driven by the id and its demands but restrained by the superego
If you are hungry, here is food grab it, it doesn’t matter who owns it, you see food grab and eat.
Superego
It is the part of the mind that polices the id (your conscience)
Moderator, the concious componet of one’s personality, “why do you want to grab, it is not yours”
Social (or Cultural) Determinism, a.k.a. Behaviourism
– “nurture” in the “nature versus nurture” debate
– Behaviourists emphasizes the power of learning in the development of behaviour
– Much of who we are and what we do is a consequence of how previous behaviour was responded to
Behaviour modification
Shaping someone’s behaviours through rewards and punishment
Edward Thorndike law of effect
1) Desired behaviours are rewarded and thus reinforced
2) Undesired behaviours are ignored or punished and thus likely abandoned
Limitations: humans have agency
Canadian sociologist Dennis H. Wrong (1961) argued that behaviourists work with an oversocialized representation of human beings
• Individuals are not passive recipients of the messages that our socializing agents give us, but have the agency to resist
Agents of socialization
are groups that have a significant impact on one’s socialization
– E.g., family, peers, neighbourhood/community, school,
mass media, the legal system, one’s culture and religion
George Herbert Mead, a symbolic interactionist, argued children are
socialized by others and internalize norms and values
Mead distinguished between two categories of agents of socialization
Significant others
Generalized others
Significant others:
key individuals, primarily parents, siblings and friends, whom young children imitate and model themselves after
Generalized others:
the attitudes, viewpoints, and general expectations of the society into which the child is socialized
Freud would call that the superego’s internalization of societal norms
Mead argued that the socialization of a child unfolds as a developmental sequence in three stages:
Preparatory stage
Play stage
Game stage
Preparatory stage:
involves the imitation on the part of the child
Imitating what other people are doing
Play stage
the child engages in role-taking and assumes the perspective of significant others (e.g., parents, grandparents, siblings)
Game Stage
the child is able to consider several roles and viewpoints simultaneously
Development in reasoning
Charles Cooley (1864–1929), also a symbolic interactionist, introduced the idea of
the looking-glass self as an explanation of how the self develops
– The individual’s self-image is based on how a person thinks they are viewed by others
There are three components to the looking-glass self:
How you imagine you appear to others
How you imagine those others judge your appearance
How you feel as a result (proud, self-confident, etc.)
Family
first and often most powerful agent of socialization
Peer group
can be defined as a social group sharing key characteristics such as age, social position, and interests