Socialization Flashcards
What is socialization?
Acquisition of knowledge skills and motivation to paticipate in social life
How people learn in interaction with others
A lifelong process that enables us to develop ourselves, roles and identities
Is human behaviour nature or nurture?
Natutre
- Behaviour is determined by biological forces
Nurture
-Behaviour is influenced by the environment
What are the effects of social isolation?
Hampers the ability to develop human traits, handle lifes ups and downs and affect the way we age
- the case of Genie
-Immediate improvement when hospitalized and fostered
Can also drive people insane
Cultural isolation (Canada did this with Aboriginals in residential schools)
What are learning/behaviourist frame of reference?
Socialization is a product of classical or instrumental conditioning
Classical conditioning (Pavlov’s dogs)
Operant conditioning
- learning to make a certain response because the outcome that the response produces
-Being praised for conforming to social expectations and punished for deviance
What is symbolic interactionist frame of reference?
Assumptions:
-study interactions with others and environments
-the human infant is asocial at birth
-a socialized being is an actor as well as a reactor
Development through interaction with others
- different statues and roles with related expectations
-constantly changing through significant referent others
George Herber Mead
- people are born as tabula rasa or a blank slate
-social self-consisted od spontaneous I and socialized Me
-Me become predominant over time
What are functionalist perspectives?
Emphasis on the role and the importance of socialization
Functionalists examine how conformity helps to create and preserve social harmony
Intergenerational knowledge fosters solidarity and cooperation (passing down values and norms)
What are conflict perspectives?
Conflict theorists place more attention on power and social control created by socialization
Socialization is a process by which advantages and disadvantages are transmitted to the next genration. Inequality and the status quo are learned and taken for granted
How are feminist theorues and gender rols important in scialization?
Gender as a given key component of social life
How gender roles are socially constructed and perpetuates gendered inequalities
What are gender roles?
Expectations related to masculinity and femininity
-Feminists draw attention to the sexual objectification of girls in society and the gender specific toys and games manufactured marketed and purchased for children
What are sex roles?
Expectations related to biology
Many feminists challenge the assumption that anatomy os destiny and point to how this belief justifies the subordination of women
The family and socialization
Most important agen in socialization during infancy and childhood
- earliest source of emotional attachments
- shapes our values and beliefs
What families look like is becoming more diverse
Influenced by facotrs such as age at which parents have children, social class, ethnicity and family size
Reciprocal socialization
- not just linear
Peers and socialization
Often seen sas the 2nd most importatnt agent of socialization
affects us because they provide cimpanionship adn approval
Peer influence is quite stong during adolences
Peers allow youth to develop thier identities adn theu may reinforce both positive and negative behaviours
Research shows that peer pressure is a relatively short term influence
School and socialization
Provide environment for socialization seperate from teh family
Micro level
- student teacher interactons are important
- shape the values and beleifs of student
Macro level
- cahnnel student through progams to prepare them for he work place. Serves to allocate individuls for differnt positions in society
Unequal educational oppotunitie
The hidden cirriculum
-emphaisizes dominant societal values and social hieracrchies
Mass media and socialization
TV computers, newspapers radio magazines and entertainment are other secondary agents of socialisation
May have positive and negative effects
- educational informative entertaining
-can help people be more secure and expand social interactions
Media messages have been linked to crime, eating disorders and sexuality
Impact of media in shaping behaviours is often overstated
What is the life course of ageing and socializtion?
Socialization is an ongoing process
Anticipatory
-how individuals acquire values and orientations, that they will inhabit later in life
-May include doing things such as household chores, childhood jobs, sports, dance lessons and dating
Resocialization
-events, social movements affect our behaviours, relationships and self-images
-occurs during our ever-changing lives
