Lesson 2

1. Lesson 2 Socialization

2. Chapter Outline • Perspectives on Socialization • Agents of Childhood Socialization • Processes of Socialization • Outcomes of Socialization • Adult Socialization

3. Perspectives On Socialization • Which is the more influential on behavior, heredity or environment? • Both factors influence the who we become. • However, some theorists believe heredity is most important, while others believe social influences (culture and society) are more important. • This argument has never been completely resolved. • Consider the case of Genie

4. Socialization • The ways in which individuals learn and recreate skills, knowledge, values, motives, and roles appropriate to their position in a group or society. • Socialization makes us like most other members of society in important ways. • Socialization also produces our individuality.

5. Developmental Theory • Socialization is dependent on biologically determined physical and psychological maturation. • The development of many social behaviors as primarily due to physical and neurological maturation.

6. Developmental Theory Responsiveness to another person develops early in life. By 16 weeks of age, a child smiles in response to a human face. By 28 weeks, a child can distinguish caregivers from strangers.

7. The Developmental Perspective • Studies show the age at which children gain certain motor skills and social skills. • By age one an infant enjoys watching TV. • By age one a child can run and has good control of his/her hands.

8. The Social Learning Perspective • This perspective emphasizes that children gain their cognitive and behavioral skills interacting with others and their environment. • Children must learn about the environment and learn the language in order to communicate their needs to others. • Children learn the shared meanings of the groups in which they are reared. • What a child learns depends on the group in which he/she was raised.

9. Interpretive Perspective • A child must learn the meanings common to the social group (e.g. the family, the neighborhood, the classroom). • A child’s participation in cultural routines, which are recurrent and predictable activities basic to day-to-day social life. • Get up, get dressed, brush your teeth, go to school. • Learning the routines requires communication with parents, other adults, and other children.

10. Agents of Childhood Socialization • Examples of common agents of socialization in an industrialized society are: • Family • Peers • School • Media

11. Family • Family is an ascribed social institution and socializing agent. • The family is the single most significant agent of socialization in all societies and teaches us the basic values and norms that shape our identity. • Research demonstrates that an emotionally responsive caregiver is essential for normal child development. • The type, quality, and amount of care determines the child’s outcome.

12. Peers • Peers provide very different social skills and often become more immediately significant than the family, especially as children move through adolescence. • Peer group socialization has been increasing over the past century because young people are attending school for longer periods of time. • Peer associations make a major contribution to the development of the child’s identity. • A child’s interaction with peers is spontaneous, open, and does not need tact. • Peer interaction is voluntary; not ascribed.

13. Discussion Questions • TRUE or FALSE? • Adolescents resist parental directions and prefer to follow the lead of their peers. Explain your answer. • What are the benefits and weakness derived from following your peer?

14. Schools • School provide secondary, non-personal socialization. • Praise, blame, and privileges shape student behavior. • Traits taught in school facilitate social interaction throughout life in a particular culture or society (reading, writing, punctuality, etc.)

15. Mass Media • The mass media has become an important agent of socialization, often overriding the family and other institutions in instilling values and norms. • The American mass media plays a major role in teaching Americans to buy and consume goods and other values.

16. Shaping • Shaping is learning in which an agent initially reinforces any behavior that remotely resembles the desired response. • Later on increasing correspondence between the learner’s behavior and the desired response is expected.

17. Shaping Shaping is a process through which many complex behaviors, such as playing the viola, are learned.

18. Punishment • Definition: The presentation of a painful or discomforting stimulus that decreases the probability that a behavior will occur. • Punishment is widely used in the United States. Our culture is tolerant of or encourages its use. • Punishment is one of the major child rearing practices used by parents. • Research indicates that punishment is effective in some circumstances but not in others.

19. True or False? • A study demonstrated that: • A verbal reprimand delivered as the child engaged in a particular behavior was more effective if the child was also given a reason why it was wrong.

20. Observational Learning Observational learning is an important process through which children learn appropriate behaviors.

21. Internalization • How initially external behavioral standards can become internal and guide behavior. • Behavior is internalized when the person engages in it without considering rewards or punishments. • When a person stands up for his/her own beliefs, even when it is unpopular to do so, he/she has internalized his/her beliefs.

22. Outcomes of Socialization • Outcomes of socialization include: • Gender role • Linguistic and cognitive competence

23. Gender Role • Gender role is a behavioral expectations associated with one’s gender. • Children learn gender appropriate behaviors by: • Observing their parents’ interaction • Copying gender appropriate behavior • Interacting with parents who reward behavior consistent with gender roles and punish behavior inconsistent with these roles.

24. Language • Using language to communicate with others is a prerequisite for full participation in social groups. • A child’s acquisition of speech reflects the development of the necessary perceptual and motor skills and the impact of social learning. • Recall Mead and Cooley’s “I” and the “Me” • Proper use of pronouns is key!

25. Knowledge of Social Rules • To interact with others, people must learn social rules. • Norms are beliefs about which behaviors are acceptable and which are unacceptable in specific situations. • Without norms, (1) coordinated activity would be difficult, and (2) we would find it hard to achieve our goals.

26. Adult Socialization • In adulthood, socialization is concerned with equipping the individual to function effectively in adult roles. • Three processes: • Role acquisition • Anticipatory socialization • Role discontinuity

27. Socialization Later in Life • Resocialization is the process of replacing previously learned norms and values with new ones as a part of a transition in life. • Learn how to be a husband/wife, employee, etc.

28. Socialization Later in Life (cont) • A dramatic form of resocialization takes place in a total institution, which is an institution in which individuals are cut off from the rest of society so that their lives can be controlled and regulated for the purpose of systematically stripping away previous roles and identities in order to create a new one.

29. Resocialization (cont) • Mortification of self, the most dramatic type of resocialization, occurs in such institutions as the military, POW camps, and mental hospitals. • Often involves “degradation ceremonies”