1. Chapter 5 Socializing the Individual

2. Build on What You Know • How might culture shape an individual’s personality? • How might status and role expectations shape personality?

3. What is Personality?? • Personality: • The sum total of behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, and values that are characteristic of an individual. • At an older age, personality traits change at a slower rate. • However, development varies from individual to individual.

4. Nature vs. Nurture: • Nature: • Heredity: the transmission of genetic characteristics from parents to children. • Instinct: unchanging, biologically inherited behavior pattern. • EX: birds migrating

5. Nurture: • Behavior is result of social environment. • EX: Your friends can shape your personality.

6. Ivan Pavlov • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhqumfpxuzI&feature=related&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active

7. Sociobiology: • The systematic study of the biological basis of all social behavior. • They believe that most of behavior is determined by biological factors.

8. What do most sociologists believe???? • Assume that personality and social behavior result from a blending of hereditary and social environmental influences.

9. Factors That Shape Personality Development • Heredity – physical traits, aptitudes (capacity to learn a particular skill), inherited characteristics, biological drives. • Parents – parental characteristics, such as age, education, religion, and economic status. • Birth order – personalities are shaped by whether one has siblings. • Cultural environment – determines the basic personality types found in a society. (EX: male vs. female)

10. Are you a product of your cultural environment?? • Does the term Dalai Lama best describe a spiritual leader or an Eastern religion? • If someone gave you some Lapsang souchong, would you spread it on bread or drink it? • Is Lhasa a type of dog or a capital city? • In which country do you think yak butter is an important part of the people’s diet- India, Russia, or Tibet? • The English translation for the word Chomolungma is “Goddess Mother of the World.” What do you think Chomolungma is?

11. Isolation in Childhood: • Feral children: • Wild or untamed children. • Children isolated in their homes by parents/family members • Children had no reasoning ability or no manners, and no ability to control their bodily functions.

12. Anna and Isabelle • Anna: • Confined to an attic at 6 months old. • Result: (age 6) Could not walk, talk, feed herself, expressionless face. • Later on: could eventually talk, feed herself, could talk in phrases…died at 10 years old.

13. Isabelle: • She and her deaf mother confined to a dark closet. • Result: • Used gestures to communicate • Did not learn to speak • Crawled on her hands and knees • Made grunting, animal-like sounds • Ate with hands • Later On…: • Able to overcome her early social deprivation due to the constant contact with her mother.

14. Genie: • Confined at age of 20 months to a small bedroom. • Tied to an infant's potty-chair and nights wrapped in a sleeping bag. • Totally silent world!! • Toys: 2 plastic raincoats; empty cottage cheese container!

15. Result of Genie: • Discovered at 13 years old. • Could not stand straight!! • Social/Psychological skills of one-year-old. • At 21 years of age, still could not function as a social being.

16. Institutionalization: • Children in orphanages and hospitals: • Children wasted away from lack of love and attention. • After Psychologist Rene Spitz studied an orphanage in 1945… • Fewer than 25% could walk by themselves, dress themselves, or use a spoon.

17. Isolation in Childhood and Development • Research shows that a healthy cultural environment is essential for a child’s full development. • Isolation can lead to severe effects such as causing children to waste away and die or to have stunted development.

18. Secrets of the Wild Child • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEnkY2iaKis&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active

19. Socialization • In life one person can take on many roles. Within those roles are expected behaviors. When you came into school today, you took on the role of a student. What expectations are involved with being a student? If you are able to identify expectations, how did you come to know what those expected behaviors are?

20. How Sense of Self Emerges • Through interaction with social and cultural environments people are transformed into members of society • The interactive process through which people learn the basic skills, values, beliefs, and behavior patterns of a society is called socialization • Self: Your conscious awareness of possessing a distinct identity that separates you and your environment from other members of society.

21. Three Theories of Socialization 1. John Locke – The Tabula Rosa 2. Charles Horton Cooley – The Looking Glass Self 3. George Herbert Mead – Role-Taking

22. John Locke – The Tabula Rosa • Each person is a blank slate at birth (tabula rosa), with no personality. • People develop personality as a result of their social experiences. • Moreover, infants can be molded into any type of person.

23. Charles Horton Cooley – The Looking Glass Self • Infants have no sense of person or place. • Children develop an image of themselves based on how others see them. • Looking-glass self • Other people act as a mirror, reflecting back the image a child projects through their reactions to the child’s behavior.

24. Need an Example???? • A child will develop a sense of self by the way his/her primary group members act around them (EX: parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, etc….) • If parents treat a child as capable and competent…. they will produce a capable and competent child.

25. George Herbert Mead – Role-Taking • People not only come to see themselves as others see them but also take on or pretend to take on the roles of others through imitation, play, and games. • Role-taking: taking or pretending to take the role of others. • This process enables people to anticipate what others expect of them.

26. George Mead (Cont’d) • Significant others: • Specific people, such as parents, brothers, sisters, other relatives, and friends, who have a direct influence on our socialization. • Generalized other: • Internalized attitudes, expectations, and viewpoints of society that we use to guide our behavior and reinforce our sense of self.

27. George Mead (Cont’d) He believes the self consists of 2 related parts: • I: the unsocialized, spontaneous, self-interested component of personality and self-identity. • Me: the part of yourself that is aware of the expectations and attitudes of society – the socialized self. ** To be a well-rounded member of society, a person needs BOTH aspects of the self!

28. Agents of Socialization: • The specific individuals, groups, and institutions that enable socialization to take place.

29. Agents of Socialization 1. Family: – most important agent • Principal socializer of young children. • Intended vs. unintended socialization. • “Do as I say, not as I do.”

30. Agents of Socialization: 2. Peer group: – primary group composed of individuals of roughly equal age and social characteristics, particularly influential during pre-teenage and early teenage years. • Peer-group goals are sometimes at odds with the goals of the larger society…can be alarming to family.

31. Agents of Socialization: 3. School: – plays a major role! • Much of socialization is deliberate. • Also, unintentional socialization • EX: Teachers become models, such as manners of speech, styles of dress, etc….

32. Agents of Socialization: 4. Mass media: – books, films, the Internet, magazines and television, not face-to-face.

33. Overall Importance of Family and Education • Teach children important life skills. • Teach values, norms, and beliefs.

34. Resocialization: • Total institution: • A setting in which people are isolated from the rest of society for a set period of time and are subject to tight control. • EX:Prisons, military boot camp, and psychiatric hospitals.

35. Resocialization: • Involves a break with past experiences and the learning of new values and norms. • Goal: • To change an individuals personality and social behavior. • Individual identity taken away! • (EX: hair cut; uniforms; etc….) • Once self is weakened, then easier to convince others to conform to new patterns of behavior.