Department of Political Science and Sociology

North South University

Introduction to Sociology (SOC 101)
Lecture 5 Socialization
Faculty : Dr. Naseem Akhter Hussain

Introduction
Sociologists, in general, are interested in the patterns of behavior and attitudes that emerge
throughout the life course, from infancy to old age. These patterns are part of the lifelong
process of socialization, in which people learn the attitudes, values, and behaviors
appropriate for members of a particular culture. Socialization occurs through human
interactions. We learn a great deal from those people most important in our lives-immediate
family members, best friends, and teachers. But we also learn from people we see on the
street, on television, on the Internet, and in films and magazines.

The Role of Socialization

What makes us who we are? Is it the genes we are born with? Or the environment in which
we grow up? Researchers have traditionally clashed over the relative importance of biological
inheritance and environmental factors in human development – a conflict called the nature
versus nurture (or heredity versus environment) debate. Socialization provides for the
transmission of a culture form one generation to the next and thereby for the long-term
continuance of a society.

Socialization also shapes our self-images. For example, in the United States, a person who is
viewed as “too heavy” or “too short” does not conform to the ideal cultural standard of
physical attractiveness. This kind of unfavorable evaluation can significantly influence the
person’s self-esteem. In this sense, socialization experiences can help to shape our
personalities. In everyday speech, the term personality is used to refer to a person’s typical
patterns of attitudes, needs, characteristics and behavior.

How much of a person’s personality is shaped by culture, as opposed to inborn trait s? In

what ways does socialization continue into adulthood? Who are the most powerful agents of
socialization? In this chapter we will examine the role of socialization in human
development.

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Social Environment: The Impact of Isolation
In the 1994 movie Nell, Jodie Foster played a young woman hidden from birth by her mother
in a backwoods cabin. Raised without normal human contact, Nell crouches like an animal,
screams wildly and speaks or sings in a language all her own. Tis movie was drawn from the
actual account of an emaciated 16-year-old boy who mysteriously appeared in 1828 in the
town square of Nuremberg, Germany (Lipson 1994).

The Case of Isabelle

Some viewers may have found the story of Nell difficult to believe, hut the painful childhood
of Isabelle was all too real. For the first six years of her life, Isabelle lived in almost total
seclusion in a darkened room. She had little contact with other people, with the exception of
her mother, who could neither speak nor hear. Isabelle’s mother’s parents had been so deeply
ashamed of Isabelle’s illegitimate birth that they kept her hidden away from the world. Ohio
authorities finally discovered the child in 1938, when Isabelle’s, mother escaped from her
parents’ home, taking her daughter with her.

When she was discovered at age six, Isabelle could not speak. She could merely make
various croaking sounds. Her only communications with her mother were simple gestures.
Isabelle had been largely deprived of the typical interactions and socialization experiences of
childhood. Since she had actually seen few people, she initially showed a strong fear of
strangers and reacted almost like a wild animal when confronted with an unfamiliar person.
As she became accustomed to seeing certain individuals, her reaction changed to one of
extreme apathy. At first, observers believed that Isabelle was deaf, but she soon began to
react to nearby sounds. On tests of maturity, she scored at the level of an infant rather than a
six-year-old.

Specialists developed a systematic training program to help Isabelle adapt to human

relationships and socialization. After a few days of training, she made her first attempt to
verbalize. Although she started slowly, Isabelle quickly passed through six years of
development. In a little over two months, she was speaking in complete sentences. Nine
months later, she could identify both words and sentences. Before Isabelle reached the age of
nine, she was ready to attend school with other children. By her 14th year, she was in sixth
grade, doing well in school, and emotionally well-adjusted.

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Yet, without an opportunity to experience socialization in her first six years, Isabelle had
been hardly human in the social sense when she was first discovered. Her inability to
communicate at the time of her discovery-despite her physical and cognitive potential to
learn-and her remarkable progress over the next few years underscore the impact of
socialization on human development (K. Davis 1940, 1947).

The Case of Orphanage

Isabelle’s experience is important for researchers because it is one of few cases of children
reared in total isolation. Unfortunately, however, there are many cases of children raised in
extremely neglectful social circumstances. Recently, attention has focused on infants and
young children in orphanages in the formerly communist countries of Eastern Europe. For
example, in Romanian orphanages, babies lie in their cribs for l8 or 20 hours a day, curled
against their feeding bottles and receiving little adult care. Such minimal attention continues
for the first five years of their lives. Many of them are fearful of human contact and prone to
unpredictable antisocial behavior. This situation came to light as families in North America
and Europe began adopting thousands of these children. The adjustment problems for about
20 percent of them were often so dramatic that the adopting families suffered guilty fears of
being ill-fit adoptive parents. Many of them have asked for assistance in dealing with the
children. Slowly, efforts are being made to introduce the deprived youngsters to feelings of
attachment that they have never experienced before (Groza et al. 1999; Talbot 1998).

Increasingly, researchers are emphasizing the importance of early socialization experiences

for children who grow up in more normal environments. We now know that it is not enough
to care for an infant’s physical needs; parents must also concern themselves with children’s
social development. If, for example, children are discouraged from having friends, they will
miss out on social interactions with peers that are critical for emotional growth.

Primate Studies
Studies of animals raised in isolation also support the importance of socialization in
development. Harry Harlow 1971), a researcher at the primate laboratory of the University of
Wisconsin, conducted tests with rhesus monkeys that had been raised away from their
mothers and away from contact with other monkeys. As was the case with Isabelle, the rhesus
monkeys raised in isolation were fearful and easily frightened. They did not mate, and the

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females who were artificially inseminated became abusive mothers. Apparently, isolation had
had a damaging effect on the monkeys.

The Influence of Heredity

Identical twins Oskar Stohr and Jack Yufe were separated soon after their birth and raised on
different continents in very different cultural settings. Oskar was reared as a strict Catholic by
his maternal grandmother in the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia. As a member of the Hitler
Youth movement in Nazi Germany, he learned to hate Jews. By contrast, his brother Jack was
reared in Trinidad by the twins’ Jewish father. Jack joined an Israeli kibbutz (a collective
settlement) at age l7 and later served in the Israeli army. But when the twins were reunited in
middle age, some startling similarities emerged: They both wore wire-rimmed glasses and
mustaches. They both liked spicy foods and sweet liqueurs, were absent-minded, flushed the
toilet before using it, stored rubber bands on their wrists, and dipped buttered toast in their
coffee (Holden 1980). The twins also differed in many important respects:

The Self and Socialization

We all have various perceptions, feelings, and beliefs about who we are and what we are like.
How do we come to develop the.se? Do they change as we age? We were not born with these
understandings. Sociologists recognize that we create our own designation: the self. The self
is a distinct identity that sets us apart from others. It is not a static phenomenon, but continues
to develop and change throughout our lives. Sociologists and psychologists alike have
expressed interest in how the individual develops and modifies the sense of self as a result of
social interaction.

Sociological Approaches to the Self

Cooley: Looking-Glass Self
In the early 1900s, Charles Horton Cooley advanced the belief that we learn who we are by
interacting with others. Our view of ourselves, then, comes not only from direct
contemplation of our personal qualities but also from our impressions of how others perceive
us.

The process of developing a self-identity or self-concept has three phases. First, we imagine
how we present ourselves to others-to relatives, friends, even strangers on the street. Then we
imagine how others evaluate us (attractive, intelligent, shy, or strange). Finally, we develop

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some sort of feeling about ourselves, such as respect or shame, as a result of these
impressions (Cooley 1902; M. Howard 1989).

A subtle but critical aspect of Cooley’s looking-glass self is that the self-results from an
individual’s “imagination” of how others view him or her. As a result, we can develop self-
identities based on incorrect perceptions of how others see us. A student may react strongly to
a teacher’s criticism and decide (wrongly) that the instructor views the student as stupid. This
misperception can easily be converted into a negative self-identity through the following
process: (l) the teacher criticized me, (2) the teacher must think that I’m stupid, (3) I am
stupid. Yet self-identities are also subject to change. If the student receives an A at the end of
the course, he or she will probably no longer feel stupid.

Mead: Stages of the Self

George Herbert Mead continued Cooley’s exploration of interactionism theory. Mead (1934,
1964a) developed a useful model of the process by which the self emerges, defined by three
distinct stage: the preparatory stage, the play stage and the game stage.

The Preparatory Stage: During the preparatory stage, children merely imitate the people
around them, especially family members with whom they continually interact. As they grow
older, children become more adept at using symbols to communicate with other. Symbols are
the gestures, objects and language that form the basis of human communication. By
interacting with relatives and friends as well as by watching cartoons on television and
looking at picture books, children in the preparatory stage begin to understand the use of
symbols.

The Play Stage: As children develop skill in communicating through symbols, they
gradually become more aware of social relationships. As a result, during the play stage, they
begin to pretend to be other people. Just as an actor “becomes” a character, a child becomes a
doctor, parent, superhero, or ship captain.

The Game Stage: In Mead’s third stage, the game stage, the child of about eight or nine
years old no lo9nger just plays roles, but begins to consider several actual tasks and
relationships simultaneously. At this point in development, children grasp not only their own

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social positions, but also those of others around them- just as in a football game the players
must understand their own and everyone else’s positions.

Goffman: Presentation of the Self

How do we manage our “self”? How do we display to others who we are? Erving Goffman, a
sociologist associated with the interactionism perspective, suggested that many of our daily
activities involve attempts to convey impressions of who we are. His observations help us to
understand the sometimes subtle yet critical ways in which we learn to present ourselves
socially.

Early in life, the individual learns to slant his or her presentation of the self in order to create
distinctive appearances and satisfy particular audiences. Describes an everyday example of
this concept-the way students behave after receiving their exam grades. For example, a clerk
may try to appear busier than he or she actually is if a supervisor happens to be watching. A
customer in a singles’ bar may try to look as if he or she is waiting for a particular person to
arrive.

In some cultures, people engage in elaborate deceptions to avoid losing face. In Japan, for
example, where lifetime employment has until recently been the norm, “company men”
thrown out of work. Rising as usual in the morning, donning suit and tie, and heading for the
business district. But instead of going to the office, they congregate at places such as Tokyo’s
Hibiya Library where they pass the time by reading before returning home at the usual hour.

Anticipatory Socialization and Resocialization

Anticipatory socialization refers to the processes of socialization in which a Person
"rehearses" for future positions, occupations, and social relationships. A culture can function
more efficiently and smoothly if members become acquainted with the norms, values, and
behavior associated with a social position before actual$ assuming drat status. Preparation for
many aspects of adult life begins with anticipatory socialization during childhood and
adolescence, and continues throughout our lives as we prepare for new responsibilities.

Agents of socialization

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As we have seen, the culture of the United States is defined by rather gradual movements
from one stage of socialization to the next. The continuing and lifelong socialization process
involves many different social forces that influence our lives and alter our self-images.

Family
The lifelong Process of learning begins shortly after birth. Since newborns can hear, see,
smell, taste, and feel heat, cold, and pain, they are constantly orienting themselves to the
surrounding world' Human beings, especially family members, constitute an important part of
their social environment. People minister to the baby's needs by feeding, cleansing, carrying,
and comforting the baby.

Cultural Influences
The development of the self is a critical aspect of the early years of one's life- But how
children develop this sense of self can vary from one society to another. For example, parents
in the United States would never think of sending six-year-olds to school unsupervised. But
this is the norm in Japan, where parents push their children to commute to school on their
own front an early age. In cities like Tokyo, first genders must learn to negotiate buses,
subways, and long walks. To ensure their safety, parents carefully lay out rules: never talk to
strangers; check with a station attendant if you get off at the wrong stop; if you miss your
stop stay on to the end of the line, then call; take stairs, not escalators; don't fall asleep. While
we consider the family's role in socialization, we need to remember that children do not play
a passive role. They are active agents, influencing and altering the families, schools and
communities of which they are a part (Corsaro 1997).

The Impact of Race and Gender

In the United State, social development includes exposure to cultural assumptions regarding
gender and race. African American parents for example, have learned that children as young
as two years old can absorb negative. Messages about Black in children’s books, toys, and
television shows--all of which are designed primarily for White consumers. At the same time,
African American children are exposed more often than others to the inner-city youth gang
culture. Because most Black, even those who are middle class, live near very poor
neighborhoods, children such as Charisse are susceptible to these influences, despite their
parents’ strong family values.

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The term gender roles refer to expectations regarding the proper behavior, attitudes, and
activities of males and females. For example, we traditionally think of “toughness” as
masculine-and desirable only in men-while we view “tenderness” as feminine. As the
primary agents of childhood socialization, parents play a critical role in guiding children into
those gender roles deemed appropriate in a society. Other adults, older siblings, the mass
media, and religious and educational institutions also have a noticeable impact on a child’s
socialization into feminine and-masculine norms.

School
Like the family schools have an explicit mandate to socialize people in the United States-and
especially children-into the norms and values of our culture. Schools in this country foster
competition through built-in systems of reward and punishment, such as grades and
evaluations by teachers. Consequently, a child who is working intently to learn a new skill
can sometimes come to feel stupid and unsuccessful. However, as the self-matures, children
become capable of increasingly realistic assessments of their intellectual, physical, and social
abilities. Schools, as agents of socialization, fulfill the function of teaching children the
values and customs of the larger society. In teaching students the values and customs of the
larger society, schools in the United States have tradition ally socialized children into
conventional gender roles.

Peer Group
Ask l3-year-oids who matters most in their lives and they are likely to answer “friends”. As a
child grows older, the family becomes somewhat less important in social development.
Instead, peer groups increasingly assume the role of Mead’s significant others. Within the
peer group, young people associate with others who are approximately their own age, and
who often enjoy a similar social status.

Peer groups can ease the transition to adult responsibilities, At home, parents tend to
dominate; at school, the teenager must contend with teachers and administrators. But within
the peer group, each member can assert himself or herself in a way, that may not be possible
elsewhere. Nevertheless, almost all adolescents in our culture remain economically dependent
on their parents, and most are emotionally dependent as well.

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Peers can be the source of harassment as well as support. This problem has received
considerable attention in Japan, where bullying in school is a constant fact of life. Groups of
students act together to humiliate, disgrace, or torment a specific student, a practice known in
Japan as ijime. Most students go along with the bullying out of fear that they might be the
target sometime. In some cases the ijime has led to a child’s suicide.

Gender differences arc noteworthy among adolescents. Boys and girls are socialized by their
parents, peers, and the media to identify many of the same paths to popularity, but to different
degrees. The social grouping of adolescents also varies by gender. Males are more likely to
spend time in groups of males, whereas females are more likely to interact with a single other
female. This pattern reflects differences in levels of emotional intimacy; teenage males are
less likely to develop strong emotional ties than are females. Instead, males are more inclined
to share in group activities. These patterns are evident among adolescents in many societies
besides the United States (Dornbusch 1989).

Mass Media and Technology

In the last 80 years, media innovations-radio, motion pictures, recorded music, television, and
the Internet-have become important agents of socialization. Television, in particular, is a
critical force in the socialization of children. Television, however, is not always a negative
socializing influence. Television programs and even commercials can introduce young people
to unfamiliar lifestyles and cultures.

Workplace
Learning to behave appropriately within an occupation is a fundamental aspect of human
socialization. In the United States, working full-time confirms adult status; it indicates that
one has passed out of adolescence. In a sense, socialization into an occupation can represent
both a harsh reality (“I have to work in order to buy food and pay the rent”) and the
realization of an ambition (“1’ve always wanted to be an airline pilot”).

Some observers feel that the increasing number of teenagers who are working earlier in life
and for longer hours are now finding the workplace almost as important an agent of
socialization as school.

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College students today recognize that occupational socialization is not socialization into one
lifetime occupation. They anticipate going through a number of jobs. A survey of college
students and recent graduates found that 78 percent plan to stay with their first employer for
no longer than three years. One out of every four anticipates staying with a first employer
only one year.

The state
Social scientists have increasingly recognized the importance of the government as an agent
of socialization because of its growing impact on the life course. Traditionally, family
members have served as the primary caregivers in our culture, but in the twentieth century,
the family’s protective function was steadily transferred to outside agencies such as hospitals,
mental health clinics, and insurance companies. The state runs many of these agencies.

In the past, heads of households and local groups such as religious organizations influenced
the life course most significantly. However, today national interests are increasingly
influencing the individual as a citizen and an economic actor. For example, labor unions and
political parties serve as intermediaries between the individual and the state. For example,
government regulations stipulate the ages at which a person may drive a car, drink alcohol,
vote in elections, marry without parental permission, work overtime and retire.

Summary
Socialization is the process in which people learn the attitudes, values, and actions
appropriate for members of a particular culture. This chapter examined the role of
socialization in human development; the way in which people develop perceptions, feelings,
and beliefs about themselves; the lifelong nature of the socialization process; and the
important agents of socialization.

1. Socialization affects the overall cultural practices of a society; it also shapes the
images that we hold of ourselves.
2. Heredity and environmental factors interact in influencing the socialization process.
3. In the early 1900s, Charles Horton Cooley advanced the belief that we learn who we
are by interacting with others, a phenomenon he called the looking-glass self.

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4. George Herbert Mead, best known for his theory of the self, proposed that as people
mature, their selves begin to reflect their concern about reactions from others-both
generalized others and significant others.
5. Erving Goffman has shown that in many of our daily activities, we try to convey
distinct impressions of who we arc, a process called impression management.
6. Socialization proceeds throughout the life course. Some societies mark stages of
development with formal rites of passage. In the culture of the United States,
significant events such as marriage and parenthood serve to change a person's status.
7. As the primary agents of socialization, parents play a critical role in guiding children
into those gender roles deemed appropriate in a society.
8. Like the family, schools in the United States have an explicit mandate to socialize
people- especially children- into the norms and values of our culture.
9. Pier groups and the mass media, especially television, are important agents of
socialization for adolescents.
10. Socialization in the workplace begins with part-time employment while we are in
school and continues when we work full-time and change jobs throughout our lives.
11. The state shapes the socialization process by regulating the life course and influencing
our views of appropriate behavior at particular ages.
12. As more and more mothers of young children have entered the labor market, the
demand for child care has increased dramatically, posing policy questions for many
nations around the world.

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