Latafat Aziz

OUTLINE
Introduction to Personality

Socialization

Types of Socialization

Agents of Socialization

Social Control

Resocialization

Key Concepts
 Personality can be defined
as consistency in a person’s way of
being — that is, long-term consistency
in their particular ways of perceiving,
thinking, acting and reacting as a
person.
 Personality refers to individual
differences in characteristic patterns
of thinking, feeling and behaving.
 Organized patterns of thought and
feeling and behavior.
 The totality of qualities and traits, as of
character or behavior, that are peculiar
to a specific person.
 FOUR TEMPERAMENTS

Choleric Melancholic Sanguine Phlegmatic

Four temperaments is a proto-psychological theory that

suggests that there are four fundamental personality types:
sanguine (pleasure-seeking and sociable),
choleric (ambitious and leader-like),
melancholic (analytical and quiet), and
phlegmatic (relaxed and peaceful). Most formulations
include the possibility of mixtures of the types.
 The infant enters this world as a selfish little organism
preoccupied with its physical needs.
 The child becomes a man or a person through a variety of

experiences. He becomes then what

sociologists/anthropologists calls ‘socialized’.
 The individual becomes socialized by learning the rules

and practices of social groups. By this process the

individual develops a personality of his/her own.
 W. F. Ogburn:

“ Socialization is the process by which the individual learns

to conform to the norms of the group”.
 Peter Worsley:
“Transmission of culture, the process whereby men learn
the rules and practices of social groups”.
 Harry M. Johnson understands socialization as

“learning that enables the learner to perform social roles”.

 He further says that it is a

“process by which individuals acquire the already existing

culture of groups they come into”.
SOCIAL CONTROL
 The term, ‘social control’, is widely used in anthropology to
refer to the social processes by which the behaviour of
individuals or groups is regulated.
 Since all societies have norms and values governing conduct
(a society without some such norms and values is
inconceivable), all equally have some mechanisms for
ensuring conformity to those norms and for dealing with
deviance.
 Social control refers to the techniques and the strategies for
regulating human behaviour in any society.
 Informal means of social control, and
Formal means of social control.
 In primary groups, the relationships are
close, direct and intimate.
 Social control is often maintained by
informal mechanisms such as customs,
traditions, folkways, mores and religion.
 These are adopted means of informal
groups.
 Informal means of social control
include established and accepted
institutions relating to socialization,
education, family, marriage, religion,
etc.
 The formal means of
social control come
from institutions such
as the state, law,
education and those
which have legitimate
power.
 They apply coercive
(using force or threats)
measures in the case
of deviance
 PRIMARY SOCIALIZATION
 Primary socialization occurs during childhood and refers
mainly to family or others people who occupies with child care.
 This type of socialization constitutes the basis that support the
entire children’s forming process.
 Family and close relatives are a kind o society in miniature.
 In other words, the type of socialization provided by the family,
in which the child is seen as a center of the universe and
 the moment of relative separation from the family and
integration into a new type of social structure, like school,
where each child is a center of the world.
SECONDARY SOCIALIZATION
 Secondary socialization refers to that period of childhood in
which a child begins to interact strongly with other social
environments than strictly the family.
 Contact with other children and with adults other than his
own parents helps the child to understand that there is
another social universe outside the family.
 In addition, as it grows, the child will gradually loosen the
direct control exercised by parents and seek to integrate into
a group of colleagues/friends/acquaintances, this group
being an important agent of socialization.
 This type of socialization works in the same direction with
formal activities, e.g. school or job.
 Interactive process by which
individuals learn the basic
skills, values, beliefs and
behavior patterns of a society
 An ‘agent’ is something that
causes something to occur
 So….. agents of socialization
are specific individuals,
groups and institutions that
provide the situations in
which socialization can occur
 Our experiences in the family have a lifelong impact on us,
laying down a basic sense of self, motivation, values, and
beliefs.
 Parents—often unaware of what they are doing—send
subtle messages to their children about society’s
expectations for them as males or females.
 The neighborhood has an impact on children’s
development. Some neighborhoods are better places for
children to grow up than other neighborhoods.
 For example, residents of more affluent neighborhoods
watch out for children more than do residents of poorer
neighborhoods.
 Religion plays a major role in the socialization. Religion
especially influences morality, but also ideas about the
dress, speech, and manners that are appropriate.
 Schools are primary agents of socialization.
 Research by Patricia and Peter Adler document how
elementary age children separated themselves by sex and
developed their own worlds and norms.
 They found that popular boys were athletic, cool, and
tough. Popular girls depended on family background,
physical appearance, and the ability to attract popular
boys.
 One of the most significant aspects of education is that it
exposes children to peer groups.
 A peer group is a group of people of roughly the same
age who share common interests.
 Next to the family, peer groups are the most powerful
socializing force in society.
 The workplace is a major agent of socialization for
adults; from jobs, we learn not only skills, but also
matching attitudes and values.
 We may engage in anticipatory socialization, learning to
play a role before actually entering into it and enabling
us to gradually identify with the role.
 Resocialization refers to the process of learning new
norms, values, attitudes, and behaviors.
 Resocialization in its most common form occurs each
time we learn something contrary to our previous
experiences, such as going to work in a new job. It can
be an intense experience, although it does not have to
be.
 Erving Goffman used the term total institution to refer
to places such as prisons, concentration camps, or some
mental hospitals, religious cults, and boarding schools
—places where people are cut off from the rest of
society and are under almost total control of agents of
the institution.
 KEY CONCEPTS
 Feral Child
A feral child is a human child who has lived isolated
from human contact from a very young age, and has no
experience of human care, loving or social behavior, and
crucially, of human language. For example,
Anna=found when she was 6 years old, she was unable to
walk or talk
Isabelle=found when she was 6 and a half; she had been
kept in a dark room with her, deaf, mute mother
Genie=found at 13-she had been kept in a room naked, she
will never learn to fully speak
 Self
Your conscience awareness of possessing a distinct
identity that separates you and your environment from
other members of society
 Significant Others
Parents, siblings, relatives, and others with direct
influence on our socialization
 Generalized Others
The internalized attitudes, expectations, and viewpoints
of society
 Agents of socialization
They describe the specific individuals, groups, and
institutions that enable socialization to take place
 Heredity
The transmission of genetic characteristics from parents
to their children
 Instinct
unchanging, biological, inherited behavior pattern
 Peer Group
A group of people, usually of similar age, background,
and social status, with whom a person associates and
who are likely to influence the person’s beliefs and
behaviors.
 The cultural environment
Each culture gives rise to a series of personality traits-
model personalities- that are typical of members of that
society
 Total Institutions
A setting in which people are isolated from the rest of
society for a set period of time and are subject to tight
control.
For example, orphanages, poor houses, nursing homes,
mental hospitals, P.O.W camps, jails, boarding schools
etc.
 Biological drives
Humans have certain needs like the hunger drive that
makes you want to eat. This drive does not tell you how
to eat, what to eat, or when to eat; you learn these things
from the environment around you.
 John Locke (English Philosopher and
Physician)
believed each newly born human is a "clean slate" or
"tabula rasa”