Chapter 3-Socialization.docx - Socialization Social...

Socialization
Social Isolation and Socialization
 Socialization
o The process by which people learn their culture
o Do so by entering into and disengaging from a succession of roles
o And becoming aware of themselves as they interact with others
o Must be released with potential
 Role
o A set of behaviours, expected of a person occupying a particular position in
society
 René Spitz’s Study
o Showed importance of socialization in unleashing human potential
o Compared children who were being raised in an orphanage with children who
were being raised in a nursing home attached to a woman’s prison
 Both institutions were hygienic and provided good food and medical care
o The children’s mother took care of the babies in the nursing home but only six
nurses cared for the 45 babies in the orphanage
o Orphans has much less contact with people
o Nursing home infants could see society (people socializing with doctors, nurses
etc.)
o In orphanage a sheet would separate babies’ cribs from society
 Depriving infants of social stimuli for most of the day
 Making them less demanding
o Orphans (9-12 months) were more susceptible to infections and had higher death
rates than babies in nursing homes
o All children from nursing home were walking and talking in nursing home,
compared to the 8% of orphans
o Normally children start playing with their genitals by the end of the first year, but
orphans start at the end of their 4
th
year
 Impaired sexual life?
o Without childhood socialization, most of our human potential remains
undeveloped

The crystallization of Self-Identity
 Adolescences is a turbulent period of self-development
 Crystallization of self-identity during adolescence is just one episode in lifelong process
 Agents of socialization
o Families, schools, peer groups and the mass media
o In these setting we learn how to control our impulses, think of ourselves as
members of different groups, value certain ideals and perform various roles
o Institutions don’t always work hand in hand to produce happy, well-adjusted
adults
The Symbolic- Interactionist Foundations of Childhood Socialization
 Social interactions enable infants to begin developing a self-image or a sense of self
 Self
o A set of ideas and attitudes about who they are as independent beings
Sigmund Freud
 Proposed first social- scientific interpretation of the process by which the self emerges
 Noted that infants demand is denied when- for example, parents decide not to feed and
comfort them every time they wake up in the middle of the night
 At first infants protest but they learn to eat more before going to bed, sleep for longer
periods and go back to sleep if they wake up
 Infants begin to sense that it needs differ from those of its parents
o Has existence independent of others and it must somehow balance its needs with
the realities of life
 Soon personal conscience crystallizes
 Psychological mechanism develops that normally balances the pleasure seeking and
restraining components of self
o Id
