Chapter 6

Socialization and Social

Roles
Socialization is

 Humans learning to be humans

 To be “made social”
 Socialization is developmental stages +
learning/exposure
– Potty training, reading, playing soccer…
– My wife vs. me… reading interesting
example
Suppressing Development

 Humans raised in isolation fail to develop into

humans – feral (untamed) children
 Famous Skeels and Dye study of orphanage
infants (1939)
– Experiment – some orphanage kids removed –
“parented” by mildly retarded
– 4 years later, showed improvement
– Conclusion: infants who were unattended and
unstimulated in orphanages failed to develop
normally.
Accelerating Development

 Reasons to doubt claims about accelerating

 “Mozart effect”?
– 1993 Nature article – received national
attention
– Classical music and IQ? – short term
effect?
– Was an experimental design
– Likely a statistical fluke – no studies could
replicate
Theories of Socialization

 Developmental psych issues important

in socialization
 Brief intro of 3 theories
– 2 psychologists (Freud, Piaget)
– 1 sociologist (Mead)
Freud

 Id – drives and instincts

 Superego – culture, values….
Internalized expectations of others
 Ego – reconciliation between the two –
management of the two opposing forces
Piaget discovered basic rules of
reasoning and the ages at which
normal children acquire them.
 Sensorimotor – 0 to 2
– senses and motor control
– Object permanence around 10 months
 Preoperational – 2-7
– Language, overcoming egocentrism
– Put themselves in place of another (Mead)
 Concrete operational – 7-12
– Rule of conservation
– Empirical reasoning
 Formal operational
– Abstract thoughts
– Not everyone progresses
George Herbert Mead

 Self = self awareness and self image

– Taking the role of the other
– I , me
– Self is ever changing
For sociologist, socialization is a
lifelong process
 For Freud early years ego emerges
 For Mead, self changes as “other”
changes
Agents of Socialization

 Family
 School
 Peers
 Media
Media – no question it is a
powerful force
 TV is on 7 hours per day in US homes
 Americans spend one-half of free time
in front of TV
 2-18 average 5.5 hours per day (tv plus
video games)
As agent of socialization, what
does media teach us… Examples
 “Friends” and sexual behavior
 Sensationalism = fear
 “Glorification” of… drugs?
 Media and violence?
– Most studies correlational (some experiments
show short term effects)
– Numerous longitudinal – come closer to cause and
effect
– Rap music taken heat (correlated with variety of
behaviors)
– Eminem and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Resocialization

 Culture and subculture

 Lofland and Stark Moonie research
– Conversion is resocialization
– Beliefs form after attachments
– Sociologists reject notion that someone is
“brainwashed”
 Military also resocializes
– video
Biological determinists vs Cultural
determinists (Nature vs. Nurture)
 Chap 5 discusses sociological
challenge to bio determinists
 Pendulum swings too far with
anthropologists Frank Boaz and
Margaret Mead?
 Sex Roles great example
“Pink” world vs. “Blue” world

 How much cultural vs. biological?

 Mead research in New Guinea – both men and
women…..
– Arapesh cooperative, unaggressive, sensitive, “feminine”
– Mundugumor headhunters – aggressive, selfish, violent
 Mead cultural determinist (childrearing)
 Stark offers social evolutionary theory (nobody
wanted Arapesh land, everyone wanted Mundugumor
land)
 Mead severely criticized
Other issues discussed in Chap 6

 Melvin Kohn on occupational roles and socialization

– Working Class parents more likely in jobs where obeying
rules, accepting authority, don’t question
– MC parents = jobs of self expression, independence,
personal initiative
– Children raised to be ready for the world parents envision
– Cultural factor in intergenerational class patterns
 Irving Goffman
– Live is a stage…. Impression management… role
performance