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Questions and Answers
What does socialization primarily involve?
What does socialization primarily involve?
Which perspective emphasizes genetics in socialization?
Which perspective emphasizes genetics in socialization?
What is strongly influenced by nurture according to the nature vs. nurture debate?
What is strongly influenced by nurture according to the nature vs. nurture debate?
How did the case of Genie contribute to the understanding of socialization?
How did the case of Genie contribute to the understanding of socialization?
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What method do scientists often use to study the effects of nature and nurture?
What method do scientists often use to study the effects of nature and nurture?
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What cognitive abilities does Piaget's theory focus on?
What cognitive abilities does Piaget's theory focus on?
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Which of the following is NOT associated with the nurture perspective?
Which of the following is NOT associated with the nurture perspective?
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What defines feral children in the context of socialization?
What defines feral children in the context of socialization?
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What is resocialization primarily concerned with?
What is resocialization primarily concerned with?
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According to the life course perspective, what happens if an individual does not complete a life event during the appropriate age-grade?
According to the life course perspective, what happens if an individual does not complete a life event during the appropriate age-grade?
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Which of the following best describes total institutions?
Which of the following best describes total institutions?
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What does the life course perspective emphasize about socialization?
What does the life course perspective emphasize about socialization?
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Which factor is essential in the concept of social age grades?
Which factor is essential in the concept of social age grades?
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What is the role of the 'I' in the self according to the provided content?
What is the role of the 'I' in the self according to the provided content?
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What does the term 'generalized other' refer to?
What does the term 'generalized other' refer to?
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Which of the following is NOT recognized as an agent of socialization?
Which of the following is NOT recognized as an agent of socialization?
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What would happen without the 'me' in the self?
What would happen without the 'me' in the self?
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What is the primary function of agents of socialization?
What is the primary function of agents of socialization?
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Which part of the self is responsible for reflexivity according to the content?
Which part of the self is responsible for reflexivity according to the content?
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Which of the following best represents a 'functional requisite' of social institutions?
Which of the following best represents a 'functional requisite' of social institutions?
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How does the hidden curriculum within education influence socialization?
How does the hidden curriculum within education influence socialization?
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What indicates that cognitive development is considered complete by Piaget?
What indicates that cognitive development is considered complete by Piaget?
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Which of the following is a criticism of Piaget's theory according to sociologists?
Which of the following is a criticism of Piaget's theory according to sociologists?
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What does Mead's concept of the self emphasize?
What does Mead's concept of the self emphasize?
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During which stage of the genesis of the self do children begin to mindlessly imitate behaviors?
During which stage of the genesis of the self do children begin to mindlessly imitate behaviors?
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What characterizes the Play stage according to Mead's theory?
What characterizes the Play stage according to Mead's theory?
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In the Game stage, what must children learn to succeed?
In the Game stage, what must children learn to succeed?
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What ability does reflexivity allow individuals to develop?
What ability does reflexivity allow individuals to develop?
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What is a limitation identified in Piaget's theory regarding socialization?
What is a limitation identified in Piaget's theory regarding socialization?
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What is social structure?
What is social structure?
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What does social construction mean?
What does social construction mean?
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Who proposed the Thomas theorem?
Who proposed the Thomas theorem?
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What is racial formation theory?
What is racial formation theory?
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Ethnicity refers to groups set apart by ______ or distinctive cultural patterns.
Ethnicity refers to groups set apart by ______ or distinctive cultural patterns.
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What is ascribed status?
What is ascribed status?
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What do gender roles refer to?
What do gender roles refer to?
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Role conflict occurs when the expectations of two or more roles are compatible.
Role conflict occurs when the expectations of two or more roles are compatible.
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What is intersectionality?
What is intersectionality?
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Who proposed the theory of identity related to roles?
Who proposed the theory of identity related to roles?
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What concept did Erving Goffman associate with the idea of impression management?
What concept did Erving Goffman associate with the idea of impression management?
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What is the definition of social structure?
What is the definition of social structure?
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What is social construction?
What is social construction?
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What does the Thomas theorem state?
What does the Thomas theorem state?
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According to racial formation theory, what are some variables that determine who fits in a given racial category?
According to racial formation theory, what are some variables that determine who fits in a given racial category?
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Racial categories in the U.S. have remained the same throughout history.
Racial categories in the U.S. have remained the same throughout history.
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What is the primary idea behind the externalization stage in the social construction of reality?
What is the primary idea behind the externalization stage in the social construction of reality?
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What occurs during the objectivation stage?
What occurs during the objectivation stage?
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Describe the internalization stage in the construction of reality.
Describe the internalization stage in the construction of reality.
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What is ascribed status?
What is ascribed status?
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Which of the following describes gender roles?
Which of the following describes gender roles?
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What is the concept of role strain?
What is the concept of role strain?
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Imposter syndrome primarily affects low-achieving individuals.
Imposter syndrome primarily affects low-achieving individuals.
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What is Sheldon Stryker's identity theory about?
What is Sheldon Stryker's identity theory about?
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According to Erving Goffman, roles are:
According to Erving Goffman, roles are:
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Study Notes
Socialization
- Socialization is the process of learning values, beliefs and behaviors appropriate to a particular culture.
Heredity vs Environment
- The nature perspective on socialization argues that genetics and heredity determine who we are.
- The nurture perspective argues that our social environment and experiences shape who we are.
Identical Twins
- Identical twins raised in different environments provide valuable data in studying the impact of nature versus nurture.
- Temperament, voice patterns, and individual behaviors are largely influenced by heredity.
- Attitudes, values, habits, and mate selection are strongly influenced by environment.
Feral Children
- Feral children are raised without regular socialization and exhibit limitations in social skills and behaviors.
- They are genetically human but lack the societal interactions crucial for development.
Genie: The Secret of the Wild Child
- Genie's case highlights the importance of early exposure to social interaction and language development.
- The ethical implications of research conducted on Genie are debated.
Piaget- Cognitive Development
- Piaget's cognitive theory focuses on the development of cognitive abilities, such as thinking, knowing, and reasoning.
- He proposed children progress through stages of increasing cognitive ability, with development complete by mid-teenage years.
Sociologists' Perspective on Piaget's Theory
- Sociologists see Piaget's work as limited due to a lack of focus on environmental factors influencing development.
- His theory suggests socialization is complete by 17, contradicting the reality of lifelong socialization.
Genesis of the Self (Mead, 1934)
- Mead argued that the self cannot exist without a social context.
- The self is the ability to see oneself as both subject and object.
- Reflexivity, the ability to view oneself through the eyes of others, is crucial to self-development.
Stages of Self Development
- Preparatory/imitation stage: Children imitate behaviors without understanding their meaning, practicing future role-taking.
- Play stage: Children take on the roles of others, interpreting and reacting as they believe those individuals would.
- Game stage: Children learn rules and roles within games, requiring awareness of their own role and the roles of others.
The Generalized Other
- As children develop, they internalize the expectations and attitudes of their social group, known as the "generalized other."
The Self as I and Me
- The "I" represents the spontaneous, unpredictable part of the self.
- The "me" is the socialized part of the self, shaped by societal norms and expectations.
Agents of Socialization
- Agents of socialization are the individuals, groups, and institutions that teach cultural norms and values to new members of society.
- They provide venues for social interaction, learning, and development.
Social Institutions
- Social institutions are established patterns of beliefs and behaviors to meet basic societal needs.
- They are fundamental pillars of society, enduring across generations.
- Functional requisites are essential tasks that society must fulfill for survival and order.
Agents of Socialization and Social Institutions
- Family: The primary agent of socialization, shaping early values and behaviors.
- Education: Provides knowledge, skills, and social interaction rules, including a "hidden curriculum" teaching conformity and respect for authority.
- Economy: Involves the production and distribution of goods, regulating trade.
- Religion: Instills morality, values, and belief systems.
- Media: Influences popular culture and widens access to information.
- Military: Protects and spreads culture, introducing members to a distinct set of values and behaviors.
Resocialization
- Resocialization is the process of replacing old behavioral patterns with new ones, often associated with life transitions and self-concept changes.
- It involves learning new skills and discarding outdated ones.
Total Institutions
- Total institutions are institutions that control every aspect of an individual's life, requiring extensive resocialization.
Life Course Perspective (Elder, 2003)
- The life course perspective views socialization as a lifelong process, beginning at birth and continuing throughout life.
- It incorporates both normative age-related development (Piaget) and the significant impact of life events on resocialization.
Social-Age Grades
- Social-age grades are customary age-related activities expected to be achieved within specific "acceptable completion" windows.
- Individuals who fail to complete age-graded activities may face social sanctions.
Birth Cohort
- A birth cohort encompasses individuals born around the same time and place, sharing common socio-historical experiences.
- Failure to meet age-graded expectations can lead to isolation from one's birth cohort.
Social Structure
- Preexisting patterns of social behavior
- Way society is organized into predictable relationships
Social Construction
- Reality is a product of cultural and historical time frames
- Reality is more a matter of agreement amongst people in a culture than an inherent part of the natural world
- Thomas Theorem (1923): If an individual believes something is real, then that thing is real in its consequences
Racial Formation Theory (Omi & Winant, 1989)
- Race is a social construction
- Each society uses specific variables to determine who fits into a racial category
- Racial categories have changed throughout US history
- Individuals can claim racial identity, but society may reject these claims based on its own standards
- There is nothing “essential” about race that would rely on biological indicators to determine behavior
- Most of what society refers to as “racial differences” are actually more like ethnic differences
Ethnic Groups
- Groups set apart by national origin or distinctive cultural pattern
- Assume that behavior is learned and influenced by interactions, not determined by biology
- Ethnicity is also a social construction
Social Construction of Reality (Berger & Luckmann, 1966)
- Three-stage model explaining the construction of reality:
- Externalization: Individuals develop ideas about the world and attempt to convince others they are correct. Moral entrepreneurs (Becker, 1963) act as “crusaders”, often linked to social institutions, who feel the current version of reality is unacceptable and attempt to “sell” their version in its place.
- Objectivation: Some externalized ideas begin to be seen as “fact”. Ideas take on a life of their own apart from those who created them. People hear externalized ideas, consider they may be true, and ask others for their opinion. This is the most crucial stage in the process as ideas are being considered for “truthfulness” and being spread. Urban legends are fantastic myths told as though true, often reinforcing existing norms and values.
- Internalization: If ideas reach this stage, they are now seen as true by many who heard them. As ideas become part of the natural environment, we lose awareness they are simply someone’s ideas. Once accepted as true, the ideas begin to affect the beliefs and behaviors of individuals. If many people hear and internalize them, we get patterns of behavior. Through interaction alone, any idea can become “fact” and affect social behavior.
Elements of Structure: Status
- Any defined position within a large group or society
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Ascribed Status: Position assigned by society, with no regard for the individual’s characteristics or abilities. These are characteristics society has deemed important and would like to know about all individuals. Individuals have little control over their ascribed status.
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Ascribed Variables:
- Race: Groups set apart due to obvious, non sex-based, physical differences
- Ethnicity: Groups set apart by national origin or distinctive cultural pattern
- Class: Status gained through the accumulation of economic success and wealth (parents’ class is ascribed)
- Gender: Idea of being male or female, with norms and expectations associated with “maleness” and “femaleness” in any given culture.
- Sexual Orientation: Enduring patterns of attraction to those of a specific sex.
- Ableness: Physical abilities or impairments that create different challenges for an individual
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Ascribed Variables:
- Achieved Status: A position attained largely through individual effort. You have to "do something" to be awarded an achieved status.
- Intersectionality: Concept used to describe the interconnectedness of forms of inequality and stratification (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, classism, etc.). These stratifying variables are often ascribed.
- Master Status: Dominant status that overrides all other features of other statuses.
Elements of Structure: Roles
- Statuses allow for various social locations for individuals.
- Based on these locations, expectations for the individual’s behavior are created.
- Social Roles: Sets of expectations for individuals who occupy a given social position or status. Roles grow out of status locations.
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Gender Roles: Expectations regarding proper behavior, attitudes, and activities for males and females.
- Instrumental Role (Men): Successful, aggressive, self-reliant, should initiate sexual activity without showing vulnerability or openness.
- Expressive Role (Women): Caring, emotional, nurturing, passive, accepting.
- Role Conflict: When expectations of two or more roles call for contradictory behavior.
- Role Strain: When a person has difficulty meeting the responsibilities of a particular role in their life. Imposter Syndrome: Doubting your abilities and feeling like a fraud, disproportionately affecting high-achievers.
Roles - Stryker
- Identity Theory (Stryker, 1980): Theory of self-concept.
- Identity: All of the roles in one’s self-concept along with their meanings.
- Identity Hierarchy: All roles and their accompanying identities are arranged in a hierarchy by an individual. The most salient (important) identities are at the top of the hierarchy and affect the individual’s thoughts, actions, feelings and beliefs most often. The more salient the role, the less likely you are to act in a way that goes against the expectations of that role.
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Commitment : The cost of no longer continuing to hold a given identity.
- Interactional Commitment: The extent of the relationships that would be foregone if one were to no longer play a given role (including those who you know in that role and those who know you in it).
- Affective Commitment: The emotional costs attached to departure from a given role.
- High commitment leads to high salience, which leads to:
- Spending more time in that role.
- Seeking out opportunities to play that role.
- Defining neutral situations as appropriate for that role.
- The identity hierarchy is relatively stable across time and situation, only changing when salient identities are added or subtracted.
Roles - Goffman
- Roles are far more situational (and therefore less stable), played to give off a good impression to whatever audience we are performing for.
- Dramaturgy: Viewing human social behavior as theatre.
- Impression Management: Attempting to give off the “version of ourselves” that best enables us to achieve success in a given situation.
- The self-concept is constantly changing and based totally on the audience to which we are performing.
- All interaction assumes we are all managing impressions.
- There is no stable self-concept outside of the situation we are in at the time.
- Even if we did have one, it wouldn’t matter because most people only know us in limited contexts.
Takeaway
- Stryker argues our self-concept is strong, stable, and only changes when radical changes happen in our lives.
- Goffman argues our self-concept is constantly changing and based totally on the audience to which we are performing.
Social Structure
- Pre-existing patterns of social behavior
- Predictable relationships within a society
Social Construction
- Reality is a product of culture and history
- More a matter of agreement than inherent truth
Thomas Theorem
- If an individual believes something is real, it is real in its consequences
Racial Formation Theory (Omi & Winant, 1989)
- Race is a social construction, not biological
- Societal variables determine racial categories
- Racial categories change throughout history
- Individuals claim racial identity, but society may reject it
Ethnicity
- Groups set apart by national origin or cultural patterns
- Behavior is learned and influenced by interactions, not biology
- Also a social construction
Social Construction of Reality (Berger & Luckmann, 1966)
- Three-stage model:
- Externalization: Individuals develop and spread ideas
- Objectivation: Ideas become widely accepted as "fact"
- Internalization: Ideas are seen as true and affect behavior
Moral Entrepreneurs (Becker, 1963)
- Crusaders who believe current reality is unacceptable and attempt to replace it
Urban Legends
- Fantastical myths presented as true
- Often reinforce existing norms and values
Elements of Structure: Status
- Any defined position within a society
- Ascribed Status: Assigned by society, based on characteristics (race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ableness, class). Little individual control.
- Achieved Status: Attained through effort and actions
Intersectionality
- Interconnectedness of various forms of inequality (racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, classism)
Master Status
- Dominant status that overshadows other statuses
Elements of Structure: Roles
- Expectations for behavior based on status
- Role Conflict: Conflicting expectations of multiple roles
- Role Strain: Difficulty meeting the responsibilities of a single role
- Imposter Syndrome: Feeling inadequate and like a fraud despite success
Gender Roles
- Societal expectations for behavior, attitudes, and activities based on gender
- Instrumental Roles: Masculine roles associated with success, aggression, self-reliance
- Expressive Roles: Feminine roles associated with caring, emotional, nurturing
Identity Theory (Stryker, 1980)
- Self-concept is a hierarchy of roles and their meanings
- Salient Identities: Most important identities at the top, influencing thoughts, actions, and beliefs
- Commitment: Cost of abandoning a role (interactional, affective)
- Stable hierarchy that changes with major life changes.
Dramaturgy (Goffman, 1959)
- Human social behavior is like theater
- Roles are situational, played to manage impressions.
- We perform to create the most favorable image for a given audience
- Impression Management: Attempting to control how others perceive us.
Goffman's View of Self-Concept
- Constantly changing and based on the audience
- No stable self-concept outside of the situation
- Our self-concept is defined by the roles we are playing
- It does not matter what our "true" self is because people only see us in limited contexts.
Stryker's View of Self-Concept
- Self-concept is strong and stable, only changing with significant life events
- Our dominant roles are influenced by our commitment to them and their salience in our lives.
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Description
Explore the complex process of socialization and the debate between heredity and environment in shaping human behavior. This quiz discusses concepts such as identical twins study, feral children, and the case of Genie, illustrating the dynamic interplay of genetics and social experiences in our development.
