Socialization II - Agents and Emotions

Agents of Socialization

• Socialization occurs through structured groups, institutions, and individuals, including families, schools, peers, media, sports, religion, advertising, labor force, law enforcement, state, and medical establishments.
• The impact of agents varies throughout an individual's lifespan.

The Family as the Primary Agent

• Families are the most significant socialization agents in all cultures.
• Children learn crucial skills such as thinking, speaking, internalizing values, gender roles, and self-image within the family context.

Role of the Family

• Families provide intimate face-to-face contact essential for early socialization.
• Parents are typically motivated to socialize their children effectively.

Socialization: Deliberate vs. Unintended

• Deliberate socialization involves intentional teachings (e.g., truth-telling).
• Unintended socialization can have a stronger impact through modeled behaviors (e.g., road rage affecting a child's perceptions of anger).

Schools as a Secondary Agent

• Schooling significantly occupies youth, approximately 30 weeks a year.
• Schools help reduce emotional dependency in children, aiding their adjustment to social norms.

The Hidden Curriculum

• Schools convey informal messages about social norms and expectations through interactions and curricula, emphasizing traits like punctuality and discipline.
• Known as a latent function of education, this curriculum shapes behaviors beyond academic learning.

The Peer Group

• Defined as a group of individuals of similar age and social characteristics, often formed by chance in childhood but chosen later in life.
• Peer groups provide experiences not available through family, facilitating self-exploration, while also enforcing conformity which can lead to stress.

Mass Media

• Mass media refers to communication tools like books, films, and the internet that reach large audiences without direct interaction.
• It shapes perceptions and values, encourages consumerism through advertising, and its influence is powerful though hard to quantify.

Television Influence

• Television is recognized as the strongest socializing medium, with 98% household ownership in the U.S. and significant viewing time.

Organized Sports as a Socializing Agent

• Organized sports socialize boys, fostering a competitive mentality and impacting perceptions of intimacy and self-worth.

Re-socialization

• This process involves replacing old norms with new ones during significant life transitions, such as starting a new job or getting married.

Total Institutions

• Total institutions isolate individuals from broader society and fully regulate their lives, such as prisons or military camps.
• These environments strip away previous identities to create new, institutionally approved ones.

Goffman's Theory of Total Institutions

• Goffman suggests that total institutions re-socialize individuals by controlling their environments, stripping identities, and subjecting them to degrading rituals, resulting in a transformation akin to death and rebirth.

Social Status

• Social status is a societal position accompanied by specific rights, duties, and expectations.

Types of Status

• Ascribed status is assigned at birth and is generally immutable.
• Achieved status results from personal efforts and achievements.
• Master status is a dominant position that overrides others, affecting all social interactions.

Social Roles

• Roles consist of expectations tied to a social status, reflecting associated norms and behaviors.

Socialization into Roles

• Role socialization occurs through agents such as family, schools, peers, and media, influencing roles related to gender, profession, and social status.

Role Conflict and Role Strain

• Role conflict arises when different statuses demand incompatible roles.
• Role strain occurs when multiple roles within a single status conflict.

Emotional Socialization

• Emotional socialization begins in infancy, influenced by cultural norms dictating appropriate emotional expressions.

Emotional Labor

• Emotional labor identifies the management of emotional displays relevant to professional roles, essential for impression management.

Hochschild's Contributions

• Arlie Hochschild's studies introduce concepts like emotional work, feeling rules, and emotional labor, emphasizing the significance of emotional management in various professions.

Emotion Work

• Emotion work involves the intentional management of feelings to present specific emotional displays, important in workplace interactions.

Feeling Rules

• Feeling rules are socially derived norms that dictate appropriate emotions for roles, often influenced by gender expectations.

Nature of Emotional Labor

• Emotional labor requires workers to regulate their emotional displays to elicit desired responses from others, often viewed as exploitative yet essential in many careers.