INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

Assignment # 3: Critical Analysis (Chapter Three: Socialization)

By Adil Tariq
BBA-3

Submitted to: Ma’am Mehwish Ali

24th September 2015
There has been and continues to be considerable debate over whether nature (heredity) or nurture
(social environment) most determines human behavior. Studies of feral, isolated, and
institutionalized children indicate that although heredity certainly plays a role in the human
equation, it is society that makes people human. People learn what it means to be and,
consequently, become members of the human community through language, social interaction,
and other forms of human contact.

People are not born with a complete knowledge of themselves or others. Rather, as the
theoretical insights of Charles Horton Cooley, George Herbert Mead, and Jean Piaget
demonstrate, they develop reasoning skills, morality, personality, and a sense of self through
social observation, contact, and interaction.

SOCIALIZATION INTO THE SELF AND MIND

Cooley’s conceptualization of the looking-glass self shows how a person’s sense of self is
inextricably linked to that person’s sense of others; an individual imagines how other people see
him or her, interprets their reactions to his or her behaviors, and develops a self-concept based on
those interpretations. Mead’s insights into “taking the role of the other”—as well as how children
learn through stages of imitation, play, and games, illustrate the process by which people learn to
become cooperative members of the human community and internalize the rules of the game of
life. Furthermore, his formulation of the self as subject (the “I”) and object (the “me”) shows
how socialization is an active process and how the human mind, as well as the self, is a social
product.

Through observations of young children, Piaget detailed four stages by which children typically
develop the ability to reason: the sensor imotor stage (from birth to about age two), the
preoperational stage (from about age two to age seven), the concrete operational stage (from
about age seven to about age twelve), and the formal operational stage (after the age of about
twelve).

Cooley’s insights into the looking-glass self and Mead’s insights into role-taking and the mind
appear to be universally applicable. Researchers are more divided, however, on Piaget’s four
stages of human development. Noting cultural and individual variations in the development of
reasoning skills, some researchers argue that human beings develop reasoning skills more
gradually and flexibly than Piaget’s model suggests.

LEARNING PERSONALITY, MORALITY & EMOTIONS

Sigmund Freud formulated personality in terms of the id, the ego and superego. Many
sociologists reject Freud’s contention that inborn and unconscious motivations are the primary
determinants of human behavior. However, many sociologists are attracted to Freud’s notion that
the superego represents the internalization of social norms. The women in society criticize
Freud’s theoretical assumption that being male is normal and that females can be analyzed as
inferior, castrated males.

GENDER IN SOCIALIZATION

Socialization is not only critical to internalizing social norms, to the development of the mind,
but also to the development of emotions. Although there are some basic emotions that all people
experience, all people do not express these emotions the same way or to the same extent.
Different socialization experiences tied to regional, gender, and class differences may not only
affect how people express their emotions, but also the particular emotions they may feel. Males
and females learn what it means to be boys and girls and, later, men and women through gender
socialization—the ways in which society sets children onto different courses in life because they
are male or female. From the time of their birth, children are continually presented with cultural
messages that teach them how to act masculine or feminine based on their sex.

AGENTS OF SOCIALIZATION

Human beings learn how to think, behave, and act through agents of socialization—those people
or groups that influence our self-concept, attitudes, behaviors, or other orientations toward life.
Major agents of socialization include the family, the neighborhood, religion, day care, school,
peer groups, and the workplace. When people move from one place, job, and/or life situation to
another, they often have to undergo re-socialization—the process of learning new norms, values,
attitudes, and behaviors.

Special settings that require intense re-socialization, such as boot camps, prisons, and mental
institutions, are called total institutions, a term coined by Erving Goffman to refer to a place
where people are cut off from the rest of society and are almost totally controlled by the officials
in charge. Socialization is not just limited to childhood; it is a lifelong process in which people
are taught, learn, and/or adjust to the needs, expectations, and responsibilities that typically
accompany different stages in life.

Although socialization has a tremendous influence within the limitations of the framework laid
down by our social location, and on how people think and act, human beings are not prisoners of
socialization. They have a considerable degree of freedom of choice, for example, to choose
which agents of socialization to follow (except for family), and which cultural practices or
messages to accept or reject from those agents of socialization. We can even change our sense of
self. Humans are not robots, and are, therefore, unpredictable, which makes the job of the
sociologist more difficult. Humans are not sponges that passively absorb environmental
influences. They are in fact active in their own environments and receive different treatment
from others around them. Even identical twins do not receive identical reactions from others.