SOC 2000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Ageism, Cognitive Development, Work Ethic
Chapter 3: Socialization
Social Experience: The Key to Our Humanity
• Socialization: the life long experience by which people develop their human potential and
learn culture
o Humans need social experience to learn their culture and survive
• Social experience is also the foundation of personality:
o A person’s fairly consistent patterns of acting, thinking, and feeling
Human Development: Nature and Nurture
• Darwin’s study of evolution led people to think that human behavior was instinctive
• European’s thought less technologically developed countries were biologically inferior
o Led to colonization
• Behaviorism: holds that behavior is not instinctive but learned
o Developed by John B Watson
• Nurture is more important than nature
o Nurture is our nature
Social Isolation
• In studies done with monkey’s it’s been found that complete isolation seriously disturbed
development
• In studies on humans:
o After 5 years of isolation permanent developmental damage occurred to child
Anna
▪ She died at age ten
o 6 years of virtual isolation also left Isabelle damaged but she had intensive
psychological treatment and was able to come back to an almost normal life by
age 14
o Genie isolated for 13 years. Became physically healthy but maintained the mental
ability of a child.
Understanding Socialization
Sigmund Freud’s Elements of Personality
• Two basic needs/drives
o Need for sexual and emotional bonding: life instinct (eros)
o Death instinct (Thanatos)
• Model of personality: id, ego, and superego
o Id (it): the human being’s basic drives
▪ Rooted in biology
o Ego (I): a person’s conscious efforts to balance innate pleasure-seeking drives
with the demands of society
▪ When we become aware of our distinct existence
o Superego (above or beyond the ego): the cultural values and norms internalized
by an individual
▪ Operates as our conscious
Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
• Four stages of cognitive development:
• The sensorimotor stage:
o The level of human development at which individuals experience the world
through their sense
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
o For about the first two years of life
• The preoperational stage:
o The level of human development at which individuals first use language and other
symbols.
o Lack abstract concepts but begin to think about the world mentally and using
imagination
o Age 2
• The concrete operational stage:
o The level of human development at which individuals first see casual connections
in their surroundings
o Between ages 7 and eleven
o More than one symbol to a particular object
• The formal operational stage
o The level of human development at which individuals think abstractly and
critically
o Begins at about age 12
Lawrence Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development:
• Studied moral reasoning: how individuals judge situations as right or wrong.
• Preconventional level:
o Rightness = what feels good
• Conventional level:
o Define right and wrong in terms of what pleases parents and conforms to norms
o Assess intention
• Postconventional level:
o Move beyond societal norms to consider abstract ethical principles
Carol Gillian’s Theory of Gender and Moral Development
• The two sexes use different standards of rightness
• Boys have a justice perspective:
o Rely on formal rules to define right and wrong
• Girls have a care and responsibility perspective:
o Judging a situation with an eye toward personal relationships and loyalties.
• Some treat rule-based male reasoning as superior
o Kohlberg
George Herbert Mead’s Theory of the Social Self
• Developed the theory of social behaviorism to explain how social experience develops an
individual’s personality
• The self: the part of an individual’s personality composed of self-awareness and self-
image
o The self is not there at birth; it develops
▪ Rejects biological ideas
o The self develops only with social experience
o Social experience is the exchange of symbols
▪ Words, body language, etc.
o Seeking meaning leads people to imagine other people’s intentions
o Understanding intention requires imagining the situation from the other’s point of
view
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
In studies done with monkey"s it"s been found that complete isolation seriously disturbed development. In studies on humans: after 5 years of isolation permanent developmental damage occurred to child. Became physically healthy but maintained the mental ability of a child. Agents of socialization: these include the family, school, peer group, and the mass media. The school: enlarges childrens social world, schools begin socializing children into gender roles, schooling is not the same between the classes, hidden curriculum. The peer group: a social group whose members have interests, social position, and age in common, peers affect more short term interests, anticipatory socialization: learning that helps a person achieve a desire position. The mass media: the mass media are the means for delivering impersonal communications to a vast audience. Introduces ideas and images that reflect the larger society: we spend lots of time engaging with the mass media, a way to spread politics and violence.
