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Definition of Socialization: Socialization is the process by which a society transmits its cultural values to individuals so that they can

function properly as its members. It is through socialization that a child learns to be human. It is through socialization, too, that children develop their personality a fairly stable configuration of feelings, attitudes, ideas, and behaviors that characterizes an individual. Socialization shapes the development of personality through the influence of biology and environment. There have been many theories, where some emphasized the effect of the environment on personality development, other focus on the significance of inherited factors, and yet others stress the interaction of nature and nurture. Here, we will review just a few of the most influential theories. Behaviorism: The experiments of Pavlov and Watson convinced many psychologists that behaviors are shaped by the environment. They inspire an approach that dominated American psychology for decades. Because Watson urged psychologists to focus on outer, observable behavior, he called his theory Behaviorism. The heart of behaviorism is conditioning, the process by which associations are formed between stimuli and responses. When applied to socialization, the behaviorist theory suggests that the development of certain personalities depend on classical and operant conditioning. At birth the infant neither loves nor hates his parents; it is emotionally neutral. Only after the parents repeatedly provide it with food, warmth and alleviation of pain does the infant learn to associate its parents with those pleasurable stimuli. Operant conditioning also, takes place in the way parents deal with their child. Some parents are permissive and easygoing. On the other hand, some others are overprotective, severally restricting their childs freedom of m movement and discouraging their childs exploration. Cultural Determinism: Cultural Determinism was explicitly drawn from the environmental perspective. While conceding the influence of biological heritage on personality development, cultural determinists, most of whom are anthropologists, consider cultural factors to be of overriding importance. Cultural determinists hold that culture largely defines what characteristics are rewarded and acquired by members of a society. American culture, for example, puts a high premium on competition, while the Hopi culture values cooperation highly. According to cultural determinists, personality represents an internalized culture. Psychosexual Development: Freud believed that biology lays out a certain course of human development and that each child everywhere goes through particular stages. Freud concentrated on emotional development, compelled by very strong biological drives and constrained by social forces. In his view, the individual personality becomes a battleground for those conflicting demands. According to Freud, personality is made up of the id, ego and superego. The Id is governed by the pleasure principle. The Ego operates with the reality principle. Superego seeks to restrain id, but for moral reasons. These id, ego and superego extend through a series of five stages. Among these, phallic stage develops a crucial step, which begins at about the end of third year, ends at about the sixth, which is the notorious Oedipus complex develops. Freud used the ancient Greek tale about Oedipus as a metaphor, to signify his theory. A boy is motivated by his id to feel sexual love for his mother and to be jealous of his father and hostile toward him. But he also fears his fathers power. As a result, he represses force aside both his desire for his mother and hostility toward his father. He identifies with his father by imitating him and trying to become like him. But many socialists now believe that Freud overemphasized the importance of sexuality in personality development. Cognitive Development: Piaget focused on the cognitive or intellectual part of personality. He argued that there is an inherent structure to the human mind that determines what can be learned and when. Every human being, in Piagets view, goes through certain stages of cognitive development. Sensorimotor stage (birth to age 2): The infant lacks language, cannot think, and cannot make sense of its environment, uses its senses and bodily movements to interact with the environment. Preoperational stages (age 2 to age 7): The child starts to talk, cannot perform many simple intellectual operations. He is now better able to think about things and events that aren't

immediately present, but can not distinguish one particular thing of same kind to another. Concrete operational stages (age 7 to age 12): During this stage, about first grade to early adolescence, accommodation increases. The child develops an ability to think abstractly and to make rational judgments about concrete or observable phenomena, which in the past he needed to manipulate physically to understand. Formal Operational stages (age 12 to age 15): This stage brings cognition to its final form. This person no longer requires concrete objects to make rational judgments. At his point, he is capable of hypothetical and deductive reasoning. Moral Development: According to Kohlberg, children go through three levels of moral development. He got this idea from the ways youngsters of different age deals with moral dilemmas. In his research he presented children with a hypothetical situation and found three distinct patterns of response, each reflecting a certain level of moral development. Kohlberg follows six stages which can be more generally grouped into three levels of two stages each. The levels are: Pre-Conventional, Conventional, and Post-Conventional. Symbolic Interactionism: The development theories of Freud, Piaget, and Kohlberg deal with conflict, where Symbolic Interactionism emphasizes harmonious relationship between individual and society as the foundation of personality development. The founder of Symbolic Interactionism, Cooley viewed society as a group of individual, helping each other to develop personalities. According to Cooley, the core personality is the concept of oneself, the self image, which is developed through the looking glass process. While others judging us, we are judging them in return. The way we judge others affects how we interpret their impressions on us. Suppose, certain individuals see as stupid. Looking glass process explains a formation of self-image via reflection of our personal qualities. No matter what kind of self-concept emerges from the looking glass process, it has a certain impact on our personality if we have a favorable self concept, we tend to be self-confident, outgoing or happy. If we have a poor self image, or a low self-esteem, have such undesirable outcomes as antisocial behavior and lower academic achievements, where high self esteem leads to such favorable consequences as better behavior and greater creativity. Mead assumed that the development of a self concept is made possible by interaction with other through symbols like language and gestures. In early years, children take roles of their parents, when they play, whom Mead called Significant others. They internalize their parents values and attitudes, incorporating them into their own personalities. As they grow older, they get interacted also with other people outside family circle, whom are not as significant as parents, but they are representative of society as a whole. Mead called them Generalized others. Internalized social values become only one part of our personality, which Mead called the Me. Whenever we feel like obeying the law; we are sensing the presence of me, which represents society, within our personality. On the other hand, a portion of our personality cannot be easily invaded by society; Mead referred it as the I of our personality. It is basically spontaneous, creative or impulsive. Unlike the me, which makes all of us look alike on our behavior, the I makes each of us unique. Is Socialization Over With Childhood: As we discussed, Socialization is a learning process that begins shortly after birth. When infants are born they are helpless and behave much like a kitten or a puppy. The nature (where we live in) and nurture (learning) take role to make us socialized and several theories influence our personality to be developed. Even into adulthood, the process of socialization continues, though it usually does not change us as radically as in out early childhood.

References -- Sociology (An Introduction) - Alex Thio (1989)

http://en.wikipedia.org/

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