Socialization Overview

Summary

In this engaging sociology lecture led by Mr. Plaza, the focus is on understanding socialization and how it fundamentally makes us human. The session addresses key questions about the role of socialization and its agents in shaping our identities, contrasting perspectives on socialization, and reviewing classic studies that highlight the importance of social interaction. Mr. Plaza details the lifelong process of socialization, touching upon the nature versus nurture debate, and explains various sociological perspectives—functionalist, conflict, and symbolic interactionist. The session also delves into the Looking Glass Self concept, highlighting how others' perceptions influence self-identity.

Highlights

• Mr. Plaza revisits the concept of socialization, highlighting how it starts at birth and lasts a lifetime. 🎨
• A look at the classic Harlow monkey study, showcasing the importance of intimacy and comfort over mere sustenance. 🐒
• Explore how 20 minutes of extra touch daily can improve children's developmental growth. 👐
• Debate nature versus nurture, questioning whether we're born with traits or develop them through experience. 🤔
• Dive into different sociological perspectives on socialization: from functionalist stability to conflict theory's power struggles. ⚖️
• Understand the Symbolic Interactionist approach to 'self' and the role of the Looking Glass Self in shaping identity. 💭
• The concept of anticipatory socialization is discussed, highlighting its role in transitioning through life stages. 🚀

Key Takeaways

• Socialization is the key process in becoming human, shaping our identity and personality throughout our lives. 🧠
• Agents of socialization, such as family, schools, and communities, play vital roles in our development by influencing our norms and values. 🏫
• The nature versus nurture debate examines whether our traits are innate or formed through environmental influences. 🌱
• Sociological perspectives—functionalist, conflict, and symbolic interactionist—offer different lenses to understand socialization. 🔍
• The Looking Glass Self theory suggests we shape our self-image based on others' perceptions and interactions with us. 👥
• Socialization is a dynamic, lifelong process that involves continuous learning and adaptation. 🔄

Overview

Welcome to an insightful exploration of socialization led by Mr. Plaza. In this session, we delve into the process that turns us from mere biological beings into 'humans' in social contexts. The discussion starts with defining socialization as the lifelong process of learning group life, shaping our attitudes, beliefs, and personality. Initially, Mr. Plaza raises essential questions about what renders us 'human' and how agents of socialization contribute to our identity, setting the stage for a journey through notable sociological perspectives.

The session takes a fascinating turn as it dives into historical studies by Harlow and Castle, emphasizing the profound impact of comfort, touch, and interaction in child development. Key debates like nature vs. nurture come to life, questioning whether our identities are a product of biology or shaped by our environments. Various sociological viewpoints—functionalist, conflict, and symbolic interactionist—help unpack the complex mechanisms of socialization, each providing unique insights into how individuals align with societal norms.

Finally, Mr. Plaza covers the importance of the Looking Glass Self in understanding personal identity. This theory posits that we craft our self-image based on how we perceive others view us, a process influenced by constant interaction and social feedback. We also explore the dynamic nature of socialization through concepts like desocialization and resocialization, which prompt continual adaptation to new social norms across different life stages. With engaging examples and practical explanations, this session offers a comprehensive look at the transformative power of socialization.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction The introduction addresses the topic of socialization in sociology, focusing on the idea of how we become human. It sets the stage for discussing the essential questions related to sociological perspectives on human development and identity. The video seeks to expand the audience's understanding of human nature and behavior through the lens of sociology, emphasizing that humans aren't inherently born with the identities and roles they possess in society.
• 01:00 - 03:00: Defining Socialization The chapter titled 'Defining Socialization' discusses the role of socialization in making us human. It explores how various agents of socialization either work together or compete to influence our identities. The chapter encourages readers to reflect on the interactions and influences of these agents. It also emphasizes the importance of defining socialization as a concept, laying the groundwork for further discussion in the unit.
• 03:00 - 05:00: Importance of Socialization: Harlow's Study The chapter titled 'Importance of Socialization: Harlow's Study' discusses the concept of socialization as a cultural process where individuals learn to participate in group life. Socialization is a lifelong learning process through which individuals learn how to be part of various groups, ranging from small to large, including the human group as a whole. It emphasizes that while socialization begins at birth and continues until death, it also involves ongoing processes of being socialized, resocialized, and desocialized in response to the ever-changing world.
• 05:00 - 06:00: Importance of Socialization: Casler's Study Socialization is a lifelong process that shapes our attitudes, beliefs, values, and behaviors, essentially giving us our personality.
• 06:00 - 08:00: Nature vs. Nurture Debate The chapter discusses the Nature vs. Nurture debate, focusing on the experiment conducted by Harlow with monkeys. Harlow's experiment involved monkeys raised by either wire mothers with bottles or soft cloth mothers without food. The key finding highlighted is that the monkeys prioritized closeness and comfort over food, suggesting a fundamental need for intimacy and warmth.
• 08:00 - 10:00: Functionalist Perspective on Socialization This chapter discusses the necessity of contact and comfort for proper development, highlighting the adverse effects such as distress, apathy, and withdrawal that arise from their deprivation. It also references the significant studies by Lawrence Castler in 1965, which focused on institutionalized children. Castler discovered the critical role of providing certain elements for development in settings like orphanages or group homes.
• 10:00 - 12:00: Conflict Perspective on Socialization The chapter begins by discussing the importance of extra touch in child development, highlighting that children who receive 20 minutes of extra touch daily tend to develop better than those who do not. It emphasizes the significance of socialization in developmental growth. Furthermore, the chapter introduces two key concepts in the socialization debate: nature versus nurture, questioning whether certain traits are innate or acquired.
• 12:00 - 15:00: Symbolic Interactionist Perspective: The Self and Looking Glass Self The chapter discusses the symbolic interactionist perspective, focusing on concepts of 'the self' and 'looking-glass self'. It highlights the interplay between nature and nurture, explaining that 'nature' involves biological and hereditary factors we are born with, while 'nurture' involves societal and environmental influences. The chapter emphasizes that both factors interact to shape our identity, suggesting a sociology class will explore these nurture-based influences in depth.
• 15:00 - 17:00: Agents of Socialization This chapter explores the concept of socialization through different sociological perspectives, using twin studies as a case study to understand the influence of nature versus nurture. It invites students to recall previous discussions on the main sociological perspectives and examines how each one approaches the process of socialization. The functionalist perspective, which focuses on how various parts of society work together, is highlighted.
• 17:00 - 18:00: Socialization as a Lifelong Process Chapter: Socialization as a Lifelong Process This chapter explores the different perspectives on socialization, emphasizing functionalism and conflict theories. Functionalists argue that groups such as families and schools collaborate to maintain societal stability by socializing children to fit societal norms. In contrast, conflict theorists believe that societal processes are inherently riddled with inequalities and power struggles, suggesting that these tensions influence the socialization process.
• 18:00 - 20:00: Desocialization and Resocialization The chapter discusses the concept of socialization as a means to perpetuate the societal status quo. It suggests that various agents of socialization interact to shape individuals, particularly children, in ways that may lock them into certain social statuses from birth. These individuals often accept their given social class and status without recognizing that they have the choice to change. This deterministic view of socialization aligns with a conflict theorist's perspective, emphasizing the inevitability of class acceptance due to social influences.
• 20:00 - 21:00: Anticipatory Socialization The chapter on 'Anticipatory Socialization' discusses different theoretical perspectives on socialization, focusing on functionalists and conflict theorists. It highlights that children, from birth, accept their social status, resulting in stability within the social class structure. The chapter further explores the concept of the 'self,' emphasizing its complexity and noting that symbolic interactionists are particularly interested in this area.
• 21:00 - 25:00: Results of Socialization: Internalization vs Interaction The chapter discusses the concept of the 'self,' presenting it as a symbol agreed upon by society. This symbol signifies an individual identity distinct from others, where everyone believes in a personal image that sets them apart. The discussion explores the notion that the self is not an inherent entity but rather a social construct shaped by interactions.
• 25:00 - 27:00: Conclusion The conclusion delves into the concept of the 'Looking Glass Self' which is essential to understanding how our self-concept is shaped. It explains that through socialization, individuals often take on roles and assume the viewpoints of others, which helps in shaping one's self-concept. The 'Looking Glass Self' is likened to a mirror, suggesting that the perception we have of ourselves is influenced by how we believe others see us.

Socialization Overview Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Hello everybody welcome back it's been kind of a while since we've had a sociology video posted on here but um figur it about time to add to our little Library here so the topic of our Focus today is going to be on socialization basically it's we're going to talk about this idea of how we become human because believe it or not we weren't born human and we're going to look at that topic today so our essential questions two big topics to think about as we go through today what do sociologists mean when they say
• 00:30 - 01:00 socialization makes us human we'll talk about that and then lastly how do agents of socialization work together or compete to make us who we are there are some people that think they all work together there are some people who think they compete um so give you a chance to think about that as well we're also going to talk about what agents of socialization are as we go throughout this unit so please think about these questions as we go along so first of all it's important when we talk about this idea of socialization to determine a definition when we talk about social in
• 01:00 - 01:30 sociology we're talking about the cultural process of learning to participate in group life so basically you're learning how to be part of a group small groups large group the human group okay so it's a it's a cultural process you're learning how to be human the big thing to understand is that it lasts from the time you're born to the time you die you're constantly being socialized resocialized desocialized um because the world's changing all the time so socialization
• 01:30 - 02:00 is a lifelong process it it teaches us our attitudes our beliefs our values and our behaviors in other words socialization gives us our quote unquote personality and we're actually going to be doing some stuff with personality as we go through this unit two very famous Studies have been done to talk about the importance of socialization actually three uh one of them that we're actually going to watch in class is called uh the Harry harlo monkey study which was done in the 1950s and as you can see in that picture
• 02:00 - 02:30 there on the right what harlo did was take these monkeys and some of them had been raised on wire mothers others had been raised on cloth mothers The Wider mothers had a bottle attached the cloth mothers did not they were just soft and what he tried to do was see how the monkeys would respond to each of these mothers if they were put into a situation where there was some fear going on and what he found and again we're going to watch the video is that closeness and comfort were more important than food in other words we have a need for intimacy warmth
• 02:30 - 03:00 contact and comfort if we don't have that we're not going to develop properly and there's deprivation of those things we get distress we get apathy and we get withdrawal the other major case is the one done by Lawrence castler in 1965 and he did a lot of studies on institutionalized children or children that were living in orphanages or group homes or something like that and what he discovered is that if you provide
• 03:00 - 03:30 kids with or children with 20 minutes of Extra Touch every day you can improve their developmental growth they're going to develop better than kids who do not receive that 20 minutes of extra touch a day so as we're going to see socialization is really important there are two key terms here to understand when we talk about socialization it's actually a debate that we're going to talk about as we go through the socialization unit and it's this idea of nature versus nurture are we born a certain way are we made a
• 03:30 - 04:00 certain way or is it a combination of both it's important to understand the definition of the two nature is biological it's hereditary they're innate factors that we're just born with we can't control nurture on the other hand are societal and environmental factors so you can probably imagine being a Sociology class we're going to spend a lot of time looking at this nurture idea but it's also really important to understand that there's an interaction between both of these that make us who we are and you see the pictures there on theot botom of
• 04:00 - 04:30 the screen we're going to spend a little bit of time talking about the idea of twins and there's been some really interesting case studies done on twins to see which is more important nature or nurture okay if you remember a couple weeks ago at the very beginning of our semester we started talking about this idea of perspective that there are three major ways that sociologists can look at a given topic and in this case we're going to see how each of these perspectives looks at socialization a functionalist perspective remember that functionalists talk about how things work together
• 04:30 - 05:00 functionalist stress how these groups work together to create a stable society and they basically say something like the Agents of socialization for example schools and families work together to socialize kids all of these things work together to make kids who we want them to be on the other side we have the conflict perspective remember that conflict theorists think that there's constant conflict everywhere in the world and they said that there's inequalities and power struggles and that
• 05:00 - 05:30 socialization actually perpetuates the status quo what that means is is that all of these different agents of socialization are working against each other to make kids who they are and what they say is that often times when a kid is born they accept that social class and that status they're born with before they even understand what that means they don't realize that they have a choice they're born we said that they're born in a certain social class and they accept it right away and that's what a conf theist would look at and so
• 05:30 - 06:00 they argue that because kids accept their place right when they're born there's no upset in the social class structure okay so we see the difference there between how functionalists and conflict theorists look at socialization the really important part here of socialization is this idea of the self now I'm sure people have asked you to describe yourself or say um who you think you are and and that's actually a really complex idea this idea of the self and actually symbolic interactionists are the one that look at
• 06:00 - 06:30 this idea they say there's this symbol that we all agree on called the self I have a self you have a self your parents have a self teachers whatever and basically what that means is that we have an image that's separate from other people we believe that we're somehow different than others we're I'm Jim Plaza you are who you are that is the idea of the self but the self they argue is created
• 06:30 - 07:00 by other people by socialization and often times that's done through roll taking or assuming the Viewpoint of another and using that to shape our self concept this is a very key concept that we need to understand here and it's called the Looking Glass self if you take a look at these uh two pictures here you can probably get an idea that the Looking Glass self think of it as a mirror a Looking Glass is a fancy way of saying a mirror we have an image of ourself based on what we think others
• 07:00 - 07:30 think of us now that sounds kind of confusing at first but if you think about it we're basically using other people as mirrors to reflect what they think of us okay often times that image is distorted so if I see someone give me a weird look I have this distorted image of what they think of me if they frown at me for example I might think I'm a I'm smell bad or I'm ugly or something like that because of that reaction if they smile at me or give me a little wink you know across the room that
• 07:30 - 08:00 typically would mean that I would feel pretty good about myself but we use those other people's reactions to us and our behaviors to see who we really are and that's called the Looking Glass self and here's how it works number one we imagine how we appear to that person we imagine the reactions of those others to our appearance and then we evaluate ourselves according to how we imagine those people have judged us so here's an example let's say for example I want to impress a
• 08:00 - 08:30 classmate I want to show them how smart I am okay I study really hard I read another section of the textbook just to make sure I have a lot of information I watch some like documentaries or something on TV so I prepare really really well because I want to impress this classmate so I participate in the class discussion the next day and I have an image of how I performed you know I I rocked it you know I brought up all these great points this person is going to be so impressed with me you know check it out but when I look at that person maybe they're sleeping or maybe
• 08:30 - 09:00 they're on their phone texting or maybe they're just staring off into space and so I think based on that reaction that my classmate is disappointed that he's not he or she is not satisfied with what I've done and so therefore I feel bad about myself because I didn't get them to feel the way that I wanted to I used that person's reaction as a mirror to see who I really am and that's what we call the Looking Glass self so we're going to look at some other examp examples of this as we go through the
• 09:00 - 09:30 unit there are several parts of socialization several things that make us who we are and we're going to go into more detail about these as we go through the unit so I'm not really going to spend a whole bunch of time here but if you look at this little wheel here we have us the indiv let's say you the individual in the middle and then all the things around that are the things that make you who you are okay so your family the school you go to the church you go to the community you grow up in ETC all of those things play a role in
• 09:30 - 10:00 shaping who you become and those are called agents of socialization and again we're looking we're going to look more into detail as we go through the unit lastly some very important terms as far as how socialization works again second time we've said this so you can probably guess it's pretty important socialization is a lifelong process and change constantly occurs think about like old people with technology they have to learn constantly to adapt to new technology that comes out phones and
• 10:00 - 10:30 televisions and video games and music and whatever it might be so they constantly have to learn the way that works is that we have to be desocialized from the way we used to do things we give up our old Norms our old values our old attitudes and behaviors and we are resocialized then by adopting new Norms new values New Attitudes new behaviors okay often times we are resocialized through Rewards or punishments also known as sanctions which hopefully by now you're familiar
• 10:30 - 11:00 with so here's an example and you can see there on the right the US Marines or a first year at a military academy you are completely desocialized they take away who you be who you were before they cut your hair in a lot of cases they take away your civilian clothes and they give you standard issue items and you become a serial number basically so you're desocialized and then through rewards and punishments in the military you are resocialized into being a marine or into being a sailor or into being a soldier whatever you might be doing you
• 11:00 - 11:30 resocialized into that sometimes we voluntarily resocialize and this is called anticipatory socialization we prepare ourselves to accept new Norms new values attitudes and beliefs often times this happens when you take a next step into school like for example when you go to elementary school to middle school or you go from middle school to high school or high school to college or college to the workforce you learn to get rid of some of the things that you did before
• 11:30 - 12:00 so you can get ready to be part of that new group you're going to join so like if I'm in high school I have to give up some things that in high school so that I can get ready for what life is going to be like in college and we call that anticipatory socialization okay often times again I I said pre-teens teenage years College seniors all that kind of stuff okay the results of socialization what is the end goal and this is what sociologists often debate is it internalization or interaction some sociologists argue that the result
• 12:00 - 12:30 of socialization is that an individual completely accepts society's norms and beliefs and becomes part of that group they make those Norms who they are and they call that internalization you you make that part of who you are there are some people though that say you know that's not really the case it's more about learning to interact we know the societal definitions of things but we also have our own definitions that we have to negotiate with other people so it's something to think about as we go through this unit do you think that
• 12:30 - 13:00 socialization results in internalization or interaction okay and again it's a pretty large debate in sociology so it's something we we'll definitely go over throughout the unit all right so this wraps up our video for today um if you need to watch again please feel free to rewind also make sure that you've answered all of the questions as we go through this those questions are going to be the basis of your grade it's going to let me know that I actually that you actually watch the video so make sure you go back and do that um so thank you guys for listening I hope you guys learned
• 13:00 - 13:30 something and I will see you next time