Learning to be Human

Topic 5
Theories of self development(Psychological)
• When we are born, we have a genetic makeup and biological traits. However, who
we are as human beings develops through social interaction.
• Many scholars, both in the fields of psychology and in sociology, have described the
process of self development as a precursor to understanding how that “self”
becomes socialized.
• Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) was one of the most influential modern
scientists to put forth a theory about how people develop a sense of self.
• He believed that personality and sexual development were closely linked, and he
divided the maturation process into psychosexual stages: oral, anal, phallic, latency,
and genital.
• He posited that people’s self development is closely linked to early stages of
development, like breastfeeding, toilet training, and sexual awareness (Freud 1905).
Theories of self development(Psychological)
• Key to Freud’s approach to child development is to trace the
formations of desire and pleasure in the child’s life.
• The child is seen to be at the centre of a tricky negotiation between
internal, instinctual drives for gratification (the pleasure principle) and
external, social demands to repress those drives in order to conform
to the rules and regulations of civilization (the reality principle).
• Failure to resolve the traumatic tensions and impasses of childhood
psychosexual development results in emotional and psychological
consequences throughout adulthood.
Theories of development (Sociological)
• One of the pioneering contributors to sociological perspectives on self-
development was Charles Cooley (1864–1929). He asserted that people’s
self understanding is constructed, in part, by their perception of how others
view them—a process termed “the looking glass self” (Cooley 1902).
• The self or “self idea” is thoroughly social. It is based on how we imagine
we appear to others. This projection defines how we feel about ourselves
and who we feel ourselves to be.
• The development of a self therefore involves three elements in Cooley’s
analysis: “the imagination of our appearance to the other person; the
imagination of his judgment of that appearance, and some sort of self-
feeling, such as pride or mortification.”
Theories of development (Sociological)
• George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) advanced a more detailed sociological approach to
the self. He agreed that the self, as a person’s distinct identity, is only developed
through social interaction.
• He further noted that the crucial component of the self is its capacity for self
reflection, its capacity to be “an object to itself” (Mead 1934). On this basis, he broke
the self down into two components or “phases,” the “I” and the “me.”
• The “me” represents the part of the self in which one recognizes the “organized sets
of attitudes” of others toward the self. It is who we are in other’s eyes: our roles, our
“personalities,” our public personas.
• The “I,” on the other hand, represents the part of the self that acts on its own
initiative or responds to the organized attitudes of others. It is the novel, spontaneous,
unpredictable part of the self: the part of the self that embodies the possibility of
change or undetermined action.
Theories of development (Sociological)
• The self is always caught up in a social process in which one flips back
and forth between two distinguishable phases, the I and the me, as
one mediates between one’s own individual actions and individual
responses to various social situations and the attitudes of the
community.
• This flipping back and forth is the condition of our being able to be
social. It is not an ability that we are born with (Mead 1934). Without
others, or without society, the self cannot exist: “[I]t is impossible to
conceive of a self arising outside of social experience” (Mead 1934).
Theories of development (Sociological)
• Mead developed a specifically sociological theory of the path of
development that all people go through, which he divided into stages
of increasing capacity for role play: the four stages of child
socialization.
• During the preparatory stage, children are only capable of imitation:
they have no ability to imagine how others see things.
Mead’s stages of socialization
• They copy the actions of people with whom they regularly interact, such
as their mothers and fathers. A child’s baby talk is a reflection of its
inability to make an object of itself through which it can approach itself.
• This is followed by the play stage, during which children begin to imitate
and take on roles that another person might have. Thus, children might
try on a parent’s point of view by acting out “grownup” behaviour, like
playing “dress up” and acting out the mom role, or talking on a toy
telephone the way they see their father do.
• However, they are still not able to take on roles in a consistent and
coherent manner. Role play is very fluid and transitory, and children flip in
and out of roles easily.
Mead’s stages of socialisation
• During the game stage, children learn to consider several specific roles
at the same time and how those roles interact with each other. They
learn to understand interactions involving different people with a
variety of purposes. They understand that role play in each situation
involves following a consistent set of rules and expectations.
• Finally, children develop, understand, and learn the idea of
the generalized other, the common behavioural expectations of
general society. By this stage of development, an individual is able to
internalize how he or she is viewed, not simply from the perspective of
specific others, but from the perspective of the generalized other or
“organized community.”
Mead’s stages of socialization
• Being able to guide one’s actions according to the attitudes of the
generalized other provides the basis of having a “self” in the
sociological sense.

• This capacity defines the conditions of thinking, of language, and of

society itself as the organization of complex cooperative processes
and activities.
Theory of moral development
• Moral development is an important part of the socialization process.
The term refers to the way people learn what society considered to be
“good” and “bad,” which is important for a smoothly functioning
society.
• Moral development prevents people from acting on unchecked urges,
instead considering what is right for society and good for others.
Lawrence Kohlberg (1927–1987) was interested in how people learn to
decide what is right and what is wrong.
• To understand this topic, he developed a theory of moral development
that includes three levels: pre-conventional, conventional, and post-
conventional.
Theory of moral development
• In the pre-conventional stage, young children, who lack a higher level
of cognitive ability, experience the world around them only through
their senses.
• It isn’t until the teen years that the conventional theory develops,
when youngsters become increasingly aware of others’ feelings and
take those into consideration when determining what’s “good” and
“bad.”
• The final stage, called post-conventional, is when people begin to
think of morality in abstract terms, such as Americans believing that
everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Theory of Moral development
• At this stage, people also recognize that legality and morality do not
always match up evenly (Kohlberg 1981).

• When hundreds of thousands of Egyptians turned out in 2011 to

protest government corruption, they were using post-conventional
morality.

• They understood that although their government was legal, it was not
morally correct.
Becoming a member of a society
• Socialization is the process through which people are taught to be
proficient members of a society.

• It describes the ways that people come to understand societal norms

and expectations, to accept society’s beliefs, and to be aware of
societal values.

• Socialization is not the same as socializing(interacting with others, like

family, friends, and coworkers); to be precise, it is a sociological
process that occurs through socializing.
Becoming a member of society
• Children are brought up very differently from one society to another.
Each culture has its own childrearing values, attitudes, and practices.
• No matter how children are raised, however, each society must
provide certain minimal necessities to ensure normal development.
• The infant’s physical needs must, of course, be addressed, but more
than that is required. Children need speaking social partners. (Some
evidence suggests that a child who has received no language
stimulation at all in the first five to six years of life will be unable ever
to acquire speech).
Why socialization matters
• Socialization is critical both to individuals and to the societies in which
they live.
• It illustrates how completely intertwined human beings and their
social worlds are.
• First, it is through teaching culture to new members that a society
perpetuates itself. If new generations of a society don’t learn its way
of life, it ceases to exist. Whatever is distinctive about a culture must
be transmitted to those who join it in order for a society to survive.
Why socialization matters
• Socialization is just as essential to us as individuals. Social interaction provides
the means via which we gradually become able to see ourselves through the
eyes of others, learning who we are and how we fit into the world around us.
• In addition, to function successfully in society, we have to learn the basics of
both material land nonmaterial culture, everything from how to dress
ourselves to what is suitable attire for a specific occasion; from when we
sleep to what we sleep on; and from what is considered appropriate to eat for
dinner to how to use the stove to prepare it.
• Most importantly, we have to learn language—whether it is the dominant
language or one common in a subculture, whether it is verbal or through
signs—in order to communicate and to think.
Nature versus nurture
• Some experts assert that who we are is a result of nurture—the
relationships and caring that surround us. Others argue that who we
are is based entirely in genetics.
• According to this belief, our temperaments, interests, and talents are
set before birth. From this perspective, then, who we are depends
on nature.
Agents of socialization
• Socialization helps people learn to function successfully in their social
worlds. How does the process of socialization occur? How do we learn
to use the objects of our society’s material culture? How do we come
to adopt the beliefs, values, and norms that represent its nonmaterial
culture?

• This learning takes place through interaction with various agents of

socialization, like peer groups and families, plus both formal and
informal social institutions.
Social Group Agents
• Social groups often provide the first experiences of socialization.
Families, and later peer groups, communicate expectations and
reinforce norms.

• People first learn to use the tangible objects of material culture in

these settings, as well as being introduced to the beliefs and values of
society.
Family
• Family is the first agent of socialization. Mothers and fathers, siblings and
grandparents, plus members of an extended family, all teach a child what he
or she needs to know.

• Families show the children how to use objects (such as clothes, computers,
eating utensils, books, bikes); how to relate to others (some as “family,”
others as “friends,” still others as “strangers” or “teachers” or “neighbours”);
and how the world works (what is “real” and what is “imagined”).
• As you are aware, either from your own experience as a child or your role in
helping to raise one, socialization involves teaching and learning about an
unending array of objects and ideas.
Family
• It is important to keep in mind, however, that families do not socialize children in a
vacuum. Many social factors impact how a family raises its children.
• Sociologists recognize that race, social class, religion, and other societal factors play
an important role in socialization.
• For example, poor families usually emphasize obedience and conformity when
raising their children, while wealthy families emphasize judgment and creativity
(National Opinion Research Center 2008).
• This may be because working-class parents have less education and more repetitive-
task jobs for which the ability to follow rules and to conform helps.
• Wealthy parents tend to have better educations and often work in managerial
positions or in careers that require creative problem solving, so they teach their
children behaviours that would be beneficial in these positions.
Peer Groups
• A peer group is made up of people who are similar in age and social status and who
share interests. Peer group socialization begins in the earliest years, such as when kids
on a playground teach younger children the norms about taking turns or the rules of a
game or how to shoot a basket.
• As children grow into teenagers, this process continues. Peer groups are important to
adolescents in a new way, as they begin to develop an identity separate from their
parents and exert independence.
• Additionally, peer groups provide their own opportunities for socialization since kids
usually engage in different types of activities with their peers than they do with their
families.
• Peer groups provide adolescents’ first major socialization experience outside the
realm of their families. Interestingly, studies have shown that although friendships
rank high in adolescents’ priorities, this is balanced by parental influence.
Institutional Agents
• The social institutions of our culture also inform our socialization.
Formal institutions—like schools, workplaces, and the government—
teach people how to behave in and navigate these systems.

• Other institutions, like the media, contribute to socialization by

inundating (flooding) us with messages about norms and
expectations.
School
• Students are not only in school to study math, reading, science, and other subjects—
the manifest function of this system. Schools also serve a latent function in society by
socializing children into behaviours like teamwork, following a schedule, and using
textbooks.
• School and classroom rituals, led by teachers serving as role models and leaders,
regularly reinforce what society expects from children. Sociologists describe this
aspect of schools as the hidden curriculum, the informal teaching done by schools.
• Children learn how to deal with bureaucracy, rules, expectations, waiting their turn,
and sitting still for hours during the day. The latent functions of competition,
teamwork, classroom discipline, time awareness and dealing with bureaucracy are
features of the hidden curriculum.
• Schools also socialize children by teaching them overtly about citizenship and
nationalism.
School
• The school is an institution intended to socialize children in selected
skills and knowledge.

• The school must also confront a more basic problem. As an

institution, it must resolve the conflicting values of the local
community and of the state and regional officials whose job it is to
determine what should be taught.
Religion
• While some religions may tend toward being an informal institution, this section
focuses on practices related to formal institutions. Religion is an important avenue
of socialization for many people.

• Like other institutions, these places teach participants how to interact with the
religion’s material culture (like a mezuzah, a prayer rug, or a communion wafer).
For some people, important ceremonies related to family structure—like marriage
and birth—are connected to religious celebrations.
• Many of these institutions uphold gender norms and contribute to their
enforcement through socialization. From ceremonial rites of passage that
reinforce the family unit, to power dynamics which reinforce gender roles, religion
fosters a shared set of socialized values that are passed on through society.
Mass Media
• Mass media refers to the distribution of impersonal information to a
wide audience, via television, newspapers, radio, and the internet.
• With the average person spending over four hours a day in front of
the TV (and children averaging even more screen time), media greatly
influences social norms (Roberts, Foehr, and Rideout 2005).
• People learn about objects of material culture (like new technology
and transportation options), as well as nonmaterial culture—what is
true (beliefs), what is important (values), and what is expected
(norms).
Government
• Although we do not think about it, many of the rites of passage people go
through today are based on age norms established by the government.
• To be defined as an “adult” usually means being 18 years old, the age at
which a person becomes legally responsible for themselves. And 65 is the
start of “old age” since most people become eligible for senior benefits at
that point.
• Each time we embark on one of these new categories—senior, adult,
taxpayer—we must be socialized into this new role. Seniors, for example,
must learn the ropes of obtaining pension benefits. This government
program marks the points at which we require socialization into a new
category.
Socialisation is continuous(lifelong)
• Socialization isn’t a one-time or even a short-term event. We are not
“stamped” by some socialization machine as we move along a conveyor belt
and thereby socialized once and for all. In fact, socialization is a lifelong
process.
• Among other things, children develop a sense of self, memory, language, and
intellect. And in doing so, they learn from their elders the attitudes, values,
and proper social behaviours of the culture into which they were born.
• Becoming socialized benefits the individual by giving him or her the tools
needed for success in the native culture, and also benefits the society by
providing continuity over time and preserving its essential nature from
generation to generation. In other words, socialization connects different
generations to each other.
Feral Child(children)
• A feral child is a human child who has lived isolated from human
contact from a very young age, and has no (or little) experience of
human care, loving or social behaviour, and, crucially, of human
language.
• Some feral children have been confined in isolation by other people,
usually their own parents. In some cases, this child abandonment was
due to the parents rejecting a child’s severe intellectual or physical
impairment.
• Feral children may have experienced severe child abuse or trauma
before being abandoned or running away.
Feral children
• In reality, feral children lack the basic social skills that are normally learned
in the process of enculturation. For example, they may be unable to learn
to use a toilet, have trouble learning to walk upright, and display a
complete lack of interest in the human activity around them.
• They often seem mentally impaired and have almost insurmountable
trouble learning human language.

• The impaired ability to learn language after having been isolated for so
many years is often attributed to the existence of a critical period for
language learning at an early age, and is taken as evidence in favour of the
critical period hypothesis.
Feral Children
• It is theorized that if language is not developed, at least to a degree,
during this critical period, a child can never reach his or her full
language potential.

• The fact that feral children lack these abilities pinpoints the role of
socialization in human development.
Unsocialised children
• “Unsocialized(untamed)” children are those that typically look more
animal than human, prefer to remain naked (at least at first upon
being discovered), lack human speech, have no sense of personal
hygiene, fail to recognize themselves in a mirror, show little or no
reasoning ability, and respond only partially to attempts to help them
change from “animal into human.”
• The phenomenon of feral (literally wild or untamed) children sparks
much discussion regarding the nature versus nurture debate because
research shows that the state of these children seems to suggest the
important role that learning plays in normal human development.
Unsocialized children
• Social scientists emphasize that socialization is intimately related
to cognitive, personality, and social development.

• They argue that socialization primarily occurs during infancy and

childhood, although they acknowledge that humans continue to grow
and adapt throughout the lifespan.