Notes: As sociologists, two of the key questions we ask are: to what degree do individuals freely choose these preferences, and to what extent does society mold and shape individual choices and behaviors?
Sociologists contend that numerous social influences groom you, from everyday social interactions to the larger social forces such as family, peers, school, media, religion, work, and government. Your awareness of these social processes depends on the situation.
4.1.3 –
Have you ever been in a situation where you are embarrassed because of what other people might think of you? Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929) described this process as the looking-glass self, the process of imagining the reaction of others toward oneself. Here is how it works: first, we imagine how we appear to others, and next, we imagine how others judge that appearance.
For example, are you feeling down or upbeat at the moment? Replay your most recent social interactions and apply the three phases of the looking-glass self:
- Imagine how you appear to others.
- Imagine how others judge your appearance.
- Determine how the process influences your self by combining how you imagine you appear to others with others\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\’ judgments of your appearance.
- 4.2.1 –
- For example, the agents of socialization, individuals, groups, and institutions that influence the attitudes and behaviors of members of society, are structural components of society that significantly influence who you are today and who you will become. These agents include family, peers, school, media, religion, work, and government. Sociologists often explain socialization within families through social learning theory, the process of learning from one another in a social context through observation and imitation. Developed by Albert Bandura, social learning theory holds that individuals learn and develop by observing others. The family is the primary agent of socialization. Social development begins at birth, as babies mimic the facial expressions of their mother and father and coo over them in their crib. For toddlers, imitation is vital to developing a range of abilities, from language to social skills. One of parents’ biggest concerns is their child hanging around the wrong friends and caving into negative pressure from peer groups, social groups consisting of members with similar interests, social rank, and ages. Popular adolescents are labeled as high-status youth, those viewed as popular among peers. There are two categories of high-status youth: those who are genuinely well-liked by their peers and engage in predominantly prosocial behaviors, and those who are seen as popular but not necessarily well-liked.
- 4.2.2 –
- Sociologist Jessica McCrory Calarco (2014) found that middle-class parents teach their children to ask their teachers for help, while working-class parents view asking for help as disrespectful and instead encourage their children to work out problems on their own. This pattern of socialization reproduces class inequalities in educational outcomes. These examples are part of the hidden curriculum, the unintentional education of students in the ideals and ways of being in society. This hidden curriculum may have even influenced your college major. Socialization processes change based on your social situation at various stages of your life, such as during school and when entering the workforce.
- 4.2.3 –
- Born in and after the 1990s, digital natives, individuals born after the widespread adoption of technology, are those individuals who have always experienced a digital world. On the other hand, your authors are digital immigrants, individuals born before the widespread adoption of technology. Since today’s children and adolescents are digital natives, this 24/7 connectivity may be remapping their neural activity, a phenomenon known as neuroplasticity. First, the Internet is destroying our power of concentration and thus our interest in reading books. Second, due to the Internet’s superficiality, we are becoming intellectually shallow, and our brains are no longer fertile ground for contemplation and critical analysis.
- 4.3.1 –
- Sometimes families fail to socialize their children to the standards considered the norm in society. What happens when families completely fail to socialize with their children? While this may occur for various reasons, extreme cases result in what sociologists call feral children, children who are isolated and neglected such that they are raised without socialization. What conclusions can we draw from cases of feral children? At its core, we can conclude that the family’s role as an agent of socialization can have a broad and possibly irreversible impact on an individual’s life. The child\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\’s gender can also play a role in how a family socializes its children. The lessons parents give their daughters about self-protection are often quite different from the ones they give their sons.
- 4.3.3 –
- On a macro or structural level, religion works to strengthen society’s norms and promote social control by reinforcing behaviors society views as acceptable while at the same time condemning those viewed as abhorrent. Problems arise when a religion becomes a total institution, an isolated group with strict rules and regulations whose goal is to control every aspect of its members’ lives. In addition, if the religion requires resocialization, an identity transformation in which social norms and roles are altered or replaced, other problems may develop. As a total institution, The Movement of the Restoration resocialized its members by controlling what they thought and how they acted. The level of obedience required of followers of The Movement was all part of an effort at resocialization. Other forms of total institutions that resocialize members include prisons, convents, and the military. Recruits who have accidentally or intentionally done something wrong are often confronted with a type of public punishment or humiliation that sociologists call a degradation ceremony, an event, ceremony, or rite of passage used to break down people and make them more accepting of a total institution. People’s willingness to endure the difficulties of boot camp is an example of anticipatory socialization, the process of learning behaviors or activities in an effort to gain group membership. For most, completing basic training is a rite of passage, a ceremony or ritual used to mark a change in age or social status, and the start of their military career.
- 4.4.1 –
- The sociological imagination allows us to view socialization from the standpoint of the individual and the group. It also enables us to examine personal troubles and public issues that may arise with socialization. Just as in a theatrical play, there is a stage that we use for our social performances. In his 1956 book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, sociologist Erving Goffman explained these performances with the concept of dramaturgy, the theory that we are all actors on the stage of life, and as such, we divide our world based on what we do and do not let others see of us. For example, you most likely use different language with your professors than with classmates. You don’t use slang and may even throw in a big word or two when conversing with one of your professors.
- According to Goffman’s theory, our world is divided into two areas. The first is what we let the world see, our front stage, a person’s public life that they reveal to the world. In juxtaposition, we try not to let the world see our backstage, a person’s private world that they choose not to reveal. As an example of the front and backstage of dramaturgy, consider the waitstaff experience in a restaurant. The front stage is the public area where the patrons sit and enjoy their meals. The restaurant employees work to ensure the public dining area is calm and inviting. On the other hand, the backstage of a restaurant is the kitchen.
- Goffman’s theory of dramaturgy does not stop with the notions of front stage and backstage. He contends that the theory has a third component, the notion of impression management, an effort to control the impression others have of us. By engaging in impression management, we are not only being selective about what we reveal to the world but also making a decision, consciously or otherwise, about how much of our personal troubles we are willing to make public issues.
- 4.4.2 –
- Anthropologist Edward Hall addressed the issue of personal space with his work on Proxemic Theory (Brown 2011). His research involved studying distance zones, the amount of space we are socialized to feel comfortable having between ourselves and others.
- Intimate (0–18 inches): reserved for people who know you really well, such as your significant other, family, and close friends.
- Personal (18 inches–4 feet): reserved for less intimate social interactions like student and teacher, or therapist and patient.
- Social (4–12 feet): reserved for casual acquaintances and strangers.
- Public (12 feet and beyond): reserved for impersonal interactions like those involving public speakers and stage performances. Questions about dramaturgy, privacy, and the sociological imagination also surround social media. Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter increasingly blur the lines between front and backstage. Unsurprisingly, our understanding of privacy has shifted as a result.
- 4.5.1 –
- We can study an individual’s socialization experience at different intervals based on the norms of their society. This approach, known as the life course perspective, refers to a series of social changes that a person experiences over their lifetime. Sociologists William Thomas and Florian Znaniecki first identified this perspective in the 1920s, using biographical information about Polish peasants to study the experiences of Polish immigrants in Europe and America.
- While the life course perspective typically unfolds in stages that follow a specific pattern, it is essential to remember that these stages are socially constructed. This means that while the chronological aspects of life may be universal, the social expectations and behaviors of each stage vary tremendously around the world, depending on each society’s norms. To a great extent, the difference in the life course sequence of an American teen and an Afghan teen is related to their countries’ social and economic positions. The United States, as a wealthy nation, affords its teens, especially teen girls, options and freedoms not seen in poorer nations like Afghanistan.