Introduction to Sociology

Lecturer: Muniza Javed

 Socialization:
• Socialization is so basic to human development that we sometimes overlook
its importance.
• Sociologists use the term socialization to refer to the lifelong social
experience by which people develop their human potential and learn culture.
Unlike other living species, whose behavior is mostly or entirely set by
biology, humans need social experience to learn their culture and to survive.
• Social experience is also the foundation of personality.
 Socialization:
• Personality: a person’s fairly consistent patterns of acting, thinking, and
feeling. We build a personality by internalizing—taking in—our
surroundings.
• (Anna Example)
• Role of Nature and Nurture:
• Charles Darwin’s groundbreaking 1859 study of evolution people to think
that human behavior was instinctive, simply our “nature.”
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• Nurture: it is the learnt behavior
• In the twentieth century, biological explanations of human behavior came under
fire. The psychologist John B. Watson (1878–1958) developed a theory called
behaviorism, which holds that behavior is not instinctive but learned. Thus people
everywhere are equally human, differing only in their cultural patterns. In short,
Watson rooted human behavior not in nature but in nurture.
• Without denying the importance of nature, then, we can correctly say that nurture
matters more in shaping human behavior. More precisely, nurture is our nature.
 Socialization:
• Socialization is predominately an unconscious process by which a newborn
child learns the values, beliefs, rules and regulations of society or internalizes
the culture in which it is born.
• In other words, socialization includes the knowledge of how things are
caused and the establishment of emotional links with the rest of the
members of the society. Socialization, therefore, equips an individual in such
a way that he can perform his duties in his society.
 Socialization:
• Agents of Socialization: The agents of socialization vary from society to
society. However, in most of the cases, it is the family which is a major
socializing agent, that is, the nearest kinsmen are the first and the most
important agents of socialization. The other groups which are socializing
units in a society vary according to the complexity. Thus, in modern complex
society, the important socializing agents are educational institutions, while in
primitive societies, clans and lineages play a more important role.
Socialization is a slow process.
• There is no fixed time regarding the beginning and the end of this process.
 Socialization:
• Agents of socialization:
• Media
• Peer groups
• Institutions (family, education, politics, religion)
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• Formal (secondary) socialization: secondary socialization is carried out
through agencies of secondary socialization including:
• Education system
• Workplace
• Peer group
• Mass media
• Religious institutions
 Socialization:
• Informal (Primary) Socialization: it is the socialization that children first
begin to learn about the basic values and norms of society and begin to
acquire their sense of who they are as individuals, their significant identities
and significant elements of their identities such as gender ethnicity, sexuality.
These identities formed during childhood will remain through out people’s
lives and are very much difficult to change in adulthood.
• Family plays the role of an agent of informal socialization.
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• Socialization and Personality development:
• Freud’s Elements of Personality
• Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) lived in Vienna at a time when most Europeans
considered human behavior to be biologically fixed.
• Trained as a physician, Freud gradually turned to the study of personality and
mental disorders and eventually developed the celebrated theory of
psychoanalysis.
 Socialization:
• Basic Human Needs:
• Freud claimed that biology plays a major part in human development, although not in terms
of specific instincts, as is the case in other species. Rather, he theorized that humans have
two basic needs or drives that are present at birth.
• First is a need for sexual and emotional bonding, which he called the “life instinct,” or eros
(named after the Greek god of love).
• Second, we share an aggressive drive he called the “death instinct,” or thanatos (the Greek
word for “death”). These opposing forces, operating at an unconscious level, create deep
inner tension.
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• Freud’s Model of Personality:
• Freud combined basic needs and the influence of society into a model of
personality with three parts: id, ego, and superego.
• The id (Latin for “it”) represents the human being’s basic drives, which are
unconscious and demand immediate satisfaction.
• To avoid frustration, a child must learn to approach the world realistically.
This is done through the ego (Latin for “I”), which is a person’s conscious
efforts to balance innate pleasure-seeking drives with the demands
 Socialization:
• of society. The ego arises as we become aware of our distinct existence and
face the fact that we cannot have everything we want.
• In the human personality, the superego (Latin for “above or beyond the
ego”) is the cultural values and norms internalized by an individual. The
superego operates as our conscience, telling us why we cannot have
everything we want. The superego begins to form as a child becomes aware
of parental demands and matures as the child comes to understand that
everyone’s behavior should take account of cultural norms.
 Socialization:
• The id and superego remain in conflict, but in a well-adjusted person, the
ego manages these two opposing forces. If conflicts are not resolved during
childhood, Freud claimed, they may surface as personality disorders later on.
Culture, in the form of the superego, represses selfish demands, forcing
people to look beyond their own desires. Often the competing demands of
self and society result in a compromise that Freud called sublimation.
 Socialization:
• Symbolic Interactionism:
• Charles Horton Cooley & George Herbert Mead developed the Symbolic Interactionist Perspective in the early
1900s. They challenged the idea that biology determined human nature
• They argued that human nature is a product of society

• Symbolic Interactionism uses several key ideas to explain socialization

• The Self Concept
• The looking-glass self
• Significant others
• Role taking (imitation, play, & game)
• The generalized other
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• Cooley and the Looking Glass Self:
• Self-concept: an image of yourself as having an identity separate from other people
• Cooley developed this idea by watching his own children at play
• Children learn to judge themselves based on how they imagine others will react to them
• Other people serve as a mirror for the development of self
• Looking-glass self: a self concept based
on what you believe others think of you
 Socialization:
• The Looking-Glass Self:
• According to Cooley it is a 3 step process,
1. We imagine how we appear to others
(our perception of how others see us)
2. We imagine the reaction of others to our
(imagined) appearance
3. We evaluate ourselves according to how we imagine others have judged us
 Socialization:
• This process is not a conscious process and the stages can occur quickly.
The results can be positive or negative self-evaluation
• A Distorted Glass?
• Because the looking glass comes from
our imagination, it can be distorted
• The mirror may not accurately reflect other’s opinion of us
 Socialization:
• Unfortunately, regardless of whether or not we are correct or incorrect about their
perception the consequences are just as real as if it were
• “I don’t think they liked me; therefore they don’t like me”
 Socialization:
• Who is your most important mirror?
• According to Mead, some people who are more important to us than others
• Significant Others: People whose judgments are most important to our self-
concept
• Depending on your age your significant others can change
• Children: parents, grandparents, siblings
• Teenagers: peers
• Adults: spouses, parents, friends, and employers
 Socialization:
• What is Role Taking?
• Role Taking: assuming the viewpoint of someone else and using that
viewpoint to shape self-concept
• Allows us to see ourselves through the eyes of someone else; allows you to
imagine in your mind what someone might say or do
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• Mead’s 3 Stages of Role Taking:
1. Imitation Stage (1½-2 years): children imitate the physical &
verbal behavior of significant others without understanding.
2. Play Stage (3-4 years): play involves acting and thinking as a
another person would. The child imagines the world through
another’s eyes and assume one role at a time.
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3. Game Stage (4+ years) many roles are considered at once, they
anticipate others actions, and there are specific rules (norms of the
group are important) The players know who is supposed to be doing
what.
• Acting on Principle:
• During the game stage, a child’s self-concept, attitudes, beliefs and values
come to depend less on individuals and more on general concepts
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• Being on time is more than just a matter of pleasing the person you are meeting; it is a
matter of principle to be on time
• Generalized Other: an integrated concept of norms, values, & beliefs of
one’s society
Mead’s Concept of Self= 2 Parts
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The “me”
-part of self created through socialization
-predictability and conformity come from the “me”
The “I”
-part of self that is spontaneous, unpredictable, & creative
-acts in extreme situations of rage to excitement
 Socialization:
• “I” and “Me” constantly interact in social situations …
• Who’s in charge?
• The first reaction comes from the “I”
• BUT before we act, the response is channeled through the socialized “me”
• Typically, the “I” takes the “Me” into account (thinks about consequences)
BUT, humans are NOT always predictable
• Therefore, the “me” is NOT always in charge!
 Socialization:
• Members of every society rely on social structure to make sense of everyday
situations.
• Status: a social position that a person holds. In everyday use, the word
status generally means “prestige,” as when we say that a college president has
more “status” than a newly hired assistant professor. But sociologically
speaking, both “president” and “professor” are statuses, or positions, within the
collegiate organization.
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• Status is part of our social identity and helps define our relationship to
others. As Georg Simmel (1950:307, orig. 1902), one of the founders of
sociology, once pointed out, before we can deal with anyone, we need to
know who the person is.
• Status Set: The term status set refers to all the statuses a person holds at a
given time. A teenage girl may be a daughter to her parents, a sister to her
brother, a student at her school, and a goalie on her soccer team
 Socialization:
• Status sets change over the life course. A child grows up to become a parent,
a student graduates to become a lawyer, and a single person marries to
become a husband or wife, sometimes becoming single again as a result of
death or divorce. Joining an organization or finding a job enlarges our status
set; withdrawing from activities makes it smaller. Over a lifetime, people gain
and lose dozens of statuses.
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• Master Status: others. A master status is a status that has special importance
for social identity, often shaping a person’s entire life. For most people, a job
is a master status because it reveals a great deal about a person’s social
background, education, and income. In a few cases, name is a master status;
being in the Bush or Kennedy family attracts attention and creates
opportunities.
 Socialization:
• Example: A master status can be negative as well as positive. Take, for
example, serious illness. Sometimes people, even longtime friends, avoid
cancer patients or people with AIDS because of their illnesses. As another
example, the fact that all societies limit the opportunities of women makes
gender a master status. Sometimes a physical disability serves as a master
status to the point where we dehumanize people by seeing them only in
terms of their disability.
 Socialization:
• Ascribed Status: An ascribed status is a social position a person receives at
birth or takes on involuntarily later in life. Examples of ascribed statuses
include being a daughter, a Cuban, a teenager, or a widower. Ascribed
statuses are matters about which we have little or no choice.
• Achieved status: an achieved status refers to a social position a person takes
on voluntarily that reflects personal ability and effort. Achieved statuses in
the United States include honors student, Olympic athlete, nurse, software
writer, and thief.
 Socialization:
• Role: A second important social structure is role, behavior expected of
someone who holds a particular status. A person holds a status and performs
a role (Linton, 1937b). For example, holding the status of student leads you
to perform the role of attending classes and completing assignments.
• Role Set: Because we hold many statuses at once—a status set everyday life
is a mix of many roles. Robert Merton (1968) introduced the term role set to
identify a number of roles attached to a single status. Example teacher,
mother, student, sister, wife all status of 1 women or girl.
 Socialization:
• Role Conflict and Role Strain:
• Sociologists thus recognize role conflict as conflict among the roles connected to
two or more statuses. We experience role conflict when we find ourselves pulled in
various directions as we try to respond to the many statuses we hold.
• One response to role conflict is deciding that “something has to go.” More than one
politician, for example, has decided not to run for office because of the conflicting
demands of a hectic campaign schedule and family life. In other cases, people put
off having children in order to stay on the “fast track” for career success.
 Socialization:
• Role strain: refers to tension among the roles connected to a single status.
A college professor may enjoy being friendly with students. At the same time,
however, the professor must maintain the personal distance needed to
evaluate students fairly. In short, performing the various roles attached to
even one status can be something of a balancing act.
• Role Exit: the process by which people disengage from important social
roles. Studying a range of “exes,” including ex-nuns, ex-doctors, ex-
husbands, and ex-alcoholics, Ebaugh identified elements common to the
process of becoming an “ex.”