SOCIALIZATION

Personality and Socialization, Books on Personality and Socialization

Successful socialization can result in uniformity within a society. If all children receive the same socialization, it is likely that they will share the same beliefs and expectations.

Socialization is a process of social interaction and communication in which an individual comes to learn and internalize the culture of their society or group. The general process of acquiring culture is referred to as socialization . 

Socialization begins immediately at birth, with the conditioning influences of infant handling, and continues throughout an individual's lifetime. Even seemingly insignificant actions of parents can have major impacts on the socialization of their children. 

Sociologists recognize the limitless variety of individual experiences of socialization, but have given much attention to general patterns of socialization found in individual societies and groups within them.

The sociological use of the term socialization refers to the learning and absorption of culture and not simply to the process of interacting with others.

Socialization is also sometimes used to refer to the collective ownership and management of economic resources.

During socialization, we learn the language of the culture we are born into as well as the roles we are to play in life. For instance, girls learn how to be daughters, sisters, friends, wives, and mothers. In addition, they learn about the occupational roles that their society has in store for them. 

We also learn and usually adopt our culture's norms through the socialization process. Norms are the conceptions of appropriate and expected behavior that are held by most members of the society. While socialization refers to the general process of acquiring culture, anthropologists use the term enculturation for the process of being socialized to a particular culture.

Socialization is helps in the process of personality formation. Even if human personality is the result of our genes, the socialization process can mold it.

Most of the crucial early socialization throughout the world is done informally under the supervision of women and girls. Initially, mothers and their female relatives are primarily responsible for socialization.

Handbook of Socialization: Theory and Research by Joan E. Grusec and Paul D. Hastings

Family: Socialization and Interaction Process - Robert F. Bales

A Complementary Perspective to Primary Socialization Theory
David N. Nurco, D.S.W., Monroe Lerner, Ph.D., L.H.D. (Hon.)

Abstract: Primary socialization theory as formulated by Oetting and his associates emphasizes the transmission of societal norms during childhood and adolescence within society’s three major socializing agencies: family, school, and small, intimate peer groups. The norms thus transmitted may be pro-social or deviant, with pro-social norms more likely to be transmitted through strong bonds to healthy families or schools. Personality traits and other personal characteristics influence negative outcomes, such as deviance or drug abuse, only to the extent that they interfere with socialization to family or school.

Our own research does not address primary socialization theory directly in that we have not focused on the transmission of norms per se as central. Nevertheless, we have studied social factors, personality factors, and various psychopathologies as etiological for deviance and substance abuse. By and large our research has supported the hypotheses of primary socialization theory, ever extending them in specific areas, such as the importance of family influences as etiological. Our work has also emphasized the significance of rebelliousness and impulse control in this regard.

Like all large-scale theories which necessarily abstract from the totality and diversity of human behavior, primarily socialization theory leaves some gaps requiring further elucidation. Among these is its ethnocentric and temporocentric perspective, but even within this perspective it understates the difficulties for adolescents in making a successful transition to adult social roles (Kingley Davis) and in establishing a unique identity independent of parents (Erik H. Erikson). Also, it generally ignores the salience of the youth culture as rebellious against the older generation, a particularly important characteristic of modern society. And finally, it should cover the processes of "maturing out" of deviance, which perhaps result in a reaffirmation of the legitimacy of norms transmitted earlier, and it should cover also gender differences in their transmission and legitimization.

Nevertheless, despite these caveats and especially because of this theory’s insightfulness and path-breaking character, its hypotheses should be tested in carefully-designed, large-scale studies. These studies should allow, among other factors, measurement of the effects of genetic factors on the early emergence of deviant personality attributes and of their impact on the transmission of pro-social norms.

Finally, society provides us with ideologies, justifications for our systems of socialization, social control and stratification, and other social arrangements. When people ask questions about why things are the way they are, ideologies provide answers. Sociologists use the term sociological imagination to describe the ability to see the impact of these processes on our private lives, i.e., that we are a consequence of society. People are also the cause of society, i.e., we build it. Because of the continuous operation of the four mechanisms society uses to produce us, it is difficult for a single person to make significant societal changes. However, many important changes happen because of social movements, which consist of many people organized to promote social change. Although society has many mechanisms for creating us, the operation of these mechanisms all depend upon our everyday interactions. In other words, we participate in socializing others, carrying out social control, reproducing the stratification system, and promoting ideologies. This is another way that we build society. Sociologists use the term the social construction of reality to describe how people build the social world, especially as it is done through our everyday interactions. - David Schweingruber

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