Nature and nurture
Socialization is the lifelong process through which people learn the norms, values and roles of their society and develop a sense of self. Biology sets limits and gives potential, but social experience shapes how that potential develops. Studies of children raised with very little human contact show severe language and social difficulties, which suggests that human abilities need social contact to emerge. Sociologists therefore treat "nature versus nurture" as a question of how the two interact.
How the self develops
Charles Horton Cooley's looking-glass self says that we form our self-image from how we imagine others see and judge us. It has three steps: we imagine how we appear, imagine how others judge that appearance, and feel pride or shame as a result.
George Herbert Mead argued that the self develops through taking the role of others. Children pass through stages: imitation (copying without understanding), play (taking the role of a specific other, such as "parent"), and game (understanding the roles of many people at once, as in team sports). Mead's generalized other is the internalised sense of society's expectations. He also described the "I" (spontaneous self) and the "me" (the self shaped by social expectations).
Erving Goffman's dramaturgical view compares social life to theatre: we manage impressions, with a "front stage" for audiences and a "back stage" for relaxing.
Agents of socialization
- Family: the earliest and often most powerful agent.
- School: teaches knowledge and also a hidden curriculum of punctuality, rules and competition.
- Peers: peer groups matter greatly in adolescence.
- Mass and social media: shape ideas about roles and appearance.
- Religion, workplaces and the state.
Later life
Anticipatory socialization is preparing for a role you expect to hold, such as a student practising a future job. Resocialization is giving up an old identity and learning a new one, as in military boot camp. This often takes place in a total institution, a setting in which people live under a single authority cut off from wider society, such as a prison or a monastery.
Worked example
A teenager, Sam, hands in an essay that he thinks is poor. His friends laugh when he reads it aloud.
- Sam imagines how his friends see him: as incompetent.
- He imagines their judgement: they think less of him.
- He feels embarrassed, and avoids reading aloud again.
This is the looking-glass self in action. His self-image comes from imagined reactions, not from the essay itself. A different group might have reacted with encouragement and given him a different self-image.