SOC 1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Romanian Orphans, George Herbert Mead, Harry Harlow
Chapter 4: Socialization and the Life
Course
-rite of passage
•ritual that marks the symbolic transition from one social position to another
•example: the transformative period that lasts 8 to 12 weeks that Marine recruits face
-socialization
•lifelong process in which people learn the attitudes, values, and behaviors appropriate for
members of a particular culture
•occurs through human interactions that begin in infancy and continue through retirement
•microsociological perspective
-socialization helps us discover how to behave “properly” and what to expect from others if
we follow (or challenge) society’s norms and values
•macrosociological perspective
-socialization provides for the transmission of a culture from one generation to the next, to
ensure the long-term continuity of a society
•shapes our self-images
•experiences can help to shape our personalities
-personality
•refers to a person’s typical patterns of attitude, needs, characteristics, and behavior
The Role of Socialization
-researchers have traditionally clashed over the relative importance of biological inheritance and
environmental factors in human development
•conflict known as nature vs. nurture or heredity vs. environment
-most social scientists today acknowledge the interaction of both of these variables in
shaping human development
-Social Environment: The Impact of Isolation
•cases that describe the documented effects of social isolation and neglect
-1) Extreme Isolation: Isabelle
•lived almost in seclusion in a darkened room for the first six years of her life
•had little contact with others, with the exception of her mother, who could neither speak
nor hear
•her mother’s parents had been ashamed of her illegitimate birth that they kept her
hidden from the world
•Isabelle was discovered at the age of six in 1938 when her mother escaped from her
parents’ home, taking her with her
-she could not speak
-showed strong fear of strangers and reacted almost like a wild animal when confronted
with an unfamiliar person
-scored at the infant level rather than a six-year-old level on tests of maturity
-before the age of nine she was able to attend school
•by the age of 14 she was in sixth grade, doing well in school, and emotionally well
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•scientists involved with Isabelle’s case concluded that all children need socialization in the
form of love, care, and affect
-absence of this kind of attention, humans cannot learn to speak and interact with
others as expected
•2) Extreme Neglect: Romanian Orphans
-in Romanian orphanages in the 1990s, babies lay in their cribs for 18-20 hours a day,
curled against their feeding bottles, receiving little care from adults
•this minimal attention continued for the first five years of their lives
•many grew up fearful of human contact and prone to unpredictable antisocial
behavior
•3) Primate Studies
-studies of animals raised in isolation also support the importance of socialization in
development
-Harry Harlow (1971)
•researcher at the primate laboratory of the University of Wisconsin
•conducted tests with rhesus monkeys that had been raised away from their mothers
and away from contact with other monkeys
-monkeys were raised in isolation and were fearful and easily frightened
-did not mate, and females who were artificially inseminated became abusive
mothers
•isolation also has a damaging effect on the monkeys
•used “artificial mothers”
-Harlow presented monkeys raised in isolation with two substitute mothers—one
cloth-covered replica and one covered with wire that had the ability to offer milk
•monkey after monkey went to the wire mother for the milk, but spent much
more time clinging to the motherlike cloth model
-infant monkeys developed greater social attachments from their need for
warmth, comfort, and intimacy than from their need for milk
-The Influence of Heredity
•identical twins Oskar Stohr and Jack Yufe were separated soon after their birth and were
raised on different continents, in very different cultural setting
-Oskar was reared as a strict Catholic by his maternal grandmother in the Sudetenland of
Czechoslovakia
•member of the Hitler Youth movement in Nazi Germany, learned to hate Jews
-Jack was reared in Trinidad by the twins’ Jewish father
•joined an Israeli kibbutz (collective settlement) at the age of 17 and later served in the
Israeli army
-when the twins were reunited they shared many physical similarities and behaviors
•they also differed in many important respects
-Jack was a workaholic, political liberal who was much more accepting of feminism,
extremely proud of being Jewish
-Oskar enjoyed leisure-time activities, was a traditionalist who was domineering toward
women, and never mentioned his Jewish heritage
•these twins are great examples of the interplay between heredity and environmental factors
of development
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The Self and Socialization
-George Herbert Mead (1946)
•work provided a foundation for what sociologists recognize that our concept of who we are, the
self, emerges as we interact with others
-self
•distinct identity that sets us apart from others
•continuously changing phenomenon throughout our lives
-Sociological Approaches to the Self
•Cooley: Looking-Glass Self
-Horton Cooley (early 1900s)
•promoted the belief that we learn who we are by interacting with others
•looking-glass self
-phrase used to emphasize that the self is the product of our social interactions
•three phases to the process of developing a self-identity or self-concept
-1) imagine how we present ourselves to others—to relatives, friends, and even
strangers on the street
-2) imagine how others evaluate us (attractive, intelligent, shy, or strange)
-3) develop some sort of feeling about ourselves, such as respect of shame, as a result
of these impressions
•critical aspect of Cooley’s looking glass self
-the self results from an individual’s imagination of how others view him or her
•as a result, we can develop self-identities based on incorrect perceptions of how
others see us
-example: a student may react strongly to a teacher’s criticism and decide
(wrongly) that the instructor view the student as stupid
•this misperception can be converted into a negative self identity through these
processes:
-1) the teacher criticized me
-2) the teacher must think I’m stupid
-3) I am stupid
•Mead: Stages of the Self
-George Herbert Mead (1934, 1964)
•developed a useful model of the process by which the self emerges, defined b three
stages: the preparatory stage, the play stage, and the game stage
-The Preparatory Stage
•children imitate the people around them, especially family members with whom they
continually interact with
•as children grow up they become more adept at using symbols, including the gestures
and words that for the basis of human communication
-by interactive with relatives and friends, as well as by watching cartoons on tv and
looking at picture books, children in the prep stage behind to understand symbols
-The Play Stage
•children begin to pretend to be other people
-just like how an actor becomes a character, a child becomes a doctor, parent,
superhero, or ship captain
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Document Summary
Rite of passage: ritual that marks the symbolic transition from one social position to another, example: the transformative period that lasts 8 to 12 weeks that marine recruits face. Socialization: lifelong process in which people learn the attitudes, values, and behaviors appropriate for members of a particular culture, occurs through human interactions that begin in infancy and continue through retirement, microsociological perspective. Socialization helps us discover how to behave properly and what to expect from others if we follow (or challenge) society"s norms and values: macrosociological perspective. Socialization provides for the transmission of a culture from one generation to the next, to ensure the long-term continuity of a society: shapes our self-images, experiences can help to shape our personalities. Personality: refers to a person"s typical patterns of attitude, needs, characteristics, and behavior. Researchers have traditionally clashed over the relative importance of biological inheritance and environmental factors in human development: conflict known as nature vs. nurture or heredity vs. environment.
