42950 (Personality and his socialization), страница 2

The functionalist approach has been criticized for its static understanding of roles. Even so, it remains a fundamental concept which is still taught in most introductory courses and is still regarded as important.

In the interactionist perspective, the definition of role is more fluid and subtle than in the functionalist perspective. In this conception, a role is not fixed or prescribed but it is something that is constantly negotiated between individuals.

To explain the idea of roles, a famous American researcher G. Mead used a development model for children. According to him, children adopt roles in the development of self. In doing so, they pass through three stages:

• preparatory stage – meaningless imitation by the infant; the infant assumes roles but doesn’t understand what they are;

• play stage – actual playing of roles occurs; but the child has no unified conception of self;

• game stage – completion stage of self; the child finds himself and must respond to simultaneous roles; the individual can act with a certain amount of consistency in a variety of situations because he acts in accordance with a generalized set of expectations and definitions he has internalized.

No doubt, adults are beyond the game stage, but they continue to adopt roles and adapt them through interpersonal interactions. This can be most easily seen in encounters where there is considerable ambiguity. For instance, let’s assume John has a friend Nick who is a lawyer. If John approaches Nick as a friend but then asks for legal advice, it forces Nick either to switch roles completely or to merge the roles temporarily. Until Nick decides on his course of action, role ambiguity will exist.

There are also additional approaches to consider roles:

• structural approach – little attention is given to norms; attention is focused on social structures conceived as stable organizations of sets of persons (called social positions or statuses) who share the same, patterned behaviours (roles);

• organization – the approach focuses on social systems that are preplanned, task-oriented, and hierarchical; roles in such organizations are assumed to be associated with identified social positions and to be generated by normative expectations;

• cognitive role theory focuses on relationships between role expectations and behaviour.

Anyway, role theory has its limitations. It has a hard time explaining social deviance when it does not correspond to a pre-specified role. For instance, the behaviour of someone who adopts the role of a bank robber can be predicted – he will rob banks. But if a bank manager simply begins handing out cash to random people, role theory would be unable to explain why.

Another limitation of role theory is that it cannot explain how role expectations came to be what they are. Role theory has no explanation for why it is expected of male soldiers to cut their hair short, but it could predict with a high degree of accuracy that if someone is a male soldier they will have short hair. Additionally, role theory does not explain when and how role expectations change.

Despite these limitations, role theory describes adaptation of humans through their socialization into the basic values and norms of a given society.

Socialization of personality

The sociological view of socialization cannot be attributed to any single researcher but rather has been developed as a result of the work of many. Some of the more important researchers who have contributed to the filed are E. Durkheim, Ch. Cooley, G. Mead, J. Piaget and many others.

Socialization is a lifelong process by which, through contact with others, one becomes a self-aware, knowledgeable human being, skilled in the ways of a given culture and environment. Socialization suggests interiorizing of social roles and cultural norms. The focus is on interiorizing, not learning because one can’t learn a social role after reading a book, although one can acquire knowledge how to do it. Each role includes various norms, rules and patterns of behaviour; it is locked with other roles by social contacts such as relations, rights, obligations. A human can’t simply learn all this. He should interiorize. So, interiorizing has a wider meaning than learning and includes learning as its part.

Socialization is a lifelong process because an individual, in his life, has to learn not one but a number of social roles while growing older, getting married or being promoted on the career ladder. People constantly change their habits, tastes, rules, behaviours up till the old age.

Socialization can be distinguished as deliberate and unconscious. Deliberate socialization refers to the socialization process when there is a deliberate and purposeful intent to convey values, attitudes, knowledge, skills etc., for instance, when parents are telling a child to always say “please. ”

Unconscious socialization occurs as a result of spontaneous interaction with no purposeful or deliberate attempt on the part of anyone involved to train, educate or the like. An example of such socialization is when the child learns to use vulgarity in a frustrating traffic situation by observing parents.

The aims of socialization are as follows:

• to instill disciplines, for instance, don’t walk in front of a moving car;

• to develop aspirations and ambitions, for instance, I want to be a banker, rock star, great sociologist;

• to develop skills, for instance, reading, driving etc.

• to enable the acquisition of social roles, for instance, male, student, son, worker etc.

Development of an individual should be considered in connection with the family, social group and culture he belongs to. His socialization begins from the very first hours of his life and traditionally includes five stages:

• childhood – in medieval European paintings children were portrayed as little adults. In modern societies the separate character of childhood is diminishing once more, for instance, some observers point out that even small children may watch the same TV programs as adults;

• the teenager – the concept of a teenager did not exist until recently. In modern societies, teenagers live between childhood and adulthood, growing up in a society subject to continuous change;

• young adulthood – young adulthood seems to be a specific stage in personal and sexual development in modern societies. Affluent youths take the time to travel and explore sexual, political and religious affiliations;

• mature adulthood – in modern societies, midlife crisis is very real for many middle-aged people;

• old age – in traditional societies, the elder people usually had a major say over matters of importance to the community. In industrial societies, they tend to lack authority within the family and the wider social community.

By character socialization can be primary and secondary with their agencies (institutions) or agents. Agencies of socialization are structured groups or contexts within which significant processes of socialization occur.

Socialization is further differentiated as primary and secondary. Primary socialization occurs in infancy and childhood and is the most intense period of cultural learning. Family is the main agent, or agency of socialization during this phase.

Secondary socialization takes place later in childhood and into maturity. Main agents (agencies) of socialization include schools, peer groups, organizations, the media and the workplace.

All agents involved in socialization of individuals are differentiated as informal and formal ones. The family and peers are typical informal agents of socialization and the school and mass media represent formal agents. For instance, peers become especially influential in schools. They provide opportunities to practice social roles, they are an important source of information, and they greatly influence values and attitudes in mate selection, sex relations, and forms of expression in music, sports and the like. It should be noted that some entities can serve as the agents of both primary and secondary socialization, for instance, peers of childhood and teenager period (primary) and peers at work (secondary).

Difference between primary and secondary forms also lies in the character of relations among humans. Primary socialization is the area of interpersonal relations that’s why most intensively it takes place in the first half of human life, although fading and going out slowly, it remains in the second half as well. Secondary socialization is the area of social relations and it occurs in the second half of human life whereby a person is faced with secondary agencies which have a great impact on developing personality.

A principle asserting that development of personality is a lifelong ascending process based on consolidating of the interiorized before, is indisputable. But personal qualities moulded before aren’t stable or unshakable for ever. When a person learns new roles, values or habits instead of those badly learnt before or obsolete, re-socialization occurs. It embraces a lot of activities – from lessons arranged to change the child’s reading skills to vocational retraining of workers.

Development of any person is determined by a number of factors:

• family – in any civilization, it is the main area of primary socialization of personality as it is characterized by a set of social norms, sanctions and patterns of behaviour which regulate interactions and relations among spouses, parents and children, other relatives. As a rule, a child learns those patterns of behaviour typical for its parents;

• relations of equality – including into “groups of equal”(friends, peers of same age) also has a great impact on the process of personal development. Interrelations among peers are more democratic as compared to those among parents and children. In such groups, individuals enter into various contacts with each other creating informal groups; they often keep these relations all their life;

• education – its importance is determined by the fact that the society ensures development of education and upbringing of the growing generations in accordance with the values, ideals, standards of behaviour typical for a given society. Education is a process and result of learning systematic knowledge, skills, and at the same time a necessary condition of preparing a person for labour activities;

• mass media (radio, press, TV, movie) are a most powerful factor of influence on human consciousness and behaviour that means that they influence on the socialization process;

• labour – the working process is an organizational framework within which an individual turns to a member of the labour collective. While turning to a worker, he learns not only professional roles but also gets to know what is to be an executive and subordinate, leader or outsider etc.;

• culture is a specific kind of activity aimed at creating spiritual and material wealth, so its result comes to be a system of ideals, values, norms and patterns of behaviour embodied in the social development of a person and his spiritual world;

• incomes play an important symbolic role. High incomes mean well-being, high professional qualification and good business aptitudes of personality;

• organizations such as youth associations, church, sport clubs also participate in the development of a person.

Thus, the development of a person is determined by a number of socio-economic factors, social factors being dominant.

At the same time the development of a person can’t avoid crises. An American psychologist and psychiatrist Erik H. Erikson (1902-1994), who is also known for coining the phrase “identity crisis”, developed his theory on the social development of human beings with respect to the psychological analysis of S. Freud. E. Erikson described eight developmental stages of the Ego through which a human should pass from infancy to late adulthood. In each stage a person confronts new challenges which are hopefully mastered. Each stage builds on a successful completion of earlier stages. The challenges of stages which are not successfully completed may be expected to reappear as problems in the future. It should be noted that E. Erikson was the first to identify eight stages of development, later his students added two more to further refine adolescence and adulthood.

Thus, to E. Erikson, at each stage a human encounters the following crises:

• infancy (birth-18 months): trust versus mistrust;

• younger years (18 months-3 years): autonomy versus shame and doubt;

• early childhood (3-6 years): initiative versus guilt;

• middle childhood (6-12 years): industry versus inferiority;

• early adolescence (12-18 years): group identity versus alienation;

• later adolescence (18-22 years): Ego-identity versus identity confusion;

• early adulthood (22-34 years): intimacy versus isolation;

• middle adulthood (34-60 years): generativity versus stagnation;

• later adulthood (60-75 years): Ego-integrity versus despair;

• old age (75 years-death): immortality versus extinction.

According to E. Erikson, the Ego, around which the individual integrates a sense of identity, develops in the process of socialization. He, too, thinks the society plays an important role in moulding personality. He emphasized that socialization is a lifelong process which goes through cycles from infancy to adolescence to various states of young, middle, and elderly adulthood.

BASIC CONCEPTS

Agencies (agents) of socialization – structured groups or contexts within which significant processes of socialization occur.

Basis type (of personality) – a set of typical personality’s qualities which are dominant in the society and most fully meets the demands of a given society.