Chapter 5: The Socialization of the Individual

     The personality for each individual is different depending on the society they are found on. You probably think of someone social skill or social appeal by how their personality is on a society. Personality is the sum total of behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, and values that are characteristic of an individual. Our personality traits are determined how we adjust to our environment and how we react in specific situations. People’s personalities continue to develop throughout their lifetime. Specific traits change at different rates and to different degrees. Once people reach adulthood, personality traits change at a slower rate. Personality development varies from individual to individual. For many years sociologist have debated what determines personality and social behavior. One idea was the heredity, the transmission of genetic characteristics from parent to children. Another point of view is the instinct, is an unchanging, biologically inherited behavior pattern. There are also three theories of how socialization happens, we can also relate socialization to the nature vs. nurture debate, and finally there are also some agents of socialization, which enable socialization to happen. 

             Personality are the the total of behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, and values in a social environment.

     There were three main sociologists that created theories on how socialization works. Even though there are three main theories, this does not necessarily mean that these theories are totally different and we should choose the one we find more accurate, actually, each theory is kind of like a continuation to the previous theory. John Locke established the theory of “The Tabula Rasa”. In the “Tabula Rasa” theory, kids are not born with a personality, they actually create their personality during their childhood and then this personality develops and changes throughout the kid’s life. Locke believed that you could shape the new born’s personality to be however you want it to be, he even thought that if you took him a new born, he himself could shape the kid’s personality to be however he wants it to be. Charles Horton Cooley developed his own theory as well, “The Looking-Glass Self” theory. According to Cooley, people create a self image, or a sense of self, based on how others see them. By definition, this theory means, “the interactive process by which we develop an image of ourselves based on how we imagine we appear to others.” According to Cooley, there are three steps that take us to this, first of all, we imagine how we appear to others, then, based on their reactions to us, we try to compare how others see us to how we see ourselves, finally, we develop feelings about us based on how we interpret the way in which others judge us. George Mead is the last of the three sociologists we named, Mead believed that Cooley was right, that we do see ourselves as others see us, but he mentioned that that’s only the beginning of the process, he created the term role-taking, and described it as, not only do we see ourselves as others see us, but we eventually begin to act based on how others expect us to do so.

     It is clear how socialization occurs, but it would never happen though if we didn’t have the agents of socialization. The agents of socialization are, by definition, “the specific individuals, groups, and institutions that enable socialization to take place.” There are a variety of socialization agents, the most common are the family, the peer group, the school, and the mass media. We can see a correlation between all these groups, we are in continuous exposure to each, the average kid goes to school 8 hours a day for 5 days a week until they are past adolescence, and then they get into college, the average person is around peers or family basically all the time, and even though we might not be aware of this, we are in continual exposure to mass media every day of our lives.

The age in which you are usually socialized is extremely critical. The only reason why humanity has succeeded is because we have been able to master the socialization system that will prepare little kids for the future, because we have been able to identify and understand the process of socialization. It is amazing how important socialization or finding the sense of self is to any individual. Socialization not only is an important issue to handle, but it is also a clue, in a way, that gives us a reason to believe that nurture might be the actual reason to a nature nurture debate that has gotten thousands of sociologists in history to try to find the unfound answer to what actually influences the human being`s behavior.