Chapter 5: Socializing the Individual

When people think of personality, they think of a person's social skills or social appeal. It is sometimes used to describe someone's specific characteristics or as an explanation for people's achievements or failures.

            To social scientists, personality is the sum total of behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, and values that are characteristic of an individual. Some sociologists say that heredity, the transmission of genetic characteristics from parents to children, is what determines personality and social behavior. An instinct is an unchanging, biologically inherited behavior pattern. Sociobiology is the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behavior. An aptitude is capacity to learn a particular skill or acquire a particular body of knowledge. Birth order can change how people's personalities are, which is the order in which we were born. Parental characteristics can also influence personality. The cultural environment in which a person lives also influences personality. When people are isolated as kids, that can also influence personality. Feral children, wild or untamed children, can result from isolation. There was the case of Anna and Isabelle where both girl were treated similarly wrong during childhood but one had a happier ending than the other. Another case was that of Genie, who had a terrible childhood and never recovered from it. Sociologists have also studied institutionalization, where they studied how children are in orphanages or hospitals. They found out that human interaction is very important in young childhood to help social and psychological development.

            The interactive process through which people learn the basic skills, values, beliefs, and behavior patterns of a society is socialization. Your self is your conscious awareness of possessing a distinct identity that separates you and your environment from other members of society. John Locke believed that we acquire our personalities as a result of our social experiences and that we are born without personality. Charles Horton Cooley had the looking-glass self as part of his theory, it refers to the interactive process by which we develop an image of ourselves based on how we imagine we appear to others. George Herbert Mead believed we not only see ourselves in others but we actually take on or pretend to take the roles of others. The act of role-taking forms the basis of the socialization process by allowing us to anticipate what others expect of us. The people closest to us a considered significant others. The internalized attitudes, expectations, and viewpoints of society is the generalized other. According to Mead, the self consists of two parts, the I which is the unsocialized part and the me which is the socialized part.

            The term agents of socialization is used to describe the specific individuals, groups, and institutions that enable socialization to take place. The family is the most important agent of socialization in almost every society. A peer group is a primary group composed of individuals of roughly equal age and similar social characteristics. Peer groups are usually very influential. School also plays an important part in socialization. The mass media are instruments of communication that reach large audiences with no personal contact between those sending the information and those receiving it. The mass media plays a huge part in socialization as well. A total institution is a setting in which people are isolated from the rest of society for a set period of time and are subject to tight control. Resocialization involves a break with past experiences and the learning of new values and norms.

            As you can see, personality can be influenced by a number of different factors. There are many ways for a person to become who they are based on who they hang out with and what they watch along with who their family is. It is a mix of all the above, that is what influences a person to become the person he/she is today. Socialization is also pretty huge in society and what influences it is also huge, from family to the media.