Stark Chapter 6

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Stark Chapter 6

• Socialization and Social Roles

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Importance of Socialization

• Feral (untamed) children
• Biology alone cannot make us into adequate
  humans.
• Reared in isolation a human will not learn to
  talk, walk be made Social
• Socialization is the learning process by which
  infants are developed into social beings,
  possessed of culture and able to participate in
  social relationships.

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Human Development

• Harry and Margaret Harlow (1965) Monkeys raised
  in isolation failed to develop normal monkey
  skills
• Skeels and Dye (1939) infants considered mentally
  retarded The group reared by Mild MR girl
  increased IQs by 32 points control group lost
  21- IQ points in 4 years. 27 years later in 1967
  the Experimental group had graduated from high
  school and were self-supporting/considered
  normal. The Control group 3rd grade, remained
  institutionalized/not self supporting.

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Mozart Effect

• South Dakota, Georgia and Tenn. provide every new
  mother a new Mozart CD
• Study showed that of three groups 1 Mozart, 2,
  relaxation 3 silence-normal college students
  group 1 scored higher on a portion of the
  Stanford Binet. The difference was not there 10
  minutes later.
• The study has not been able to be replicated in
  16 trials.

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Stimulus Response Learning Theory

• Stimulus Response Theories The theory maintains
  that behavior is merely a response to an external
  stimuli.
• We store and retrieve past reinforcements.
• We acquire language work by word, and sentence by
  sentence.

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Cognitive Development

• Jean Piaget 1896-1980
• (1970)To present an adequate notion of learning
  one first must explain how the person manages to
  construct and invent, not merely how he repeats
  and copies
• the mind develops and functions on the basis of
  cognitive structures or general rules

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Cognitive Stages of development

• Sensorimotor stage-Birth-age 2 major cognitive
  discovery is the rule of object permanency,
  objects continue to exist even if they are out of
  sight.
• Preoperational stage age 2-7 The major task is to
  overcome egocentrism, or to learn to take the
  role of other-clay model experiment
• Concrete Operational stage age 7-12 rule of
  conservation-a given amount of material does not
  increase/decrease when its shape is changed-two
  balls of clay
• Formal Operation stage age 12-adult The ability
  to formulate and manipulate theories and
  logically deduce, think hypothetically

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Piaget/ observation techniques

• Studied his own children as they grew up then
  conducted a long series of experiments with large
  numbers of children.
• He discovered that it was impossible to
  accelerate from one stage to another,
• cognitive stages reflect maturation of the brain.

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Language Acquisition

• Norm Chomsky- Professor of Linguistics at MIT
  (1975)
• 1. A universal grammar is inborn
• 2. Children develop complex grammars very
  rapidly and at a young age, These enable them not
  only to construct and utter novel sentences but
  to interpret novel sentences and constructions
• 3. Infants learn one language as easily as
  another Hence, the underlying grammar must be
  similar in all infants, rather than differ across
  cultures

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Evidence of Language Instinct

• Pidgin - A jargon of made-up nouns and verbs
  often including some borrowed from the dominant
  group, highly variable in work order
• If children are exposed to Pidgin as infants they
  develop it into Creole, having a full range of
  grammatical rules

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Judy Kegl The Nicaraguan Sign Language Study
(1999)

• Deaf children from an less developed country had
  no sign language
• each had individual methods of signing through
  pantomimes and gestures,
• Brought together they rapidly developed a sign
  language Creole, the linguistic development of
  the Nicaraguan sign language

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Emotional Development

• Reed Bain (1936) ? When did children learn words
  to indicate others and self
• His research on the emergence of self in speech
  was at the time George Herbert Mead was writing
  in English about taking the role of other and
  Piaget was teaching and writing in French that
  children speak egocentrically without regard to
  the hearer.

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Personality Formation

• Personality is a consistent pattern of thoughts,
  feelings and actions.

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Culture and Personality

• Franz Boas 1858-1942 Cultural determinism
• Regardless of how a given culture developed the
  culture wholly determines the behavior of those
  socialized in that culture
• Equated Culture with personality
• Margaret Mead (1901-1978) Sex and Temperament in
  Primitive Societies (1935)
• Work is today is criticized

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Margaret Mead Criticism

• Field studies -her objectivity was questioned,
  too fast-found the world she wanted to find
• Insensitivity to physical realities-did the
  peaceful tribe get the worse environment because
  they lost?

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Ethnographic Atlas

• 186 pre-modern societies-early socialization
  practices. See chart 6-1 pg. 164
• Socialization is a lifelong process
• Societies with close neighbors tent to face
  chronic warfare
• Nearly 1/2 of somewhat isolated rarely engage in
  war.

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Differential Socialization

• Each society has a variety of roles
• Many social roles make demands, rigid training
• Sex roles differential socialization
• Melvin Kohn occupational roles
• Working class parents expected conforming
  behaviors
• Middle-class parents expected self-expression and
  independence.

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Kohns Research

• Children are socialized differentially on the
  basis of parental expectations of the roles the
  children will assume as adults based on their
  own experiences
• Socialization is a lifelong process, even men
  aged 50 and older showed shifts in basic
  personality traits in response to their
  occupational roles.

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Erving Goffman (1922-1982)

• Analyzed social interaction from the point of
  view that life was a stage and that much of the
  time we are putting on performances for one
  another
• Role performance is the actual conduct of a
  particular individual while in duty in a position
• Impression management-use props, wardrobe,
  scenery, costumes to convey a role
• Stage-waiters have a up front and kitchen
  role-backstage
• Teamwork is involved-parents, good cop/bad cop
• Studied non-observation-we cover for each other
  is we mess up.

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Sex Role Socialization

• Most societies have distinct male female roles
• Table 6-3 pg. 172
• In the majority of pre-modern societies women
  rear children till age 4 then shifts
• Patterns in US Pink and Blue, Gender specific
  toys

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DeLoache, Cassidy and Carpenter Baby Bear is a
Boy

• (1987)Observational study gender neutral toys
  were seen as males
• teacher was female
• Gender neutral book did not reduce sexual
  stereotyping

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Stephen Richer Games and Gender

• (1984) Most coed play was courtship play
  chasing
• age 3-4 years old did not display gender
  preference in play.
• Suggested future study in area of
  gender-segregated play.