Socialization

This chapter examines the way in which we become social beings. This is the importance of socialization, defined as a lifelong process of social interaction by which individuals develop their human potential and learn the patterns of their culture. Socialization is a vital foundation of our humanity.

In the absence of socialization, a human being is little more than a living organism. Unlike other species of life for which behavior is determined biologically, human beings require social learning in order to gain the capacity to survive. And beyond mere survival, social experience provides the foundation of personality. Personality is a concept that embraces broad patterns of our social humanity; in the simplest terms, it is defined as the organized system of personal thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Personality includes how we think about the world and about ourselves, how we respond emotionally to various situations and to other people, and how we act within our daily lives. Only through the development of personality do people become distinctive human beings, while at the same time sharing culture as members of a society. The absence of social experience eliminates the possibility for the development of personality.

Social experience is vital not only for the realization of personality, but also for the continuation of society. A society has a life that extends both forward and back­ward in time, far beyond the life span of any individual.

Every society must teach something of its past and present way of life to its new members. The complex and lifelong process of socialization is the fundamental way in which culture is transmitted from one generation to another.

Human Development: Nature and Nurture

Virtually helpless at birth, the human infant needs care and nourishment from others to survive. A child also relies on others to learn patterns of culture. Although a case like Anna's makes these facts very clear, for many years the importance of social experience to individual development was obscured by an unfounded belief that human behavior could be explained almost entirely in biological terms.

“Natu­ralists” argued that human behavior is based in biology and explained every pattern of human behavior as an instinct supposedly natural to the human species. By the latter part of the nineteenth century, virtually all human behavior was understood in this way – and such notions are still with us. It is sometimes claimed, for example, that our economic system is a reflection of “instinctive human competitiveness,” or that some peo­ple are “born criminals.” Similarly, females are often alleged to be naturally more intuitive and emotional, and males naturally more self-controlled and rational.

The naturalist argument has also been widely used to explain variations in the characteristic behavior of different societies. After centuries of world exploration and empire building, Western Europeans were well aware of how different one society could be from another. Usually, they attributed these differences to biological characteristics rather than viewing them as simply cul­tural variations. In past centuries, it was even more common to interpret these differences in terms of biologi­cal evolution. Thus Europeans and North Americans viewed the members of technologically less advanced societies as human beings who were biologically less evolved. This self-serving and ethnocentric view, of course, provided an important justification for colonial practices. It is easy to enter another society, exploit its resources, and perhaps enslave its people if you believe that they are not truly human in the same sense that you are.

In the twentieth century, such naturalistic explana­tions of human behavior were challenged. Psychologists such as John B. Watson (1878-1958) claimed that pat­terns of human behavior are conditioned by the environ­ment. Watson’s theory, known as behaviorism, explains specific behavior patterns as the result of learning within a social environment rather than as the result of biological instincts. Watson (1930) differed radically from the natu­ralists, first of all, by asserting that human beings of all cultures have the same biological foundation. Therefore, he rejected the idea that variations in human behavior were based on differences in evolutionary progress or biological instincts. Instead, he viewed human behavior malleable, open to the influence of any imaginable environment

Watson’s assertions gradually received more and more support from other researchers. By the first decades of this century, anthropologists had amassed considerable information on patterns of behavior within societies the world over. These patterns are highly variable, even among societies that have much the same level of techno­logical development. This variation is inconsistent with the belief that human behavior is rooted in the biology of the species. An outspoken proponent of the “nurture” view of human behavior, noted anthropologist Margaret Mead argued, “The differences between individuals who are members of different cultures, like the differences between individuals within a culture, are almost entirely to be laid to differences in conditioning, especially during early childhood, and this conditioning is culturally deter­mined” (1963:280; orig. 1935).

Thus, over the course of this century, biological explanations of human behavior have lost most of their former eminence. This does not mean that biology has no part in human behavior. Obviously, all social life depends on the functioning of the human body. We also know that children share some of the biological baits of their parents. The clearest case of hereditary transmission involves elements of physical appearance – such as height, weight, hair and eye color, and facial features. Heredity probably also has some importance in the transmission of intelligence and personality charac­teristics (such as how one reacts to stimulation). The potential to excel in such activities as art and music may also have a genetic component. Overall, however, there is little doubt that personality development is influ­enced more by the environmental forces of nurture than by the biological forces of nature. Furthermore, even if a dimension of human potential is inherited, whether or not it is developed depends upon social experiences.