Socialization

13 Pages 3276 Words

Socialization
The process by which personality is formed as the result of social
influences is called socialization. Early research methods employed
case studies of individuals and of individual societies (e.g.,
primitive tribes). Later research has made statistical comparisons
of numbers of persons or of different societies; differences in
child-rearing methods from one society to another, for example, have
been shown to be related to the subsequent behaviour of the infants
when they become adults. Such statistical approaches are limited,
since they fail to discern whether both the personality of the child
and the child-rearing methods used by the parents are the result of
inherited factors or whether the parents are affected by the
behaviour of their children.
Problems in the process of socialization that have been studied by
experimental methods include the analysis of mother-child
interaction in infancy; the effects of parental patterns of
behaviour on the development of intelligence, moral behaviour,
mental health, delinquency, self-image, and other aspects of the
personality of the child; the effects of birth order (e.g., being
the first-born or second-born child) on the individual; and changes
of personality during adolescence. Investigators have also studied
the origins and functioning of achievement motivation and other
social drives (e.g., as measured with personality tests).
Several theories have stimulated research into socialization;
Freudian theory led to some of the earliest studies on such
activities as oral and anal behaviour (e.g., the effect of the
toilet trainin...