Agents of Socialization
This agent is the most significant influence during early childhood and teaches basic norms, values, and language.
What is family?
Freud’s term for the human being’s basic, pleasure-seeking drives.
What is the id?
This stage occurs when individuals experience the world only through their senses.
What is the sensorimotor stage?
Cooley’s term for a self-image based on how we think others see us.
What is the looking-glass self?
A social group whose members share interests, social position, and age.
What is a peer group?
This agent becomes especially important during adolescence and strongly influences behavior, clothing styles, and hobbies.
What are peers?
This part of personality represents internalized cultural values and norms.
What is the superego?
At this stage, individuals first use language and symbols.
What is the preoperational stage?
Mead’s term for people, such as parents, who are especially important in socialization.
Who are significant others?
A category of people who share something in common, usually their age.
What is a cohort?
Schools serve as this agent by teaching knowledge, punctuality, discipline, and civic responsibility.
What is education?
Freud’s term for the conscious effort to balance the id with societal expectations.
What is the ego?
This stage is marked by seeing causal connections and logical thinking about concrete objects.
What is the concrete operational stage?
This term refers to widespread cultural norms and values used to evaluate ourselves.
What is the generalized other?
A setting where people are isolated from society and controlled by an administrative staff.
What is a total institution?
TV, social media, and books belong to this agent, which shapes perceptions of culture and norms.
What is mass media?
This concept refers to a person’s fairly consistent patterns of acting, thinking, and feeling.
What is personality?
At this stage, individuals can think abstractly and critically.
What is the formal operational stage?
Mead’s term for the part of personality composed of self-awareness and self-image.
What is the self?
Learning that prepares a person for a future role or status.
What is anticipatory socialization?
This agent introduces professional norms and expectations, often becoming important in adulthood.
What is the workplace?
This lifelong process helps shape personality by teaching culture and social norms.
What is socialization?
This theorist developed the stages of cognitive development.
Who is Jean Piaget?
This sociologist focused on the development of the self through social interaction.
Who is George Herbert Mead?
Radically changing an individual’s personality through strict control of their environment.
What is resocialization?