Socialization, Essay Example

Socialization is a part of the personality development, and different authors regard different importance to it. Some researchers find that human nature and born-with characteristics has a greater impact on human developments, others disagree. Cooley confirms in his conceptualization model that the self is developed through the sense of other people, called socialization.

Being socialized means (according to Piaget) that children develop a sense of reason based on their experiences; experiments and observations of their social environment. Later, Kohlberg added the conclusion that children would also form moral norms based on their previous socialization.

The life of a feral child would lack the processes involved in socialization, therefore, there would be no outside influences, norms and expectations. The observation of the environment would be limited and their ability of communication would not be developed. As there is no interaction between them and other human beings. According to Meade, they would not be able to think as there would be no symbols provided by the society for them.

However, taking the Meade (3 steps: imitation, play and games) model further, Piaget created a 4-stage socialization and development framework. Piaget’s model covers children’s cognitive development and determines the following stages:

• sensorimotor stage
• preoperational stage
• concrete operational stage
• formal operational stage

When a human misses out on the first two stages (up to the age of 7) and lives as a feral child, there is a chance to quickly go through them. However, the conclusions also say that some adults do not reach the formal operation stage in their lifetime.

References

Henslin, J. (2010) Essentials of Sociology: A Down-To-Earth Approach. Pearson Education. 9th Edition.