5. The concept of socialization: the stages and mechanisms of its impact on the individual

Socialization is the process and result of human social development.

Socialization can be considered from the point of view of the individual's assimilation and reproduction of social experience in the process of life ( G. M. Andreeva ).

The essence of the socialization process is that a person gradually learns social experience and uses it to adapt to society.

Socialization refers to those phenomena through which a person learns to live and effectively interact with other people.

It is directly related to social control, because it includes the assimilation of knowledge, norms, values ​​of a society that has all types of formal and informal sanctions.

Purposeful, socially controlled processes of influencing a person are realized primarily in education and upbringing.

Spontaneous influence is exercised through the means of mass communication, real-life situations, etc.

Bilateral socialization process is manifested in the unity of its internal and external content.

The external process is the totality of all social influences on a person that regulate the manifestation of impulses and drives inherent in the subject.

The inner process is the process of forming a whole person.

Each historical period determines the characteristics of socialization , depending on its factors at this stage of implementation.

Modern socialization has its own specifics, due to the rapid development of science and new technologies that affect all spheres of human life.

One of the most obvious features of modern socialization is its duration compared with previous periods.

Childhood as the primary period of socialization, compared with previous eras, has increased significantly.

Modern socialization is characterized by the humanization of childhood , when the child acts as the core value of the family and society.

In order to become a full member of society, a person needs more and more time.

If earlier socialization covered only the period of childhood, then modern man needs to socialize all his life.

A special role in modern socialization belongs to education and the acquisition of a profession.

Education is a prerequisite for socialization in almost all countries of the world.

The successes of modern education are determined not only by what the person has learned, but also by the ability to acquire new knowledge and use it in new conditions.

Creativity is also becoming a prerequisite for human socialization.

The peculiarities of modern socialization of a person are also determined by the new requirements for his characterological features that must be formed for optimal functioning as a full member of society.

These traits themselves are not very different from the personality traits needed before, but their combination implies a greater degree of ambivalence .

Ambivalence is a combination of multidirectional features that provides mutual compensation for their social manifestations in human behavior.

In the process of socialization, the individual acts as a subject and object of social relations.

A. V. Petrovsky identifies three stages of personality development in the process of socialization: adaptation, individualization and integration .

At the adaptation stage, which usually coincides with the period of childhood, a person acts as an object of social relations, to which an enormous amount of efforts of parents, educators, teachers and other people surrounding the child and being in varying degrees of closeness to him are directed.

Occurs in the world of people: the mastery of some iconic systems created by mankind, elementary rules and regulations of behavior, social roles; the assimilation of simple forms of activity.

A person is trained to be a person.

It is not so easy.

An example of this is feral people.

The feral people are those who for some reason did not go through the process of socialization, that is, they did not assimilate or reproduce social experience in their development.

These are individuals who grew up in isolation from people and were raised in the animal community ( C. Linnaeus ).

At the stage of individualization, there is some separation of the individual, caused by the need for personalization. Here the person is the subject of social relations.

A person who has already mastered certain cultural norms of society is able to manifest himself as a unique individuality, creating something new, unique, in which, in fact, his personality is manifested.

If at the first stage, the most important was assimilation, then at the second - reproduction in individual and unique forms.

Individualization is largely determined by the contradiction that exists between the achieved result of adaptation and the need for maximum realization of its individual characteristics.

The stage of individualization contributes to the manifestation of differences between people.

Integration implies the achievement of a certain balance between man and society, the integration of the subject of the object relations of the individual with society.

A person finds the optimal way of life activity, which contributes to the process of his self-realization in society, as well as his acceptance of his changing norms.

This process is very complicated, since modern society is characterized by many contradictory trends in its development.

However, there are optimal ways of life, which are most conducive to the adaptation of a particular person.

At this stage, the social-typical properties of the personality, that is, such properties that indicate that a person belongs to a particular social group, are formed.

Thus, in the process of socialization is the dynamics of the passive and active position of the individual .

Passive position - when he learns the rules and serves as an object of social relations; active position - when it reproduces social experience and acts as a subject of social relations; active-passive position - when he is able to integrate subject-object relations.

Human socialization occurs through the mechanisms of socialization - methods of conscious or unconscious assimilation and reproduction of social experience.

One of the first was the mechanism of unity of imitation, imitation, identification.

The essence lies in the human desire to reproduce the perceived behavior of other people.

The mechanism of sex - role identification (sexual identification) or sex-role typing is distinguished.

Its essence consists in the assimilation by the subject of psychological traits, behavioral characteristics characteristic of people of a particular sex.

In the process of primary socialization, the individual learns the normative ideas about the psychological, behavioral properties characteristic of men and women.

The mechanism of social assessment of the desired behavior is carried out in the process of social control ( S. Parsons ).

He works on the basis of the principle of pleasure experienced by Z. Freud - the feelings that a person experiences in connection with rewards (positive sanctions) and punishments (negative sanctions) from other people.

People perceive each other differently and seek to influence others in different ways.

These are the effects of the social assessment mechanism: social facilitation (or facilitation) and social inhibition.

Social facilitation involves the stimulating influence of some people on the behavior of others.

Social inhibition (the psychological effect of the reverse action) is manifested in the negative, inhibiting influence of one person on another.

The most common mechanism of socialization is conformity .

The concept of conformity is associated with the term “social conformism,” that is, uncritical acceptance and adherence to the standards prevailing in society, the ideology authorities.

Through group pressure and the spread of stereotypes of the mass consciousness, a type of impersonal ordinary person is formed, devoid of originality and originality.

The measure of the development of conformity may be different.

There is an external conformity, which is manifested only in external agreement, but at the same time the individual remains at his own opinion. When the inside, the individual really changes his point of view and transforms the internal attitudes depending on the opinions of others.

Negativism is conformism, on the contrary, the desire to act, by all means, contrary to the position of the majority and at any cost to assert its point of view.

Other phenomena that are considered as mechanisms of socialization have been identified: suggestion, group expositions, role learning, etc.

Human social development occurs throughout life and in different social groups.

The family, the kindergarten, the school class, the student group, the work collective, the peer company are all social groups that make up the individual’s immediate environment and act as carriers of various norms and values.

Such groups that define the system of external regulation of individual behavior are called institutions of socialization.

The most influential institutions of socialization are the family, the school, the production group.