Socialization and Social Interaction
What this domain covers
This domain tests how the self develops, which agents do the socializing, and how everyday interaction produces social reality. Expect items on Cooley, Mead, Piaget, Kohlberg, Goffman, and the nature-versus-nurture debate.
Core rules and concepts
- Cooley's looking-glass self has three steps: we imagine how we appear, imagine others' judgment, and feel pride or mortification. It is not simply self-esteem.
- Mead: the self emerges through imitation, play, and games, culminating in the generalized other. The I is the spontaneous, creative side; the me is the internalized socialized side. Significant others are the people whose expectations matter most.
- Piaget described cognitive stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational. Kohlberg traced preconventional, conventional, and postconventional moral reasoning; Gilligan argued his scheme undervalues an ethic of care.
- Agents of socialization: family (primary), school, peers, media, religion. Anticipatory socialization rehearses a future role; resocialization dismantles and rebuilds identity, often in total institutions (Goffman), where mortification of the self occurs.
- Thomas theorem: situations defined as real are real in their consequences.
- Dramaturgy (Goffman): front stage and back stage, impression management, face-work.
- Ethnomethodology (Garfinkel) studies the taken-for-granted rules people use to make interaction orderly.
Worked example
A new prisoner loses his street identity, is stripped of possessions and routines, and learns institutional rules. That is resocialization in a total institution, not anticipatory socialization, which would be rehearsing a role he expects to enter.
Traps that cost marks
- Reversing the I and the me.
- Confusing the looking-glass self with self-esteem or with the I/me distinction.
- Mixing the play stage (taking one other's role) with the game stage (coordinating many roles).
- Treating resocialization as ordinary learning rather than identity reconstruction.