Socialization - LeFonch

Social Interaction

People are very social creatures and naturally seek to interact with others.
Social interaction refers to an exchange between to or more individuals which causes people to act and react.
Socialization is the action of being part of a culture. It may make it difficult to recognize how and when you acquired certain ideas and habits due to how natural it is.
Like psychological factors and biological factors, it is impossible to understand human behavior without taking social factors into account.
During socialization, people adapt norms and customs into their own behavior.
Context, culture and social circumstances must be taken into account when reviewing human behavior.

The social environment presents us with norms and habits we adapt.
Human nature always develops in interaction with others.
Having human genes and a biologically human appearance does not generate human nature alone.
Human nature develops in continuous interaction with out people.
People who have never socialized, such as feral children, often act deranged and weird (I'm referring to you, reader).
This is because social interaction is vital to human development.

Alongside values and cultural customs, social interaction teaches us about norms.
Norms are consciously and unconsciously accepted rules of "normal" behavior in a group.
Some norms are laws or otherwise publicly declared, others customs or assumptions of accepted behavior.
Norms can include forbidden actions and manners for example.
Psychological research is especially interested in the adaptation of norms that relate to interaction, emotional regulation, sexuality, and gender.

In addition to norms, socialization shapes the way, in which the individual thinks, uses language, and analyzes and interprets the world.
Soviet scientist A.R. Luria observed that literacy, or education in general, changed how people categorized tools and relevant items.
Undereducated people grouped a hammer and nail together, whereas educated people sorted all tools into one group.
Education facilitates abstract thinking and use of hypernyms such as "tool" whereas undereducated people simply thought of everyday items.

Socialization is essentially a learning process.
The learning that takes place is generally incidental or even unconscious.
You make an effort to learn in school but probably had no books or lectures to learn how to express emotions in appropriately or what type of gender expectations there are.

Behaviorism is a psychological approach that studied learning and introduced the idea of precise measurements to psychological research.
Early behaviorists primarily studied animal learning but noticed that their findings are applicable to humans as well.
John B. Watson, a famous psychologist believed that people were born as "blank slates" without free will and exposed to behavioral shaping.

Learning can either be passive or active.
In classical conditioning, environmental regularities and automatic reactions to them such as fear, pleasure or reservation shape learning passively.
Operant conditioning pushes for certain behaviors through associating positive and negative stimuli.
Operant conditioning is a significant type of learning during socialization.
Psychologist B.F. Skinner found out that rewards increase a certain behavior whereas punishments decrease a certain behavior.
The theory of operant conditioning can be useful in animal testing, however it is also applicable to people.
A dog could be given a treat if it obeys commands. Similarly you might get a good grade on an exam if you study hard. This reward encourages you to learn and study in school.
Unlike animals, humans don't need concrete rewards such as food or treats.
A reward could be approval or kindness while a punishment could be discipline or neglect.

People learn from one another through observation, imitation and modeling.
You can learn from observing the actions and consequences of others.
This phenomenon is called vicarious reinforcement.
Vicarious reinforcement is the process of learning through observing the consequences of behavior of other people and it increases behavioral conformity.
People tend to repeat rewarded behaviors and avoid punished behaviors.

An infant depends on the environment and strongly adapts to it.
The temperament of a child affects how the social environment reacts to them.
A happy baby receives a lot of positive attention, while a fussy baby may evoke the feelings of exhaustion.
In this way the infant influences the types of environmental effects they encounter.
Adolescents can mostly control their environmental influences.
It is also possible to develop social skills and positive attitudes.
Culture, society, and norms strongly impact the socialization process.
People are the ones who create a culture and constantly shape social atmosphere and other social realms such as legislation.
This means that we affect our culture and society as much as it affects us, which is a reciprocal interaction.
In addition to sociocultural factors and their impacts on behaviors, there is also individuality.