agents of socialization

(noun)

Agents of socialization, or institutions that can impress social norms upon an individual, include the family, religion, peer groups, economic systems, legal systems, penal systems, language, and the media.

Related Terms

Examples of agents of socialization in the following topics:

  • Forming Political Values

    • People form political values throughout their life cycle through different agents of political socialization, including family, media, and education.
    • The following agents of Socialization influence to different degrees an individual's political opinions:
    • The agents a child surrounds him/herself with during childhood are crucial to the child's development of future voting behaviors.
    • Some of these agents include:
    • Explain the agents of socialization that inform the individual's political values

  • Gender Messages in the Family

    • Division of labor creates gender roles, which in turn, lead to gender-specific social behavior.
    • Family is the most important agent of socialization because it serves as the center of a child's life.
    • Socialization theory tells us that primary socialization - the process that occurs when a child learns the attitudes, values and actions expected of individuals within a particular culture - is the most important phase of social development, and lays the groundwork for all future socialization.
    • Socialization can be intentional or unintentional; the family may not be conscious of the messages it transmits, but these messages nonetheless contribute to the child's socialization.
    • Justify how the family acts as the most important agent of gender socialization for children and adolescents

  • Theoretical Understandings of Socialization

    • While the basic idea outlined above has been a component of most understandings of socialization, there have been quite a variety of definitions and theories of socialization.
    • As a result, everyone becomes both a socializing agent (socializer) and a novice (socializee) in all encounters with others.
    • Socialization could be attributed to this or that but in order to truly understand what is taking place it is necessary to go beyond just pointing to socializing agents and specify what it is about those agents that is doing the socializing.
    • To accomplish this, Long and Hadden developed a new understanding of socialization, "socialization is the process of creating and incorporating new members of a group from a pool of newcomers, carried out by members and their allies".
    • Under this understanding, the principal agents of socialization are certified and practicing members of the group to which novices are being socialized.

  • Child Socialization

    • Primary and secondary socialization are two forms of socialization that are particularly important for children.
    • Primary socialization in sociology is the acceptance and learning of a set of norms and values established through the process of socialization.
    • Secondary socialization refers to the process of learning what is the appropriate behavior as a member of a smaller group within the larger society.
    • Basically, it is the behavioral patterns reinforced by socializing agents of society.
    • Justify the importance of socialization for children, in terms of both primary and secondary socialization

  • Objective, constraints and alternatives

    • The objective is a function of the values and preferences of the individual agent.
    • Experience, social background as well as many other social and psychological characteristics that relate to the individual determine the nature of the agent's objectives.
    • Economic agents have a variety of objectives.
    • There are a variety of objectives that an agent might have.
    • Constraints may be technology, quantity of factors of production, quality of factors, profits, utility, sales, market share, income, growth, social institutions, values, law or a myriad of other possibilities.

  • Introduction to Social Psychology and Social Perception

    • Some of the topics of focus within social psychology are listed below:
    • The structure-versus-agency debate may be understood as an issue of socialization against autonomy in determining whether an individual acts as a free agent or in a manner dictated by social structure.
    • On the other hand, other theorists stress the capacity of individual agents to construct and reconstruct their environments.
    • The field of social psychology consists of the overlapping foci of psychology and sociology.
    • Define the goals, questions, and approaches of the field of social psychology

  • Introduction

    • The basic idea of a social network is very simple.
    • A social network is a set of actors (or points, or nodes, or agents) that may have relationships (or edges, or ties) with one another.
    • To build a useful understanding of a social network, a complete and rigorous description of a pattern of social relationships is a necessary starting point for analysis.
    • The amount of information that we need to describe even small social networks can be quite great.
    • All of the tasks of social network methods are made easier by using tools from mathematics.

  • Agents

    • A decision also implies the existence of an agent.
    • The agent may act for themselves or on the behalf of a principal.
    • Rules and habits (or social institutions) arise because there is some desired end to be accomplished.
    • The agent has a conflict of interest.
    • Enron is an example of the principal/agent problem.

  • Social Interaction and Technology

    • Humans have sought to solve the problem of provisioning through social interaction and the use of technology.
    • In legal terms, this individual is called an "agent. "
    • An agreement between two individuals or agents is a contract.
    • A social institution is a habitual pattern of behavior that is embedded in a social system.
    • Marriage is an example of a social institution.

  • Principle-Agent Problem

    • The principle-agent problem (agency dilemma) exists when conflicts of interest arise between a principal and an agent in a business setting.
    • Examples of relationships that can experience the principal-agent problem include:
    • The deviation of the agent from the principals interest is referred to as "agency costs. "
    • This connection sets the standard for judging the performance of the agent.
    • The diagram shows the basic idea of the principle agent problem.