Psychology

The Importance of the Socialization Process in Shaping Human Behaviour
Antonio Commisso
The process of socialization can be defined as lifelong learning through the conformity of social contact in society, which helps us to develop as individuals by showing us what is normal, developing our morals, shaping behaviour, and revealing to us the social skills necessary to assume our role or social position in society. Human behaviour is the development of all of the aforementioned qualities that socialization provides for us through conformity. If a person is isolated from society for their whole life and does not come into contact with anything human then that subject will develop attributes and behaviours not found within a “normal” person. This is because they would have never gotten the chance to observe, register and conform to the actions of the people who would have been around them if they had a normal upbringing. This is proven in the life of the feral child Victor of Aveyron, who had spent the majority of his young life in the woods of a village in 1800’s France. His way of communication and physical tendencies are proof enough that socialization, through the act of social contact, plays an important role in the development of human behaviour.
The Nature vs. Nurture was a debate coined in the mid 1800`s to come to a conclusion on whether the social environment around you (Nurture) or your genetic makeup (Nature) have a greater impact on human behaviour and its development. The nurture side of the debate is the sociological side which states that the influences of the environment around an individual determine the future social role and behaviour of said individual. It may be true that nurture is more of a factor than nature when determining human behaviour. In Margaret Mead`s mid 1900`s study of Nature vs. Nurture she studied the gender roles, something people thought was defined by nature, of the Tchambuli culture in Papua New Guinea which were reversed from what we normally see in our society. Women were tough and hearty, while men were passive and looked after households. This was because, as children, girls were trained in handicrafts and were absorbed into the woman`s way of life. Boys, however, were given no training for their future roles. Margaret Mead concluded that personality traits are a result of early learning not hereditary. Thus proving even further that socialization and its impact on humans shape the way humans behave.
Genie was a 14 year old girl who had been tied to a chair, abused and was never allowed to speak nor be spoken to for around 7 years. She was discovered in the early 1970`s at the age of fourteen and since she was found people tried to teach her how to communicate and behave in a “normal” way. She had learned to put words together similar to that of a young child just learning how to speak, for example she would for sentences like “Another house have dog.” Although she was learning, she never became fluent, and could never form complex sentences. The disruption in her development as a child shows us what happens when a child is deprived of opportunities for normal socialization. Even though her social skills were completely destroyed she was able to overcome it and learn to communicate in a simple way which shows how socialization works. Also, the impact of socialization on her behaviour is seen in how negatively she had developed when being isolated from a healthy environment. Finally, in all three of these cases it is evident that the socialization process is one of if not the only important factor in the shaping of human behaviour.