Man, as you know, is a social being. We live in a society and obey its laws. The formation of a person’s personality occurs in the process of his upbringing, development and socialization. This process begins almost from the first days of the child's acquaintance with the world and continues throughout life. In this article we will consider the influence of agents of primary and secondary socialization on a person’s personality.
What is socialization?
It implies a process of assimilation by a person of social norms, values ​​and patterns of behavior.
The formation of a person’s personality occurs with the help of the so-called agents of primary and secondary socialization and its institutions.
The process of adaptation to the conditions put forward by society includes the transfer and assimilation of knowledge, skills, the formation of ideals, norms and rules of behavior.
The purpose and functions of socialization
The main goal of this process is to prepare an individual to fulfill a specific role and meet the requirements of society. Based on this, socialization performs a number of functions. Among them are the following:
- Regulatory function. It is associated with the regulation of interpersonal relations in society, which obey the generally accepted norms and laws. It is carried out thanks to the impact on the person of the family, the training or work collective, religion, politics and other social institutions.
- Personally-transforming function. This function of socialization consists in the allocation by a person of personal attitudes, values ​​and guidelines, the transformation of social ideals into personally significant concepts.
- Value Oriented Function. It is determined by the fact that a person is aware and accepts social values ​​that are close to his environment; regulates his behavior in accordance with these values, develops his own life values. The formation of value orientations affects a person’s attitude to reality and his family.
- Information and communication function. In the process of communication, information is exchanged. This helps to expand the social experience and knowledge of each individual.
- Projective function. It contributes to the fact that a person or group in the process of socialization adopts a model of behavior and projects it on their life activities, guided in their activities by a specific project. That is, this action is in a certain pattern.
- Creative function. It becomes possible with a sufficiently high level of social adaptation and testifies to the ability of a person or a social group to create, create something new, look for ways out of the situation, using his personal experience gained in the process of socialization.
- Compensatory function. The essence of this function of socialization is to fill in the shortcomings of a physical, mental or intellectual nature. Within the framework of this function, an individual with certain characteristics or shortcomings adapts to full-fledged life activity in society.
Socialization mechanisms
Factors or mechanisms by which this process is carried out is all that affects a person’s life. These include heredity, family, collective, books, television, the Internet, the type of social system, political system, and more.
Agents and institutions of socialization
Under the agents of socialization is meant the environment of a person, which, acting on him, ensures the assimilation of social norms and rules. In other words, these are specific individuals that influence the process of individual adaptation.
Institutions of socialization are objects that influence the formation of personality in society (school, university, work).
Scientists distinguish between primary and secondary socialization.
The primary process is the process of mastering a person’s norms and laws by which society lives, its values ​​and traditions from birth to the period of maturity.
Secondary socialization is directly related to the individual's mastery of the profession in the process of its formation as a person.
Primary Socialization Agents
Depending on the species, scientists distinguish agents of primary and secondary socialization.
They affect a person in different ways and to different degrees.
Primary agents include the closest human environment: the family as an institution of primary socialization (mom, dad, grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle, other relatives). The same category includes school teachers, friends and neighbors.
A feature of these agents is that they begin to affect a person from birth, from the first minutes of his life.
The role of the family in the social adaptation of the child
One of the main functions of the family is the socialization of the personality of the child.
The social adaptation of the child consists in the adoption of norms and rules based on the experience gained in interaction with society.
The role of the family in this process is very large, because the family as an institution of socialization is the very first and most significant institution that affects the formation of a person’s personality.
It is in the family that the child acquires first knowledge about society, roles, norms and laws, learns about the traditions and customs adopted by members of this society.
In such an environment, he learns to interact with other people and obey certain rules. Therefore, the role of the family as an institution of socialization in the adaptation of the child in society cannot be overestimated.
Agents of Secondary Socialization
These include all those who have less impact on a person, but are directly related to him in the process of life. These are representatives of the administration of the educational institution, employees of the police, army, church and other public or professional organizations.
Society as an institution of socialization is a complex dynamic system, which includes many substructures that organically interact with each other according to certain rules in the process of life.
Successful Socialization Factors
These are the conditions under the interaction of which the process of socialization proceeds. It is customary to distinguish 4 groups of factors of socialization:
- megafactors are space, world, planet;
- macro factors - state, people, society;
- mesofactors, which are determined by the conditions of socialization of a large group of people united by their place of residence, belonging to one ethnic group, social group;
- microfactors - family, friends, student or work team, neighbors, other social microgroups.
All these factors of socialization to one degree or another affect a person, ensuring the process of socialization.
It is worth noting that there are other classifications of factors of socialization.
A.V. Mudrik distributes factors into three groups: macro factors, mesofactors, and microfactors.
In the Bronfenbrenner classification, we find four groups of factors that affect the success of personality socialization:
- The first factor is the microenvironment. This is all that surrounds a person from birth - family, friends, books, toys.
- The second factor is the mesosystem. The relationship between different areas of life, the unification of these areas - the union of school and family, family and street, etc.
- The third factor is the exosystem. It includes public authorities, administrative institutions and other public organizations.
- The fourth fact is the macrosystem. These are the norms of culture and subculture, worldviews and ideology that prevail in society.
Also distinguish personal, environmental and educational factors of socialization:
- Personal factors - the potential and characteristics of a person that regulate his activities, behavior in normal conditions of life, the ability to acquire new social experience.
- Environmental factors include atypical situations and the conditions in which a person finds himself. This may be a new situation or pressure from the team.
- Educational factors - this is the educational impact that is on a person and regulates the process of his social adaptation.
The success of a person’s social adaptation is determined by its adoption of social norms and orders, as well as its ability to withstand society and life situations that impede self-development and self-realization.
The conditions for successful socialization is a coordinated impact on a person of various social institutions. Nevertheless, society continues to influence a person spontaneously, which often leads to problems. In this regard, educational institutions are actively introducing and implementing a program of education and socialization of students and youth.
The education of a competent and socially active generation is the key to the prosperity of the state as a whole. That is why this problem already requires the search for solutions at the state level.
Social Adaptation Centers
A variety of factors of socialization and inconsistency of the impact of social institutions on the individual often provoke problems with social adaptation. This is expressed in the antisocial behavior of a person, his conduct of an asocial lifestyle, the occurrence of alcohol or drug addiction, etc.
To overcome these problems, today there are centers of social adaptation.
They work to help people fill the gaps and correct the shortcomings of socialization. Social adaptation centers provide temporary accommodation for people who find themselves without a specific residence and occupation. Also, the staff of the centers conduct a series of events that contribute to the adaptation of those people who have lost socially useful connections. They implement a program of education and socialization of the individual through the influence of a complex of factors. The centers take into account the interaction of all components of human adaptation in society. The centers actively cooperate with all institutions and agents of primary and secondary socialization.