Socialization

 Socialization, arguably, refers to the phenomenon where individuals would learn the society’s concept of what is right and wrong and garner a concept about different things, including what they may think about themselves or others. It is a key step in development for young individuals. There may be different ways that an individual would become ‘socialized’ - for instance, through interacting with other individuals like them or unlike them, a child may learn what they should do when communicating or playing with others, and they may also garner concepts like what individuals would be in-group and who would be out-group, and even concepts about what role they would play in the larger group; socialization may also occur when older people would interact with the younger ones, like parents or teachers educating the children, and children may socialize by learning the response of the parents or teachers, for instance, they may learn not to eat crayons after being scolded, or they may learn to line up after being told and doing it every day at the kindergarten. Socialization basically exists in every point of an individual’s life and it is not limited to their childhood, for example, one may still get socialized about what they are expected to achieve or do at different points of their lives, and they may get socialized about what is the beauty standard through comments of others or advertisement about weight loss and plastic surgery.

 There are some debate about whether something is inherent or learned, however, those experiments involving children being isolated or deprived of socialization are arguably too inhumane and unethical; it is also arguable that how an individual becomes themselves is a combination of both inherent features and things learned through socialization.