3 Social Structure, Lesson 6: Families in the U.S.

As students enter, please review this NY Magazine piece about Carolyn Dweck's book, Mindset.
 



Family; The Most Influential Agent of Socialization

Family is the most important agent of socialization. Family shapes our self-concept first and before we are even conscious of it.  Human brain development happens most rapidly and greatly in the first few years after birth.  This UNICEF website (2016) explains what experts have concluded about brain development.  Dr. Suzana Herculano-Houzel explains the latest conclusions in this 5 min video.  The point is that much growth and development happens in the earliest years of human life so our first caregivers have an enormous impact on who we become.

Some of the influences from family are intentional.  Sociologists call direct lessons that are consciously taught manifest lessons.  Conversely, latent lessons are lessons that you learn unconsciously.  An anecdotal example from my own life is about my dad smoking.

And another example is when I was in college and considering what jobs to do afterwards.  Besides teaching, I considered both the Chicago Police and FBI - both jobs that my parents did

Here is the Google Form for this lesson.

Answer individually:
1.  What are some ways that you are similar to your family? Is this latent or manifest?  Why?


Evidence for Family Socialization 

There is much evidence for how individuals are socialized to think about their "self".  Examine the evidence below from sociologists.

Family Dinner - Latent Lessons from ther Dinner Table

From Stanford

From Harvard

From the NIH

Family Integration and Self-Esteem

Family and the Educational Self 

Family shapes your "self"
Read, Recall and Comprehend Quiz for this NY Magazine piece about Carolyn Dweck's book, Mindset

4.  How is Dweck's research an example of family's influence on "self"?

Carol Dweck explains how parents and eventually schools both work to create a fixed mindset that actually prevents learning.

This Atlantic article the latest update to Dweck's research which shows that praise cannot be empty.  It must be directed in specific nuanced ways to promote growth.

This NPR review of the book includes an excerpt and an interview.

This NY Magazine article explains how to apply Dweck's research to parenting and talking to kids.

Brain Pickings review of Dweck's Research provides a thorough explanation and a few quotes from the book.

Dweck explains her work on this TED Talk

and she explains how we can teach a growth mindset in this talk from Stanford U.

 

Cross-Cultural Example of Family and Production of Culture and the Self
Life Lessons from Chinese Culture from NPR shows how families influence kids to accept aspects of their culture. What are the hidden messages in the storybooks we read to our kids? That's a question that may occur to parents as their children dive into the new books that arrived over the holidays.
And it's a question that inspired a team of researchers to set up a study. Specifically, they wondered how the lessons varied from storybooks of one country to another.

Explain how you have been shaped by parents to have either a "growth mindset" or a "fixed mindset"? 

A lesson for parents from Angel Harris

Have you ever been in trouble for poor grades? You may want to read this research by Keith Robinson and Angel Harris.  

A main finding from our analyses is that a non-punitive parenting philosophy enhances future academic performance. It may be that non-punitive strategies are particularly effective because they create an optimal setting under which children can devote more attention to schooling. This setting, void of punitive restrictions on activities, might foster the intrinsic motivation necessary for improved performance (Deci and Ryan 1985). It might also be that parents are re-organizing the way children spend their time, for example, suggesting (rather than explicitly demanding) they exchange some time spent on extracurricular activities for time on activities more essential for academic success. An exchange of this sort may involve spending fewer hours watching television or time alone in recreation, to more time studying with friends or attending after-school classes over the same number of hours. In this way, parents are not using punitive measures to adjust the way their child spends time, which might be the most effective way to motivate children academically.

Angel Harris is a widely respected sociologist from Duke University who focuses on the effects of family, race and social class on student education.  Harris's book Kids Don't Want to Fail explains the influences that limit poor minority students.  From Harvard University Press,

 

"Despite achieving less in school, black students value schooling more than their white counterparts do. Black kids perform badly in high school not because they don’t want to succeed but because they enter without the necessary skills. Harris finds that the achievement gap starts to open up in preadolescence—when cumulating socioeconomic and health disadvantages inhibit skills development and when students start to feel the impact of lowered teacher expectations. Kids Don’t Want to Fail is must reading for teachers, academics, policy makers, and anyone interested in understanding the intersection of race and education."

Some agents of socialization can teach unintended (latent) lessons.

For today:  Please read this excerpt from Carol Dweck:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JNwPepdP_s5f4IuUG_qzv3lAmTTSfmin/view

Please be ready to discuss it tomorrow.

Here is more about her work:

Dweck's Mindset
Speaking of agents of socialization and family, we learned that sometimes we are influenced in unintended, hidden ways. That is called latent socialization. Another example of latent family messages is from a book by Carolyn Dweck called Mindset. Here is an excerpt. In the book, Dweck explains that unintentionally many of us sabotage our own learning because we have "fixed mindsets". That is we believe that either we know something or we don't and that's it. For example, either I am good at math or not. But Dweck explains that some people have a "growth mindset" meaning that they understand that whatever they learn, they have worked hard to learn and when something is difficult, they change how they learn it. These people are excited about the learning and are open to new ideas and they enjoy the challenge of learning. Often times, those with fixed mindsets learned to be that way because they were overly praised by parents and teachers. For example, "You are so smart," or "You are so good at math." Then when these students have difficulty, they think, "Well I guess I am not good at that," rather than "I have to try something different or try harder to learn that." Do you see how the fixed mindset can sabotage learning? Do you think that you have been socialized by parents or school to have one mindset or another? What are some other ways that you may have been latently socialized?

3SocStructure, Lesson 5: The Self and Agents of Socialization

 HW:  Read this NY Magazine piece about Carolyn Dweck's Mindset.

As you enter, please open the  Twenty Statements Test and fill in 20 responses to the question, "Who am I?" 

Try to fill in all 20 statements about yourself.   Work quickly and individually.


The "self"

The Twenty Statements Test is a survey that has been used in various studies for over 50 years. (Note: this lesson is based on Rusty Schnellinger's lesson) It is a qualitative measurement of how people think about themselves, or who they are as a person.   This conscious understanding of who we are as individuals is an example of what sociologists call a "self."  Similar to metacognition and how people think about thinking, a "self" is how individuals consciously think about who they are as an individual.  

Coding your responses.
When conducting qualitative data analysis, sometimes sociologists will code the responses to make sense of the data.  Code your responses to the Twenty Statements Test:

A mode responses: Physical characteristics.   

Ex. I am blonde, I am short, I am strong.

B mode responses: Socially defined statuses that associate you relative to a group.   

Ex. I am an SHS student, I am Catholic, I am a quarterback, I am a daughter, I am a store clerk.

C mode responses:  Personal traits, styles of behavior or emotional states. 

Ex. I am a happy person, I am competitive, I am loud. I am tired.

D mode responses: General, more abstract or existential responses.   

Ex. I am me, I am part of the universe, I am human, I am alive.

After you code your responses, answer the following questions on your notes page:

Google Form for this lesson.

1.  Individually:  Which did you have the most of?  Hypothesize what your totals reveal about your sense of self.  Which responses came to mind first/easier?   How do you think you will compare to the class as a whole?  

Culture And your Sense of Self

Without reading any further, hypothesize how these responses might have changed over time.  How might culture shape your responses to these? 

As Peter Kaufman explains in A Sociology Experiment (2019),

In summary, culture shapes how we think about what is important and what we value.  

Erving Goffman's Dramaturgy

2.  Choose one of your responses that is from B.  Which one did you choose? How do you express yourself to fit into this response?  In other words, how do you dress, talk and act in order to be like _______ (B)?

Discussion:  What were some examples for your answer to number two? For number two, this is exemplifying a sociological theory called Dramaturgy by Erving Goffman. Goffman wrote The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life which theorized that people present themselves to the world based on their ideas about their "self". They create an image of how they want to be perceived. It is like being in a play - when you go on stage you are dressed up to play your role. Goffman's theory in the form of an extended metaphor is known as dramaturgy. How do these fit into Goffman’s theory?

Presentation of Selfies in Everyday Life

Drawing on Goffman's theory, Jay Livingston of the Montclair Socioblog posted about selfies at this post, also cross-posted at SocImages.  Here's Livingston's take on selfies:

A girl takes a selfie, posts it to Instagram, and waits. She doesn’t have to wait long – a minute or two - before the likes and comments start rolling in. “Gorgeous,” “So pretty OMG,” “Stunning,” “Cutest.” ...the selfie-Instagram-comments syndrome is not about narcissism – seeing yourself as standing shiningly above everyone else. It’s about fitting in – reading the social map, finding where you stand, and maybe changing your location in that social space.... All these moves – the posting, the commenting and liking – have a meaning that girls know intuitively but that must be decoded for outsiders...It’s hard to find narcissism or vanity in any of this. The girls are not preening, not basking in their triumphs, not nursing an ego wounded from some social slight. They are reading a constantly changing sociogram or network model of their world.
If you look at the individual –a girl posting a selfie and reading the laudatory comments –you see a personality trait, narcissism. But the behavior that looks like narcissism is really an aspect of the social structure (girls’ friendships networks) and the institution those networks are embedded in (school).

Agents of socialization

3.  Regarding your answer to number 2 above, what are some of the places that you have learned to talk/dress/act/ like this?

Discussion: Examples of where?

These are examples of agents of socialization. Esp: Family, School, Peers/friends, Media.  Agents of Socialization are the most important groups that shape an individual's sense of self.

4. Charles Horton Cooley's Looking Glass Self

Can you think of a time when one of your responses to B was received positively by another person or group? Who was it? How did they react? What did they say?
Can you think of a time when one of your responses to B was received negatively by another person or group? Who was it? How did they react? What did they say?

These are examples of Charles Horton Cooley’s theory called the “Looking Glass”.  By “Looking Glass” he is referring to a mirror.  His theory is that we learn to act a certain way because of our interactions with others and how they react to us.

In Sum

People look at themselves in the mirror and see themself in a particular way.  However, what we don't see is all of the messages that have been told to us through the most significant groups in our lives.  These groups are called agents of socialization.  All of them exist within a culture as well. 

HW:  Read this NY Magazine piece about Carolyn Dweck's Mindset.

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Amer I can Values

 

Culture has a very influential impact on people.  Humans are born into a culture that has been influencing their growth from before their birth and continues throughout their development, even before they have become cognitively aware of this influence.  Some of the strongest influence of culture is non-material and thus, not readily noticeable.  These aspects of culture affect how people think.  One of the strongest of these non-material cultural components is values.  Values are the behaviors and attitudes that a culture of people deem desirable.

Sociologist Robin Williams's work is seminal research in the sociology of American values.  Williams first published his work in 1951 and then updated it in 1960 and 1970.

In 2008, sociologist Karen Cerulo re-examined Williams's work in her essay published in the Sociological Forum, Social Relations, Core Values and the Polyphony of the American Experience.

In 1985, L. Robert Kohl published a similar examination of values written for refugees and immigrants so that they could adjust to American culture.  

Below is a chart that merges the Williams and Kohl's values lists.

American Values                        vs.        Other Cultures’ Values

Personal control/responsibility                              Fate/destiny

Change seen as natural/positive/Progress             Stability/tradition

Time and its control                                               Human Interaction

Equality/fairness                                                    Hierarchy/rank/status

Individualism/independence/freedom                    Group welfare/dependence

Self-Help/initiative                                                 Birthright/inheritance

Competition                                                            Cooperation

Future orientation                                                   Past orientation

Action/work                                                             “Being”

Informality                                                              Formality

Directness/openness/Honesty                                 Indirectness/ritual/”face”

Practicality/efficiency                                             Idealism/theory

Materialism/Acquisitiveness                                   Spiritualism/detachment

Achievement/Success                                              Acceptance/Status Quo

Morality/judgement                                                Consequentialism/situational ethics

More about American values:

https://www.state.gov/courses/answeringdifficultquestions/html/app.htm?p=module2_p2.htm

Study USA values for understanding Americans

And more recently, in 2015 Sociologists Erik Olin Wright and Joel Rogers published American Society; How It Really Works, which identifies five core social values that most Americans affirm in one way or another: 

• freedom
• prosperity
• efficiency
• fairness
• democracy

Read Kohl's The Values Americans Live By

After you are assigned a number (1-13), find your partner and travel to the table that matches your number. 

1.  What evidence does the author provide for the value that you were assigned?

2.  If you agree with the author’s evidence, what are some specific examples that you can cite from your own life (or your parents’ lives) that show these values shaping either you or your parents?  If you don’t agree why not? Provide evidence that contradicts the author.

3.  Individually, look over the whole reading.  What are the three values that impact you personally the most?  In what ways?

Value 1: _____________ How?

Value 2: _____________ How?

Value 3: _____________ How?

Here is an exercise to try that asks you to personally explore the way values affect you.

Here is a TED Talk by Chris Jordan about how values subtly shape life in the USA.