Ways of Thinking...: The "self" and family

Language and the Self

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 a 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:

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.

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

Lesson Focus:

What are the ways that family influences individuals?

What are the ways that family is changing in the U.S.?

How does this research compare to your family?

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.

Manifest - Don't smoke.

Latent - Stand this way.

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. But they never influenced me to do those jobs in a manifest lesson, instead it was more latent - I heard them talk about those jobs and it swayed me to consider them.

Answer individually:
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 the Dinner Table

From Stanford

From Harvard

From the NIH

Family Integration and Self-Esteem

From Krauss, S., Orth, U., & Robins, R. W. (2020). Family environment and self-esteem development: A longitudinal study from age 10 to 16. Journal of personality and social psychology, 119(2), 457–478. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000263

From Yabiku, Axinn and Thorton (1999) American Journal os Sociology)

Family shapes your "self"

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. See the first chapter of her book here.

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"?

The Changing Structure of Family

1. If I told you that I live with my family, who would you assume I mean?

2. What are some other ways to define family different than above?

My family and I dressed up as the family from Despicable Me one Halloween. This was one of my favorite costumes but it also is an interesting example of the changing family in the U.S. Most often, when Americans think of "family" they think of the nuclear family - two heterosexual partners, married and their children. Although this is an ideal in many Americans' minds, sociologists question whether or not it was ever a reality. Most family researchers will trace this back to the post-WWII era when these types of families seemed to peak. However, the romanticized notion may be from media that created an ideal image of this family even if the reality was much different then and certainly is now.

One sociologist who researched the American family extensively using historical methods is Stephanie Coontz who writes,

Leave It to Beaver was not a documentary, a man’s home has never been his castle, the ‘male breadwinner marriage’ is the least traditional family in history, and rape and sexual assault were far higher in the 1970s than they are today. In The Way We Never Were, acclaimed historian Stephanie Coontz provides a myth-shattering examination of two centuries of the American family, sweeping away misconceptions about the past that cloud current debates about domestic life. The 1950s do not present a workable model of how to conduct our personal lives today, Coontz argues, and neither does any other era from our cultural past. This revised edition includes a new introduction and epilogue, looking at what has and has not changed since the original publication in 1992, and exploring how the clash between growing gender equality and rising economic inequality is reshaping family life, marriage, and male-female relationships in our modern era.

Here is a review of Coontz's book from the New Republic.

Here is a review of her work on Goodreads.

Family Structure in the U.S. is Changing

From the PEW Research Center, Trends Shaping the US (2017):

Americans’ lives at home are changing. Following a decades-long trend, just half of U.S. adults were married in 2015, down from 70% in 1950. As marriage has declined, the number in cohabiting relationships (living with an unmarried partner) rose 29% between 2007 and 2016, from 14 million to 18 million. The increase was especially large among those ages 50 and older: 75% in the same period. The “gray divorce” rate – divorces among those 50 and older – roughly doubled between 1990 and 2015.
Also, a record number of Americans (nearly 61 million in 2014) were living in multigenerational households, that is, households that include two or more adult generations or grandparents and grandchildren. Growing racial and ethnic diversity in the U.S. helps explain some of the rise in multigenerational living. The Asian and Hispanic populations overall are growing more rapidly than the white population, and those groups are more likely than whites to live in multigenerational family households.

Americans are more accepting of the changing structures than they have ever been.

As family structures change in U.S., a growing share of Americans say it makes no difference
The American family is changing in many ways: Cohabitation is on the rise, more adults are delaying or forgoing marriage, a growing share of children are living with an unmarried parent, and same-sex marriage is legal in all 50 states. Amid these changes, three-in-ten U.S. adults think it’s a good thing that there is growing variety in the types of family arrangements people live in, while about half as many (16%) say this is a bad thing. The largest share (45%) don’t think it makes a difference, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in June 2019.

Here is a graph from Phil Cohen showing different types of households by decade 1900-2017: