essays religion as an agent of socialization

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The Religion and Family Connection

Social science perspectives, darwin l. thomas , editor, the influence of three agents of religious socialization: family, church, and peers, marie cornwall.

Marie Cornwall, “The Influence of Three Agents of Religious Socialization: Family, Church, and Peers,” in  The Religion and Family Connection: Social Science Perspectives , ed. Darwin L. Thomas (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1988), 207–31.

Marie Cornwall was an assistant professor of sociology at Brigham Young University when this was published. For several years she was the project director for the Religious Activity Project sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Her published research has focused on how to measure religiosity, the processes of religious disaffiliation, and the role of personal communities in maintaining religious commitment. She received her PhD from the University of Minnesota.

Introduction

How is it that people come to believe, feel, and behave religiously? Social scientists have addressed this question in a number of ways, but the most fruitful research focuses on religious socialization. Of particular interest is not only why people are religious, but why they are religious in the way they are. Sociologists have predicted the decline of religion for the past one hundred years, but it is now clear that religion has not lost its importance in modern society. A new focus in the research, therefore, is to understand how society maintains religion and how religion is transferred to the next generation. Religious institutions no longer operate as monopolies. The modern pluralistic world offers a multitude of religious perspectives from which individuals may choose. What are the processes by which people come to adopt a particular religious identity?

This paper studies the impact of religious socialization on the religiosity of adults. Three agents of religious socialization are examined: parents, the church, and peers. After reviewing the research which demonstrates the importance of these three agents, elements of the socialization process are outlined and a model to test the interrelatedness of these elements is presented. The paper concludes with a discussion of three processes of religious socialization.

Much of the literature examining the influence of religious socialization has been based on data collected from adolescent respondents (Johnson, 1973; Thomas et al., 1974; Albrecht et al., 1977; Aacock and Bengston, 1978; Hoge and Petrillo, 1978). These studies, and other research which has examined the antecedents of adult religiosity (Himmelfarb, 1977, 1979; Greeley and Rossi, 1966; Greeley, 1976), suggest the importance of three agents of religious socialization: (1) parental religiosity and family religious observances, (2) the religiosity of one’s peers—particularly the religiosity of one’s spouse in studies utilizing adult samples, and (3) exposure to church socialization, most notably religious education.

One limitation in much of this research has been a focus on the relative influence of parents, the church, and peers in the socialization process. Greeley, for example, looked at the impact of a parochial school education on the religiosity of Catholics. He and Rossi (Greeley and Rossi, 1966) concluded that religious training in the home had a greater influence on the religious development of children than did a parochial school education. Other research among Jews (Himmelfarb, 1977) and Lutherans 0ohnstone, 1966) supported these finding. Having underscored the relative importance of the family, and the relative unimportance of church and peer socialization, researchers have neglected to ask the next question. How are family, church, and peer socialization processes interrelated? For example, how do family processes influence friendship choices and church attendance? While Greeley originally concluded a parochial school education by itself did not have a substantial influence on adult religiosity, in more recent research he has found a parochial education does have an important influence on adult religiosity by helping integrate the individual into the Catholic community (Fee, Greeley, McCready, and Sullivan, 1981). An understanding of the influence of family, church, and peer socialization requires a more careful examination of how these factors influence one another as well as how they influence adult religiosity. Himmelfarb (1979) has made a significant step towards this kind of understanding in his study of religious socialization based on data collected from a random sample of Jews in Chicago. He suggests that “parents socialize their children by channelling them into other groups or experiences (such as schools and marriage) which will reinforce (have an additive influence on) what was learned at home and will channel them further into similar adult activities” (Himmelfarb, 1979: 478).

In a test of his theory, he found that while parental religiosity was not the best predictor of any of the types of adult religious involvement used in the model, its indirect effect through other agents of religious socialization was very substantial. There was a direct positive influence of parents’ observance of ritual on (1) hours of Jewish schooling, (2) Jewish organizational participation, and (3) spouse’s ritual observance at marriage. Each of these variables had a strong positive effect on adult religious involvement. Himmelfarb concluded parents are influential because they channel their children into experiences and environments which support the socialization received at home.

Theoretical perspectives on the importance of religious socialization generally have focused on the importance of “social learning” and the construction of a religious worldview. For example, Yinger has noted that religiosity, particularly church participation, is a learned behavior. “One learns his religion from those around him Fundamentalist parents tend to bring up children who share the fundamentalist tradition; liberal religious views are found most often among those who have been trained to such views.” (1970: 131.)

A sociology of knowledge perspective suggests the importance of socialization processes in the development of a religious worldview. Individuals come to adopt a particular worldview through early childhood religious socialization or as an adult by switching worlds through re-socialization. The world is built up in the consciousness of the individual by conversation with significant others: parents, peers, and teachers. The subjective reality of the world is maintained by this same conversation. “If such conversation is disrupted (the spouse dies, the friends disappear, or one comes to leave one’s original social milieu), the world begins to totter, to lose its subjective plausibility The subjective reality of the world hangs on the thin thread of conversation.” (Berger, 1967: 17.)

Berger also introduces the concept of “plausibility structures” such as the nuclear and extended family, friendship networks, or churches and other voluntary organizations which socialize individuals into a particular worldview and help them maintain their subjective reality. While Berger suggests that the nuclear family is a tenuous plausibility structure, Lenski (1963) suggests that the family is the core of vital subcommunities which sustain religious commitment in the modern world. Lenski, in fact, argues that religious institutions are highly dependent upon subcommunities of individuals who effectively socialize and indoctrinate group members.

An adequate study of the processes of religious socialization should incorporate each of the elements discussed above. This requires careful attention to:

1. The impact of family, church, and peer socialization on adult religiosity as well as the interrelatedness of these three agents.

2. Channelling processes by which parents and other family members encourage participation in experiences and environments which support the socialization received at home.

3. The role of the family in providing a religious worldview.

4. The role of the family in modelling religious behaviors.

Methodology

<3>Sample.

Respondents were randomly selected from complete membership lists from twenty-seven different Mormon wards (congregations) from all parts of the United States. These twenty-seven wards had previously been chosen from a larger sample of Mormon stakes (typically made up of from six to twelve wards) which had been selected randomly from the different administrative areas of the church in the United States.

A membership roster was obtained from each of the ward units used in the sample and a list of households was randomly selected from each roster. Using this procedure, a total of thirty-two active and forty-eight inactive families was obtained within each of the twenty-seven units. Level of religious participation was previously obtained from the local bishop. Inactive households were oversampled because pretest data indicated they would be less likely to respond to the study than would active families. One adult member in each household was designated for inclusion in the sample by a toss of a die. Adult children over the age of eighteen were included in the sampling universe. When only one adult lived in the household or when there was only one adult who was a member of the LDS church, that person was included in the sample. The final sample consisted of 1,874 members over the age of eighteen.

A thirty-two-page questionnaire with appropriate cover letters requesting participation in what was described as one of the most important studies of Mormon religiosity ever undertaken was mailed to all adults in the sample. Follow-up postcards and additional copies of the questionnaire were mailed to nonrespondents over the next eight-week period. Adjusting for the 576 questionnaires that were undeliverable, the response rate was 74 percent from active members and 48 percent from less active members. The overall response rate was 64 percent. Despite the efforts taken to get accurate membership rosters, church records for those who are not currently attending religious services were found to be seriously inaccurate. Consequently, the majority of the undeliverable questionnaires were returned from less active members. The sample is representative of Mormons who could be located using information available from current church records. Respondents, therefore, probably have more positive feelings towards the LDS church and may be more religious than the general population.

Only the respondents baptized before age nineteen are included in this analysis. About one-third of the respondents are adult converts and the amount of family religious socialization reported by them is much lower than that reported by lifelong members. These adult converts were not socialized in their youth by family, peers, and the religious institution but acquired their belief and commitment through socialization experienced in the conversion process.

While the majority of lifelong members are baptized at age eight, about 10 percent of the lifelong members in the sample were baptized in their teenage years. Because they were exposed to some degree of church and peer socialization during their teenage years, we felt it appropriate to include them in the analysis. A total of 570 respondents in the sample had been baptized before age nineteen. Table 1 presents a description of the sample according to age, education, marital status and gender. In the sample 43 percent of the respondents were weekly attenders; 39 percent reported they seldom or never attend.

Table 1. Demographic profile of respondents (Respondents baptized before age 19 only)

Measurement

Family socialization. The amount of religious socialization in the family was measured by three variables. Respondents were asked to indicate the religious preference of their parents when the respondents were age twelve to eighteen. FAMILY is a dummy variable coded one if both parents were present in the home and both were members of the LDS church and zero if one or both parents were not LDS or if one parent was not present in the home. FAMILY is an indicator of whether or not respondents came from a complete LDS family.

Respondents also reported the frequency of their parents’ church attendance. PCHURCH is the average frequency of church attendance for both parents when the respondent was age twelve to eighteen. If only one parent was present in the home, PCHURCH is the frequency of that parent’s church attendance.

YHRO is a measure of the amount of religious observance respondents experienced in the home during their teenage years. The scale is composed of four items measuring frequency of family prayer, family religious discussions, family Bible or scripture reading, and family discussions of right and wrong. Home religious observance is stressed by LDS church leaders, and, furthermore, parents are strongly encouraged to take an active role in the religious development of their children.

Church socialization. The amount of socialization received through church participation was measured by two variables: YATTEND, a measure of the frequency of attendance at religious services during the teenage years, and SEMINARY. Seminary is a program of religious study offered to LDS students in the ninth through twelfth grades. In most areas of the United States students attend early-morning seminary prior to attending regular school. In Utah students are allowed “released time” from their regular studies to take a seminary course during the day. Response categories were (1) never attended (2) attended occasionally, (3) completed one to two years, and (4) completed three to four years. Because seminary has not always been available in all parts of the country, we expected, and found, a moderate age effect for attendance at seminary (correlation of -.30). Younger respondents were more likely to report having attended. Because of this age effect, the analysis is based on a covariance matrix of residuals after controlling for age.

Peer socialization. Two measures of peer socialization were used: FRIENDS and DECLINE. Respondents were asked to indicate how many of their friends were active members of the LDS church during their teenage and young adult years. Response categories included (1) none of them (2) a few of them (3) about half of them (4) most of them and (5) all of them. FRIENDS is a measure of the proportion of one’s friends who were active LDS during the teenage years, and DECLINE is a measure of the amount of decline in proportion of active LDS friends between the teenage and young adult years. DECLINE was computed by subtracting the proportion of active friends who were LDS during the young adult years (nineteen to twenty-five) from the proportion of active friends who were LDS during the teenage years.

Dimensions of religiosity. Four measures of religious belief and commitment are used in the analysis: two scales measuring a more personal mode of religiosity and two scales measuring the institutional mode of religiosity (for a full discussion of the dimensions of religiosity, see Cornwall, et al., 1986).

1. Traditional orthodoxy is defined as belief in traditional Christian doctrines such as the existence of God, the divinity of Christ, life after death, Satan, and the Bible. These are beliefs that are not unique to Mormonism. Acceptance or rejection of such beliefs is largely independent of affiliation with a particular religious group or institution. Traditional orthodoxy was measured with a five-item scale (see Table 2).

2. Spiritual commitment was measured using a five-item scale which focuses on degree of commitment to God. Items tap feelings such as loving God with all one’s heart, willingness to do whatever the Lord wants, and the importance of one’s relationship with God.

3. Particularistic orthodoxy refers to the acceptance or rejection of beliefs peculiar to a particular religious organization. Particularistic orthodoxy includes acceptance of such doctrines as the prophetic calling of Joseph Smith and the current church president, the authenticity of the Book of Mormon, and adherence to the belief that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the only true church on earth. Four items were used to measure particularistic orthodoxy.

4. Church commitment is the affective orientation of the individual towards the religious organization or community. It measures the attachment, identification, and loyalty of the individual towards the church organization or religious community. Five items were used to measure church commitment.

Table 2. Varimax Factor Pattern of Religiosity Items

Table 2 presents the results of a factor analysis of the several items which were combined into four separate religiosity scales. A factor analysis of these items produced three factors. All the spiritual commitment items load on the first factor with two items from the traditional orthodoxy scale. The particularistic orthodoxy items and the church commitment items load on the second factor. The particularistic orthodoxy items and the traditional belief items load on the third factor. When only the traditional orthodoxy items and the particularistic orthodoxy items are entered into a factor analysis, two distinct factors emerge. The traditional items load on one factor and the particularistic items load on the other. In addition, when other religiosity measures are included in the factor analysis (such as church attendance, frequency of personal prayer, and frequency of home religious observance), the overlap between church commitment and particularistic orthodoxy factors disappears. For this reason, four separate religiosity scales will be used as measures of religiosity.

Two levels of statistical analysis are reported in this paper. First, zero-order correlations among the several variables are examined, and then, in order to examine the complex interrelationships among variables, a path model is developed and tested. It is always useful to examine the zero-order correlations [1] between two variables to get an initial estimate of the amount of association between them. However, measures of association are not always indicators of a causal relationship. For example, the amount of association between two variables may actually be due to their correlation with a third variable. Or sometimes the amount of association between two variables is masked by the effects of another variable. The primary question to be addressed in the following statistical analysis is the interrelatedness of the family, peer and church socialization variables as well as their impact on adult religiosity.

Table 3 presents a correlation matrix of the religious socialization variables with the four measures of religious belief and commitment. The correlations between the family socialization variables (FAMILY, PCHURCH, and YHRO) and the four religious belief and commitment scales are not very large, ranging from a high of. 19 (SPIRIT and YHRO) to a low of .04 (SPIRIT and FAMILY). Compared with other family variables, correlations between YHRO and the four adult religiosity measures are relatively strong, ranging between .14 and .17, although all three family socialization variables have an impact on particularistic belief. The correlation matrix also reveals LDS family completeness and parental church activity have a greater influence on institutional religiosity (PARTIC and CHURCH) than on personal religiosity (TRAD and SPIRIT).

Table 3. Correlation Matrix of Religious Socialization Variables and Religious Belief and Commitment, Lifelong Members Only, Controlling for Age

GENDER (0=female; 1=male) FAMILY, family complete LDS (0=single parent or one parent not LDS; 1=both parents present and both LDS) PCHURCH, frequency of parents' church attendance YHRO, frequency of home religious observance: frequency of family prayer, family religious discussions, scripture reading, and family discussions about right and wrong YATTEND, church attendance of respondents when age 12-18 SEMINARY, years attendance at seminary FRIENDS, proportion of friends who wer active LDS when respondent was age 12-18 DECLINE, decline in proportion of friends active LDS between teenage years and adult years TRAD, traditional orthodoxy SPIRIT, spiritual commitment PARTIC, particularistic orthodoxy CHURCH, church commitment *p>.05

Church socialization variables and measures of adult religiosity are also moderately correlated. SEMINARY is correlated .22 and .15 with church commitment and particularistic orthodoxy and .05 and .09 with spiritual commitment and traditional orthodoxy. The same pattern holds for the correlation between YATTEND and religious belief and commitment, although the differences are not as great. The greater the amount of church socialization, the greater the level of institutional belief and commitment. Church socialization does not have as great an impact on personal belief and commitment.

A similar pattern is found when we examine the relationship between the proportion of active LDS friends (FRIENDS) and religiosity: low, nonsignificant correlations with personal religiosity (.06 and .03), and moderate correlations with institutional religiosity (.21 and .15).

Family socialization variables are highly correlated with both the peer socialization and the church socialization variables. The correlation between FAMILY and SEMINARY is .40 and the correlation between FAMILY and FRIENDS is .45. The size of the correlations between PCHURCH and YHRO and both FRIENDS and SEMINARY is also moderately strong.

The size of correlations between the four measures of belief and commitment and the amount of decline in proportion of active LDS friends is larger than any other coefficients in the table. The religiosity measures are more highly correlated with DECLINE than any other variable in the model, suggesting that peer socialization during the young adult years has a significant impact on both personal and institutional modes of religiosity.

An effect for sex is also apparent in Table 3. (The negative coefficient indicates that men report lower levels). Women report higher levels of home religious observance, greater frequency of attendance at religious services, a greater proportion of active LDS friends during the teenage years, and more decline in active LDS friends from the teenage years to young adulthood. Furthermore, they also report higher levels of adult religious belief and commitment. While the effect of gender on frequency of attendance at religious services, active LDS friends, and adult religiosity is not surprising, one might question the theoretical link between gender and the amount of home religious observance reported in the teenage years. Two explanations for this are possible. First, response bias may account for the slight correlation. Women report higher levels of religiosity and recall greater religious activity in their homes during the teenage years. However, another explanation is just as compelling. It may mean that women experience more home religious observance in their youth than men. Much of the responsibility for initiating home religious observance may fall upon women, and perhaps the young women themselves act as an important catalyst for encouraging parents and siblings to have family prayer, scripture reading, and the like.

At this point, the analysis suggests family socialization variables have less impact than church and peer socialization variables. However, because the family, church, and peer socialization variables are highly correlated, further analysis must be done to isolate the impact of each of the variables and to examine their interrelatedness.

LISREL (Joreskog and Sorbom, 1984) is a computer program which facilitates path modelling while controlling for measurement error. LISREL estimates the unknown coefficients in a set of linear structural equations. The advantages of LISREL over other analysis programs are (1) it provides a chi square measure of fit, (2) it requires specificity of assumptions about measurement error, and (3) it handles reciprocal causation or interdependence among the variables in the model. It also allows for the introduction of latent, unobserv-able variables.

LISREL was used for this analysis because it enables us to control for the effect of uncorrelated errors. Recall data is often suspect, and the introduction of measurement error is particularly likely with respect to data about frequency of parental church attendance and frequency of religious observance in the home. We are able to take into consideration the correlation of error terms between PCHURCH and YHRO by requesting the calculation of the error term.

LISREL also allowed us to specify and account for the interdependence of the YATTEND, FRIENDS, and SEMINARY variables. Interdependence is a problem because it is difficult to know whether attending church during the teenage years influences friendship patterns or whether friendship patterns influence attendance at church. The same is true, of course, for the relationship between FRIENDS and SEMINARY. These relationships are reciprocal. For path modelling purposes, the relationship between FRIENDS and SEMINARY and between YATTEND and FRIENDS is assumed to be reciprocal. However, we assumed the relationship between YATTEND and SEMINARY is monocausal. Those teenagers who attend church on a regular basis are more likely to attend seminary, but attendance at seminary is not as likely to influence attendance at religious services.

The findings presented here are the result of an iterative process. Early model specification was based on both empirical results (correlation matrix and regression analysis) and theoretical insights. In some cases, the T-value (less than 2.05) suggested the path should be dropped from the model. In other cases, the modification index indicated a path should be included. Once the model was fit, both theoretically and empirically, the same model was used to predict the four measures of belief and commitment.

Final model specification assumed a direct effect of six variables on adult religiosity: home religious observance, seminary attendance, proportion of friends who were active LDS during the teenage years, amount of decline in proportion of active LDS friends between the young adult years and the teenage years, frequency of respondent’s church attendance as a youth, and gender.

Each of the three family variables operate differently in the socialization process. Model specification assumed the FAMILY variable would influence parental church activity, proportion of active LDS friends, and seminary attendance. While the correlation matrix also suggested a moderate association between FAMILY and YATTEND, DECLINE, and the religiosity measures, early efforts to fit the model produced nonsignificant t-values for these paths. Theoretically, we would expect LDS family completeness would have the strongest direct effect on frequency of parental church attendance. When both parents are present and both belong to the same church, their level of religious activity is likely to be higher than if parents are of different religions, or only one parent is present. Friendship choices and seminary attendance are also directly affected because of the lack of support in the family for in-group association and church participation.

PCHURCH is correlated with YHRO, YATTEND, SEMINARY, and FRIENDS, but early efforts to fit the model suggested a direct effect of PCHURCH on YHRO and YATTEND only. The influence of family religious socialization on seminary attendance and friendship patterns is felt directly through FAMILY and YHRO, rather than PCHURCH. However, as might be expected, parental religious activity is strongly correlated with amount of religious observance in the home, and with frequency of attendance at church during the teenage years. Teenagers are more likely to attend church if their parents attend with them.

Final model specification is presented in Figure 1. The results of the LISREL analyses are displayed in Figures 2 through 5. The chi-squares for all models ranged between 10 and 16 with 14 degrees of freedom, indicating no significant difference between the model and the data (probability levels between .20 and .73).

The standardized path coefficients [2] presented in Figures 2 through 5 demonstrate the direct and indirect effects of the several variables in the model. Each figure contains essentially the same structural equation model but a different measure of adult religiosity is examined.

Because each model is essentially the same except for the dependent variable, the relationships among the family socialization variables (FAMILY, PCHURCH, and YHRO), the peer socialization variables (FRIENDS, and DECLINE), and the church socialization variables (YATTEND and SEMINARY) are the same across all models. Understanding the processes of religious socialization requires careful examination of the relationships among these variables alone. In the following discussion, the size of relevant path coefficients will be noted within parentheses.

Coming from a complete LDS family increases the likelihood of also having parents who attend church regularly (.46), having active LDS friends during the teenage years (.24), and attending seminary (.24). Frequency of parental church attendance has a strong positive influence on the amount of religious observance in the home (.76) and frequency of attendance at worship services during the teenage years (.59). Home religious observance has a slight positive influence on seminary attendance (.09) and proportion of active LDS friends (.12). Having active LDS friends is associated with both church (.13) and seminary attendance (.23) although the interdependence is greater for seminary attendance than for church attendance. Proportion of active LDS friends also has a strong positive influence on decline in active LDS friends during the young adult years (.64), although the strength of this relationship is due in part to the way DECLINE was calculated. In addition, women report higher levels of home religious observance and more frequent church attendance during their teenage years.

Contrary to earlier findings, frequency of home religious observance does not have the same direct effect on all measures of adult religiosity. The significant direct effect of YHRO on traditional orthodoxy (.11) and spiritual commitment (.17) does not appear in the other two models. Frequency of home religious observance during the teenage years influences personal religiosity, but not institutional religiosity. Further model testing using frequency of personal prayer and attendance at worship services as dependent variables gives additional evidence of the relative importance of home religious observance on the private, more personalized aspects of religion. In the meeting attendance model (not shown), home religious observance does not have a direct effect on frequency of attendance (.04). However, there is a significant direct effect of home religious observance on frequency of personal prayer.

The path from SEMINARY to the outcome variables is not significant in any of the four models. Although seminary attendance does have an impact on adult religiosity, its impact is primarily indirect through its influence on friendship networks. Seminary attendance influences friendship choices in the young adult years (coefficient equals -.20 in all models), and these friendship choices have a notable impact on adult religiosity.

The impact of the DECLINE variable on the four measures of religiosity differs across all models. It is weakest for traditional orthodoxy (-.32) and strongest for church commitment (-.56), but it is the variable which has the strongest direct effect in all four models. The strength of the DECLINE variable in predicting adult religiosity can in part be understood in light of recent research suggesting the importance of the teenage and young adult years in the development of a religious identity (Albrecht, Cornwall, Cunningham, forthcoming). Religious change frequently occurs during these years. Those who drop out or disengage from religious participation do so during the teenage or young adult years.

The impact of proportion of active LDS friends during the teenage years is different for each dimension of adult religiosity. The path coefficient for the FRIENDS variable is almost twice as large for the institutional measures (.38 and .40) as for the personal measures (.16 and .21), suggesting peer relationships have a greater impact on institutional religiosity than on personal religiosity. The significance of such patterns emphasizes the importance of in-group association for institutional religiosity and the relative less importance of such association for personal religiosity.

A direct effect for gender is found in the two personal religiosity models, but gender has no direct influence on institutional religiosity once the effect of other variables is controlled. Women report higher levels of traditional orthodoxy (-.10) and spiritual commitment (-.13), but the coefficients for gender are nonsignificant in the institutional religiosity models.

Attendance at meetings during the teenage years has a stronger influence on institutional commitment than on personal religious commitment. Data analysis reveals a significant direct effect of frequency of attendance during the teenage years on church commitment (.11) only. Further model testing reveals youth church attendance also directly influenced adult attendance (standardized coefficient equals .08).

The R-square for each model differs significantly from a low of .11 for traditional orthodoxy to a high of .26 for church commitment. The R-square for particularistic orthodoxy is .20 and the R-square for spiritual commitment is .16. We are less able to account for the variance in personal religiosity than we are to account for the variance in institutional religiosity, but even so, the overall amount of explained variance using religious socialization variables is less than one-fourth. However, other model testing produced an R-square of .29 for frequency of attendance at worship services.

The amount of variance explained in these models is relatively low. One reason for this may be that we are examining the relationship between religious experiences and socialization during the teenage years with adult religiosity. The low R-square may be an indicator of the many other factors which influence religiosity as the individual becomes an adult. This interpretation is strengthened by the results Himmelfarb (1979) found in his study of American Jews. His analysis of the effect of similar variables on eight different dimensions of religiosity produced an average R-square of .30. He was able to explain slightly more of the variance in his dependent variables by including a measure of spouse religiosity. Even so, an average R-square of .30 suggests the need to identify additional, currently unmeasured factors which also influence adult religiosity.

Conclusions

The primary importance of the family is apparent in this research, although in somewhat unexpected ways. For the most part, the family variables did not directly influence adult religiosity, although they had a significant influence on almost every other variable in the model. When both parents are present and both are LDS, a teenager is more likely to attend seminary and is also more likely to have active LDS friends during the teenage years. When frequency of parental church attendance is high, the teenager attends church more frequently. And when home religious observance is high, teenagers are also more likely to associate with LDS friends. Family religious socialization affects adult religiosity to the extent that it influences intervening variables: church and seminary attendance, and integration into a network of LDS peers.

The family, however, has a particularly important influence on personal religiosity. There was a consistent direct effect of home religious observance for models examining the personal mode of adult religiosity (traditional orthodoxy, spiritual commitment, and frequency of personal prayer), but not for the models examining the institutional mode of religiosity (particularistic orthodoxy, church commitment, and frequency of church attendance). Why is there no direct effect of family socialization variables on institutional religiosity? One explanation is participation in and commitment to the religious group is more heavily dependent upon the degree to which individuals are integrated into that group and has established a pattern of group participation. Thus, peer group associaton has a greater impact on institutional religiosity than on personal religiosity, and family socialization has a greater direct impact on personal religiosity than on institutional religiosity. Family socialization therefore influences the institutional modes of religiosity in adulthood to the extent that it contributes to the development of friendship ties with people who are active participators in the same religious group. On the other hand, family socialization influences personal religiosity by providing the foundation for a religious worldview, as well as by channelling people into networks of associations which foster the maintenance of that worldview.

Church and peer socialization have a significant impact on adult religiosity as well. Consistent with Himmelfarb’s conclusions, these data suggest parents channel their children into religious activities and religious networks which reinforce what is learned at home and encourage continued participation in adult activities which sustain belief and commitment. However, church and peer socialization also channel individuals. Seminary attendance acts as an important mechanism for increased integration within an LDS network and sustains integration through the young adult years and into adulthood.

The Processes of Religious Development

Extrapolating from these findings, we can begin to identify the processes by which individuals acquire a religious identity. Parents influence the development of a religious identity by supplying their children with a symbolic reference for understanding and interpreting a religious life, by modelling religious behavior on both the personal and institutional levels, and by encouraging the integration of their children into networks of relationships with others who share the same beliefs and the same group identity.

Symbolic references and the construction of religious meaning. Every person must develop a worldview or meaning system by which he or she can understand and interpret life experiences. Sociologists refer to this process as the social construction of reality because reality construction is highly dependent upon the symbolic references provided by others: parents, siblings, friends, and associates (Geertz, 1966). For the most part, these symbolic references take the form of “stories” (Greeley, 1982; Fowler, 1984) or “conversations” (Berger, 1967). Within these stories are images which represent, resonate, and articulate religious experience. The child, according to Greeley, “more explicitly and more self-consciously than the rest of us wants a story that will clarify reality for him” (1982: 57). Fairy tales and folktales, Bible stories and family stories are all equally true within the mind of the young child seeking to understand the world and how it works. Within the family, the individual begins to create his own religious worldview. The foundations upon which this worldview rests are created out of the family environment and the more religiously oriented the family, the more central religion will be within the child’s personal construction of reality.

Modelling religious behavior. Along with the construction of a religious worldview, the individual must also learn the norms and expectations of the religious group. The exact parameters of these expectations (for example, daily prayers, tithe paying, daily scripture reading) are defined by the particular religious group to which he or she belongs and become a part of the religious worldview during the socialization process. A young child learns what these expectations are by listening to stories and conversations told to them by their peers and by adults. In addition, however, children also learn about the norms and expectations of the religious group from parents and others whose own religious behavior provides the child with additional information about the practical application of religious norms and the contexts in which they are most appropriate. The extent to which these norms and expectations become an integral part of the beliefs and behaviors of a group member is therefore dependent upon both the development of a worldview that incorporates a belief in the norms and expectations of the group and the extent to which he or she has had opportunities to observe the practical application of those expectations.

Channelling. As with any type of social group, religious groups are particularly concerned with encouraging commitment on the part of its members. The vitality of the group is highly dependent upon the degree to which members are committed to the survival of the organization itself, to other members of the group, and to the norms and expectations of the group (Kanter, 1972). It is generally agreed that commitment is very much a product of the extent to which individuals are integrated into the religious community (Roof, 1978; McGaw, 1980; Cornwall, 1985; 1987). For example, the role of friendship ties and social networks in the conversion process has been demonstrated in the literature (Lofland and Stark, 1965; Lofland, 1977), and social scientists are beginning to assert that affective commitment develops prior to full acceptance of the belief system.

This, and other research on the channelling effect of parents (Himmelfarb, 1979), and the church (Fee et al., 1981) not only confirms the importance of social ties in religious development, but also begins to identify how the family and the church influence friendship choices. People are channelled into networks of association at fairly young ages and this channelling continues to be a vital force during the teenage and young adult years.

Implications

Having identified these three salient processes of religious development (symbolic references, modelling, and channelling), we know families have a strong influence on the religious development of individuals and we have a better understanding of why. While more research is needed to understand these processes and how they interact with one another, religious educators and church leaders can begin now to emulate what families have been able to do so well for so many years. We must therefore begin to ask in what ways youth leaders can enhance religious development in children and youth by sharing religious experiences and personal stories, by modelling religious behavior, and by encouraging integration into networks of people who share the same religious faith.

The research reported here is helpful in other ways, as well. The data strongly suggest interfaith marriages and single parent families place the religious development of children at risk. Family completeness affects parental religious activity. It also influences seminary attendance and proportion of active LDS friends during the teenage years, even after controlling for the effect of parental religious activity and home religious observance. It may be that parents in interfaith marriages or single parent families are less integrated into a religious network themselves and are therefore less able to help integrate their children. It may also be that these parents (either intentionally or unintentionally) channel their children into experiences which do not foster identity with one particular religious group. Presented with the option to choose between two groups, they opt for neither one. There is insufficient data available about the effects of interfaith marriages on the religious development of children. But given the increasing numbers of such marriages (Caplow et al., 1983), more research is needed in that area.

Finally, these findings again point to two critical periods of religious development: adolescence and young adulthood. In addition to the physical, social and cognitive changes experienced during the teenage and young adult years, individuals are much more likely to be confronted with alternative worldviews and their attendant life-styles, as well as new friendship choices. It is likely the strength of attachments, the plausibility of parental worldviews, and the practicalities of modelled behaviors play a central role in maintaining a religious identity during this critical period. All of which suggests the need for further examination of the processes of faith development during these critical years.

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[1] Zero-order correlations measure the amount and direction of association between two variables. The larger the correlation, the greater the amount of association. Correlations vary from -1.00 to +1.00. However, in social science research of this type a correlation greater than .40 is considered a relatively strong association.

[2] Path coefficients are measures of the amount of association between two variables controlling for the effect of all other variables in the model. The coefficient represents the amount of change in the independent variable which is associated with one standardized unit of change in the dependent variable.

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5.3 Agents of Socialization

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you should be able to:

• Evaluate the roles of families and peer groups in socialization
• Describe how people are socialized through institutions like schools, workplaces, and the government

Socialization helps people learn to function successfully in their social worlds. How does the process of socialization occur? How do we learn to use the objects of our society’s material culture? How do we come to adopt the beliefs, values, and norms that represent its nonmaterial culture? This learning takes place through interaction with various agents of socialization, like peer groups and families, plus both formal and informal social institutions.

Social Group Agents

Social groups often provide the first experiences of socialization. Families, and later peer groups, communicate expectations and reinforce norms. People first learn to use the tangible objects of material culture in these settings, as well as being introduced to the beliefs and values of society.

Family is the first agent of socialization. Mothers and fathers, siblings and grandparents, plus members of an extended family, all teach a child what he or she needs to know. For example, they show the child how to use objects (such as clothes, computers, eating utensils, books, bikes); how to relate to others (some as “family,” others as “friends,” still others as “strangers” or “teachers” or “neighbors”); and how the world works (what is “real” and what is “imagined”). As you are aware, either from your own experience as a child or from your role in helping to raise one, socialization includes teaching and learning about an unending array of objects and ideas.

Keep in mind, however, that families do not socialize children in a vacuum. Many social factors affect the way a family raises its children. For example, we can use sociological imagination to recognize that individual behaviors are affected by the historical period in which they take place. Sixty years ago, it would not have been considered especially strict for a father to hit his son with a wooden spoon or a belt if he misbehaved, but today that same action might be considered child abuse.

Sociologists recognize that race, social class, religion, and other societal factors play an important role in socialization. For example, poor families usually emphasize obedience and conformity when raising their children, while wealthy families emphasize judgment and creativity (National Opinion Research Center 2008). This may occur because working-class parents have less education and more repetitive-task jobs for which it is helpful to be able to follow rules and conform. Wealthy parents tend to have better educations and often work in managerial positions or careers that require creative problem solving, so they teach their children behaviors that are beneficial in these positions. This means children are effectively socialized and raised to take the types of jobs their parents already have, thus reproducing the class system (Kohn 1977). Likewise, children are socialized to abide by gender norms, perceptions of race, and class-related behaviors.

In Sweden, for instance, stay-at-home fathers are an accepted part of the social landscape. A government policy provides subsidized time off work—480 days for families with newborns—with the option of the paid leave being shared between mothers and fathers. As one stay-at-home dad says, being home to take care of his baby son “is a real fatherly thing to do. I think that’s very masculine” (Associated Press 2011). Close to 90 percent of Swedish fathers use their paternity leave (about 340,000 dads); on average they take seven weeks per birth (The Economist, 2014). How do U.S. policies—and our society’s expected gender roles—compare? How will Swedish children raised this way be socialized to parental gender norms? How might that be different from parental gender norms in the United States?

Peer Groups

A peer group is made up of people who are similar in age and social status and who share interests. Peer group socialization begins in the earliest years, such as when kids on a playground teach younger children the norms about taking turns, the rules of a game, or how to shoot a basket. As children grow into teenagers, this process continues. Peer groups are important to adolescents in a new way, as they begin to develop an identity separate from their parents and exert independence. Additionally, peer groups provide their own opportunities for socialization since kids usually engage in different types of activities with their peers than they do with their families. Peer groups provide adolescents’ first major socialization experience outside the realm of their families. Interestingly, studies have shown that although friendships rank high in adolescents’ priorities, this is balanced by parental influence.

Institutional Agents

The social institutions of our culture also inform our socialization. Formal institutions—like schools, workplaces, and the government—teach people how to behave in and navigate these systems. Other institutions, like the media, contribute to socialization by inundating us with messages about norms and expectations.

Most U.S. children spend about seven hours a day, 180 days a year, in school, which makes it hard to deny the importance school has on their socialization (U.S. Department of Education 2004). Students are not in school only to study math, reading, science, and other subjects—the manifest function of this system. Schools also serve a latent function in society by socializing children into behaviors like practicing teamwork, following a schedule, and using textbooks.

School and classroom rituals, led by teachers serving as role models and leaders, regularly reinforce what society expects from children. Sociologists describe this aspect of schools as the hidden curriculum , the informal teaching done by schools.

For example, in the United States, schools have built a sense of competition into the way grades are awarded and the way teachers evaluate students (Bowles and Gintis 1976). When children participate in a relay race or a math contest, they learn there are winners and losers in society. When children are required to work together on a project, they practice teamwork with other people in cooperative situations. The hidden curriculum prepares children for the adult world. Children learn how to deal with bureaucracy, rules, expectations, waiting their turn, and sitting still for hours during the day. Schools in different cultures socialize children differently in order to prepare them to function well in those cultures. The latent functions of teamwork and dealing with bureaucracy are features of U.S. culture.

Schools also socialize children by teaching them about citizenship and national pride. In the United States, children are taught to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Most districts require classes about U.S. history and geography. As academic understanding of history evolves, textbooks in the United States have been scrutinized and revised to update attitudes toward other cultures as well as perspectives on historical events; thus, children are socialized to a different national or world history than earlier textbooks may have done. For example, information about the mistreatment of African Americans and Native American Indians more accurately reflects those events than in textbooks of the past.

Big Picture

Controversial textbooks.

On August 13, 2001, twenty South Korean men gathered in Seoul. Each chopped off one of his own fingers because of textbooks. These men took drastic measures to protest eight middle school textbooks approved by Tokyo for use in Japanese middle schools. According to the Korean government (and other East Asian nations), the textbooks glossed over negative events in Japan’s history at the expense of other Asian countries.

In the early 1900s, Japan was one of Asia’s more aggressive nations. For instance, it held Korea as a colony between 1910 and 1945. Today, Koreans argue that the Japanese are whitewashing that colonial history through these textbooks. One major criticism is that they do not mention that, during World War II, the Japanese forced Korean women into sexual slavery. The textbooks describe the women as having been “drafted” to work, a euphemism that downplays the brutality of what actually occurred. Some Japanese textbooks dismiss an important Korean independence demonstration in 1919 as a “riot.” In reality, Japanese soldiers attacked peaceful demonstrators, leaving roughly 6,000 dead and 15,000 wounded (Crampton 2002).

The protest affirms that textbooks are a significant tool of socialization in state-run education systems.

The Workplace

Just as children spend much of their day at school, many U.S. adults at some point invest a significant amount of time at a place of employment. Although socialized into their culture since birth, workers require new socialization into a workplace, in terms of both material culture (such as how to operate the copy machine) and nonmaterial culture (such as whether it’s okay to speak directly to the boss or how to share the refrigerator). In the chapter introduction, Noel did not fully embrace the culture of their new company. Importantly, the obligation of such socialization is not simply on the worker: Organizational behavior and other business experts place responsibility on companies; organizations must have strong onboarding and socialization programs in order to build satisfaction, productivity, and workplace retention (Cebollero 2019).

Different jobs require different types of socialization. In the past, many people worked a single job until retirement. Today, the trend is to switch jobs at least once a decade. Between the ages of eighteen and forty-six, the average Baby Boomer of the younger set held 11.3 different jobs (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014). This means that people must become socialized to, and socialized by, a variety of work environments.

While some religions are informal institutions, here we focus on practices followed by formal institutions. Religion is an important avenue of socialization for many people. The United States is full of synagogues, temples, churches, mosques, and similar religious communities where people gather to worship and learn. Like other institutions, these places teach participants how to interact with the religion’s material culture (like a mezuzah, a prayer rug, or a communion wafer). For some people, important ceremonies related to family structure—like marriage and birth—are connected to religious celebrations. Many religious institutions also uphold gender norms and contribute to their enforcement through socialization. From ceremonial rites of passage that reinforce the family unit to power dynamics that reinforce gender roles, organized religion fosters a shared set of socialized values that are passed on through society.

Although we do not think about it, many of the rites of passage people go through today are based on age norms established by the government. To be defined as an “adult” usually means being eighteen years old, the age at which a person becomes legally responsible for him- or herself. And sixty-five years old is the start of “old age” since most people become eligible for senior benefits at that point.

Each time we embark on one of these new categories—senior, adult, taxpayer—we must be socialized into our new role. Seniors must learn the ropes of Medicare, Social Security benefits, and senior shopping discounts. When U.S. males turn eighteen, they must register with the Selective Service System within thirty days to be entered into a database for possible military service. These government dictates mark the points at which we require socialization into a new category.

Mass media distribute impersonal information to a wide audience, via television, newspapers, radio, and the Internet. With the average person spending over four hours a day in front of the television (and children averaging even more screen time), media greatly influences social norms (Roberts, Foehr, and Rideout 2005). People learn about objects of material culture (like new technology and transportation options), as well as nonmaterial culture—what is true (beliefs), what is important (values), and what is expected (norms).

Sociology in the Real World

Girls and movies.

Movies aimed at young people have featured a host of girls and women leads. Snow White , Cinderella , and Sleeping Beauty gave way to The Little Mermaid , Beauty and the Beast, and Mulan . In many of those cases, if the character is not a princess to begin with, she typically ends the movie by marrying a prince or, in the case of Mulan, a military general. Although not all “princesses” in Disney movies play a passive role in their lives, they typically find themselves needing to be rescued by a man, and the happy ending they all search for includes marriage.

Alongside this prevalence of princesses, many parents are expressing concern about the culture of princesses that Disney has created. Peggy Orenstein addresses this problem in her popular book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter . Orenstein wonders why every little girl is expected to be a “princess” and why pink has become an all-consuming obsession for many young girls. Another mother wondered what she did wrong when her three-year-old daughter refused to do “nonprincessy” things, including running and jumping. The effects of this princess culture can have negative consequences for girls throughout life. An early emphasis on beauty can lead to reduced interest in math and science among girls, as well as avoiding educational scenarios that are "typically feminine" (Coyne 2016).

Others acknowledge these issues, but find princess movies and "princess culture" less alarming. Some remind concerned parents that children have an array of media and activities around them, and the children may be happy wearing their princess outfit while digging for worms or going to hockey practice, which run counter to feminine stereotypes (Wagner 2019). Others indicate that rather than disallowing princess movies and merchandise, engaging with the children as they enjoy them might be more effective. And many people acknowledge that girls and women are often currently portrayed differently than they were in years past.

Disney seems to have gotten the message about the concerns. Its 2009 Tiana and the Frog was specifically billed as "a princess movie for people who don't like princess movies," and features a talented chef and business owner—who didn't need a man to rescue her—as its main character. Brave 's Merida and the title character in Moana seem to go out of their way to separate themselves from traditional princesses, and undertake great acts of bravery to help others. Frozen focuses on sisterly love rather than romantic love. And though she was never meant to be a princess, Star Wars ' Rey was the go-to girls Halloween costume for years after she was introduced in the movies.

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Religion, Identity, Socialization, and Well-Being

• First Online: 13 July 2022

Cite this chapter

• Preeti Kapur 4 ,
• Girishwar Misra 5 &
• Nitin K. Verma 6  

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Life involves a series of negotiations between alternative choices, a variety of stresses and strains, management of relationships, striking a balance between personal and social needs and demands. It is often punctuated by a series of religious engagements across the life span. The period of transition from adolescence to young adulthood is viewed as very critical in many religions. The agents of socialization play a crucial role in the acquisition and maintenance of religious beliefs and behaviors. On the other hand, cognitive maturation allows the acceptance and transmission of religious values, customs, and traditions. Once the foundation is laid down, maintaining the religious beliefs and practices continues during the subsequent phases of life. The religious beliefs and practices, in turn, construct and maintain self and identity, with different pathways for men and women, giving shape to a variety of coping strategies. Developmental research tends to suggest potential relationships between self-construal, religious identity, and well-being.

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Kapur, P., Misra, G., K. Verma, N. (2022). Religion, Identity, Socialization, and Well-Being. In: Psychological Perspectives on Identity, Religion and Well-Being. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2844-4_2

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Agents of Socialization

• Learn the agents of socialization and then general order they typically occur in.
• Understand how we are socialized through formal institutions like schools, workplaces, and the government

Socialization helps people learn to function successfully in their social worlds. How does the process of socialization occur? How do we learn to use the objects of our society’s material culture? How do we come to adopt the beliefs, values, and norms that represent its nonmaterial culture? This learning takes place through interaction with various agents of socialization, like peer groups and families, plus both formal and informal social institutions.

Socialization Agents

Socialization agents are a combination of social groups and social institutions that provide the first experiences of socialization . Families, early education, peer groups, the workplace, religion, government, and media all communicate expectations and reinforce norms. People first learn to use the tangible objects of material culture in these settings, as well as being introduced to the beliefs and values of society.

Family is the first agent of socialization . Mothers and fathers, siblings and grandparents, plus members of an extended family, all teach a child what he or she needs to know. Familes, of course, come in all sorts of formations. Whether the young child is living with a biological parent, adopted by their parents, or exclusively raised by a sibling or a grandparent, this unit of family is what socializes the young child to the world first.

For example, they show the child how to use objects (such as clothes, computers, eating utensils, books, bikes); how to relate to others (some as “family,” others as “friends,” still others as “strangers” or “teachers” or “neighbors”); and how the world works (what is “real” and what is “imagined”). As you are aware, either from your own experience as a child or from your role in helping to raise one, socialization includes teaching and learning about an unending array of objects and ideas.

The particular values of the family unit are central to the socialization process. If one child is raised in a family where discussion of connections to people from all races, religions, and ethnicities is both valued and practiced, this child is understanding multi-culturalism as a necessary asset in society. Conversely, a child who is raised our discussions and behaviors that explicitly favor their racial or religious group over others, the child learns that multi-culturalism is a problem to be avoided. These two children could be sitting next to each other in the same preschool classroom.

Keep in mind, however, that families do not socialize children in a vacuum. Many social factors affect the way a family raises its children. For example, we can use sociological imagination to recognize that individual behaviors are affected by the historical period in which they take place. Sixty years ago, it would not have been considered especially strict for a father to hit his son with a wooden spoon or a belt if he misbehaved, but today that same action might be considered child abuse.

Sociologists recognize that race, social class, religion, and other societal factors play an important role in socialization. For example, poor families usually emphasize obedience and conformity when raising their children, while wealthy families emphasize judgment and creativity (National Opinion Research Center 2008). This may occur because working-class parents have less education and more repetitive-task jobs for which it is helpful to be able to follow rules and conform. Wealthy parents tend to have better educations and often work in managerial positions or careers that require creative problem solving, so they teach their children behaviors that are beneficial in these positions. This means children are effectively socialized and raised to take the types of jobs their parents already have, thus reproducing the class system (Kohn 1977). Likewise, children are socialized to abide by gender norms, perceptions of race, and class-related behaviors.

In Sweden, for instance, stay-at-home fathers are an accepted part of the social landscape. A government policy provides subsidized time off work—480 days for families with newborns—with the option of the paid leave being shared between mothers and fathers. As one stay-at-home dad says, being home to take care of his baby son “is a real fatherly thing to do. I think that’s very masculine” (Associated Press 2011). Close to 90 percent of Swedish fathers use their paternity leave (about 340,000 dads); on average they take seven weeks per birth (The Economist, 2014). How do U.S. policies—and our society’s expected gender roles—compare? How will Swedish children raised this way be socialized to parental gender norms? How might that be different from parental gender norms in the United States?

First School Experience

The first ‘school’ experience for young children, whether it be day care or pre-school or kindergarten, generally serves as  the second socialization agent for young children.  Most U.S. children spend about seven hours a day, 180 days a year, in school, which makes it hard to deny the importance school has on their socialization (U.S. Department of Education 2004). Students are not in school only to study math, reading, science, and other subjects—the manifest function of this system. Schools also serve a latent function in society by socializing children into behaviors like practicing teamwork, following a schedule, and using textbooks.

School and classroom rituals, led by teachers serving as role models and leaders, regularly reinforce what society expects from children. Sociologists describe this aspect of schools as the hidden curriculum , the informal teaching done by schools.

For example, in the United States, schools have built a sense of competition into the way grades are awarded and the way teachers evaluate students (Bowles and Gintis 1976). When children participate in a relay race or a math contest, they learn there are winners and losers in society. When children are required to work together on a project, they practice teamwork with other people in cooperative situations. The hidden curriculum prepares children for the adult world. Children learn how to deal with bureaucracy, rules, expectations, waiting their turn, and sitting still for hours during the day. Schools in different cultures socialize children differently in order to prepare them to function well in those cultures. The latent functions of teamwork and dealing with bureaucracy are features of U.S. culture.

Schools also socialize children by teaching them about citizenship and national pride. In the United States, children are taught to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Most districts require classes about U.S. history and geography. As the academic understanding of history evolves, textbooks in the United States have been scrutinized and revised to update attitudes toward other cultures as well as perspectives on historical events; thus, children are socialized to a different national or world history than earlier textbooks may have done. For example, information about the mistreatment of African Americans and Native American Indians more accurately reflects

On August 13, 2001, twenty South Korean men gathered in Seoul. Each chopped off one of his own fingers because of textbooks. These men took drastic measures to protest eight middle school textbooks approved by Tokyo for use in Japanese middle schools. According to the Korean government (and other East Asian nations), the textbooks glossed over negative events in Japan’s history at the expense of other Asian countries.

In the early 1900s, Japan was one of Asia’s more aggressive nations. For instance, it held Korea as a colony between 1910 and 1945. Today, Koreans argue that the Japanese are whitewashing that colonial history through these textbooks. One major criticism is that they do not mention that, during World War II, the Japanese forced Korean women into sexual slavery. The textbooks describe the women as having been “drafted” to work, a euphemism that downplays the brutality of what actually occurred. Some Japanese textbooks dismiss an important Korean independence demonstration in 1919 as a “riot.” In reality, Japanese soldiers attacked peaceful demonstrators, leaving roughly 6,000 dead and 15,000 wounded (Crampton 2002).

Although it may seem extreme that people are so enraged about how events are described in a textbook that they would resort to dismemberment, the protest affirms that textbooks are a significant tool of socialization in state-run education systems.

Peer Groups

A peer group is made up of people who are similar in age and social status and who share interests. Peer group socialization begins in the earliest years, such as when kids on a playground teach younger children the norms about taking turns, the rules of a game, or how to shoot a basket. As children grow into teenagers, this process continues. Peer groups are important to adolescents in a new way, as they begin to develop an identity separate from their parents and exert independence. Additionally, peer groups provide their own opportunities for socialization since kids usually engage in different types of activities with their peers than they do with their families. Peer groups provide adolescents’ first major socialization experience outside the realm of their families. Interestingly, studies have shown that although friendships rank high in adolescents’ priorities, this is balanced by parental influence.

The Workplace

Just as children spend much of their day at school, many U.S. adults at some point invest a significant amount of time at a place of employment. Although socialized into their culture since birth, workers require new socialization into a workplace, in terms of both material culture (such as how to operate the copy machine) and nonmaterial culture (such as whether it’s okay to speak directly to the boss or how to share the refrigerator).

Different jobs require different types of socialization. In the past, many people worked a single job until retirement. Today, the trend is to switch jobs at least once a decade. Between the ages of eighteen and forty-six, the average baby boomer of the younger set held 11.3 different jobs (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014). This means that people must become socialized to, and socialized by, a variety of work environments. In the past dressing professionally meant wearing dress clothes to help communicate your feelings of respect and importance about the work. Today, in many tech companies dressing in such a way is off-putting. Many startups prefer that their workers wear their ‘everyday’ more casual clothes, bring pets to work, and ideally, blur the line between when they are ‘on’ and work and when they are ‘away’ from work.

While some religions are informal institutions, here we focus on practices followed by formal institutions. Religion is an important avenue of socialization for many people. The United States is full of synagogues, temples, churches, mosques, and similar religious communities where people gather to worship and learn. Like other institutions, these places teach participants how to interact with the religion’s material culture (like a mezuzah, a prayer rug, or a communion wafer). For some people, important ceremonies related to family structure—like marriage and birth—are connected to religious celebrations. Many religious institutions also uphold gender norms and contribute to their enforcement through socialization. From ceremonial rites of passage that reinforce the family unit to power dynamics that reinforce gender roles, organized religion fosters a shared set of socialized values that are passed on through society.

Although we do not think about it, many of the rites of passage people go through today are based on age norms established by the government. Individual governments provide facets of socialization for both individuals and groups.  To be defined as an “adult” usually means being eighteen years old, the age at which a person becomes legally responsible for him- or herself. And sixty-five years old is the start of “old age” since most people become eligible for senior benefits at that point.

Each time we embark on one of these new categories—senior, adult, taxpayer—we must be socialized into our new role. Seniors must learn the ropes of Medicare, Social Security benefits, and senior shopping discounts. When U.S. males turn eighteen, they must register with the Selective Service System within thirty days to be entered into a database for possible military service. These government dictates mark the points at which we require socialization into a new category.

Mass media distribute impersonal information to a wide audience, via television, newspapers, radio, and the Internet. Media contributes to socialization by inundating us with messages about norms and expectations. With the average person spending over four hours a day in front of the television (and children averaging even more screen time), media greatly influences social norms (Roberts, Foehr, and Rideout 2005). People learn about objects of material culture (like new technology and transportation options), as well as nonmaterial culture—what is true (beliefs), what is important (values), and what is expected (norms).

Pixar is one of the largest producers of children’s movies in the world and has released large box office draws, such as Toy Story , Cars , The Incredibles , and Up . What Pixar has never before produced is a movie with a female lead role. This changed with Pixar’s newest movie Brave , which was released in 2012. Before Brave , women in Pixar served as supporting characters and love interests. In Up , for example, the only human female character dies within the first ten minutes of the film. For the millions of girls watching Pixar films, there are few strong characters or roles for them to relate to. If they do not see possible versions of themselves, they may come to view women as secondary to the lives of men.

The animated films of Pixar’s parent company, Disney, have many female lead roles. Disney is well known for films with female leads, such as Snow White , Cinderella , The Little Mermaid , and Mulan . Many of Disney’s movies star a female, and she is nearly always a princess figure. If she is not a princess to begin with, she typically ends the movie by marrying a prince or, in the case of Mulan, a military general. Although not all “princesses” in Disney movies play a passive role in their lives, they typically find themselves needing to be rescued by a man, and the happy ending they all search for includes marriage.

Alongside this prevalence of princesses, many parents are expressing concern about the culture of princesses that Disney has created. Peggy Orenstein addresses this problem in her popular book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter . Orenstein wonders why every little girl is expected to be a “princess” and why pink has become an all-consuming obsession for many young girls. Another mother wondered what she did wrong when her three-year-old daughter refused to do “nonprincessy” things, including running and jumping. The effects of this princess culture can have negative consequences for girls throughout life. An early emphasis on beauty and sexiness can lead to eating disorders, low self-esteem, and risky sexual behavior among older girls.

Our direct interactions with social groups, like families and peers, teach us how others expect us to behave. Likewise, a society’s formal and informal institutions socialize its population. Schools, workplaces, and the media communicate and reinforce cultural norms and values.

Section Quiz

Associated Press. 2011. “Swedish Dads Swap Work for Child Care.” The Gainesville Sun , October 23. Retrieved January 12, 2012 ( http://www.gainesville.com/article/20111023/wire/111029834?template=printpicart ).

Barnes, Brooks. 2010. “Pixar Removes Its First Female Director.” The New York Times , December 20. Retrieved August 2, 2011 ( http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/first-woman-to-direct-a-pixar-film-is-instead-first-to-be-replaced/?ref=arts ).

Bowles, Samuel, and Herbert Gintis. 1976. Schooling in Capitalistic America: Educational Reforms and the Contradictions of Economic Life . New York: Basic Books.

Crampton, Thomas. 2002. “The Ongoing Battle over Japan’s Textbooks.” New York Times , February 12. Retrieved August 2, 2011 ( http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/12/news/12iht-rtexts_ed3_.html ).

Kohn, Melvin L. 1977. Class and Conformity: A Study in Values . Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press.

National Opinion Research Center. 2007. General Social Surveys, 1972–2006: Cumulative Codebook . Chicago: National Opinion Research Center.

O’Connor, Lydia. 2011. “The Princess Effect: Are Girls Too ‘Tangled’ in Disney’s Fantasy?” Annenberg Digital News , January 26. Retrieved August 2, 2011 ( http://www.neontommy.com/news/2011/01/princess-effect-are-girls-too-tangled-disneys-fantasy ).

Roberts, Donald F., Ulla G. Foehr, and Victoria Rideout. 2005. “Parents, Children, and Media: A Kaiser Family Foundation Survey.” The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Retrieved February 14, 2012 ( http://www.kff.org/entmedia/upload/7638.pdf ).

Rose, Steve. 2011. “Studio Ghibli: Leave the Boys Behind.” The Guardian , July 14. Retrieved August 2, 2011. ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jul/14/studio-ghibli-arrietty-heroines ).

“South Koreans Sever Fingers in Anti-Japan Protest.” 2001. The Telegraph . Retrieved January 31, 2012 ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1337272/South-Koreans-sever-fingers-in-anti-Japan-protest.html ).

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2014. “Number of Jobs Held, Labor Market Activity, and Earnings Growth Among the Youngest Baby Boomers.” September 10. Retrieved Oct. 27th, 2012 ( www.bls.gov/nls/nlsfaqs.htm ).

U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. 2004. “Average Length of School Year and Average Length of School Day, by Selected Characteristics: United States, 2003-04.” Private School Universe Survey (PSS) . Retrieved July 30, 2011 ( http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pss/tables/table_2004_06.asp ).

“Why Swedish Men take so much Paternity Leave.” 2014. The Economist . Retrieved Oct. 27th, 2014. (http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/07/economist-explains-15)

the informal teaching done in schools that socializes children to societal norms

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4.2 Explaining Socialization

Learning objective.

• Describe the theories of Cooley, Mead, Freud, Piaget, Kohlberg, Gilligan, and Erikson.

Because socialization is so important, scholars in various fields have tried to understand how and why it occurs, with different scholars looking at different aspects of the process. Their efforts mostly focus on infancy, childhood, and adolescence, which are the critical years for socialization, but some have also looked at how socialization continues through the life course. Let’s examine some of the major theories of socialization, which are summarized in Table 4.1 “Theory Snapshot” .

Table 4.1 Theory Snapshot

Sociological Explanations: The Development of the Self

One set of explanations, and the most sociological of those we discuss, looks at how the self , or one’s identity, self-concept, and self-image, develops. These explanations stress that we learn how to interact by first interacting with others and that we do so by using this interaction to gain an idea of who we are and what they expect of us.

Charles Horton Cooley

Among the first to advance this view was Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929), who said that by interacting with other people we gain an impression of how they perceive us. In effect, we “see” ourselves when we interact with other people, as if we are looking in a mirror when we are with them. Cooley (1902) developed his famous concept of the looking-glass self to summarize this process. Cooley said we first imagine how we appear to others and then imagine how they think of us and, more specifically, whether they are evaluating us positively or negatively. We then use these perceptions to develop judgments and feelings about ourselves, such as pride or embarrassment.

Sometimes errors occur in this complex process, as we may misperceive how others regard us and develop misguided judgments of our behavior and feelings. For example, you may have been in a situation where someone laughed at what you said, and you thought they were mocking you, when in fact they just thought you were being funny. Although you should have interpreted their laughter positively, you interpreted it negatively and probably felt stupid or embarrassed.

Charles Horton Cooley wrote that we gain an impression of ourselves by interacting with other people. By doing so, we “see” ourselves as if we are looking in a mirror when we are with them. Cooley developed his famous concept of the looking-glass self to summarize this process.

Helena Perez García – The Looking Glass – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Whether errors occur or not, the process Cooley described is especially critical during childhood and adolescence, when our self is still in a state of flux. Imagine how much better children on a sports team feel after being cheered for making a great play or how children in the school band feel after a standing ovation at the end of the band’s performance. If they feel better about themselves, they may do that much better next time. For better or worse, the reverse is also true. If children do poorly on the sports field or in a school performance and the applause they hoped for does not occur, they may feel dejected and worse about themselves and from frustration or anxiety perform worse the next time around.

Yet it is also true that the looking-glass-self process affects us throughout our lives. By the time we get out of late adolescence and into our early adult years, we have very much developed our conception of our self, yet this development is never complete. As young, middle-aged, or older adults, we continue to react to our perceptions of how others view us, and these perceptions influence our conception of our self, even if this influence is often less than was true in our younger years. Whether our social interaction is with friends, relatives, coworkers, supervisors, or even strangers, our self continues to change.

George Herbert Mead

Another scholar who discussed the development of the self was George Herbert Mead (1863–1931), a founder of the field of symbolic interactionism discussed in Chapter 1 “Sociology and the Sociological Perspective” . Mead’s (1934) main emphasis was on children’s playing, which he saw as central to their understanding of how people should interact. When they play, Mead said, children take the role of the other . This means they pretend to be other people in their play and in so doing learn what these other people expect of them. For example, when children play house and pretend to be their parents, they treat their dolls the way they think their parents treat them. In so doing, they get a better idea of how they are expected to behave. Another way of saying this is that they internalize the expectations other people have of them.

Younger children, said Mead, take the role of significant others , or the people, most typically parents and siblings, who have the most contact with them. Older children take on the roles of other people and learn society’s expectations as a whole. In so doing, they internalize the expectations of what Mead called the generalized other , or society itself.

This whole process, Mead wrote, involves several stages. In the imitation stage, infants can only imitate behavior without really understanding its purposes. If their parents rub their own bellies and laugh, 1-year-olds may do likewise. After they reach the age of 3, they are in the play stage. Here most of their play is by themselves or with only one or two other children, and much of it involves pretending to be other people: their parents, teachers, superheroes, television characters, and so forth. In this stage they begin taking the role of the other. Once they reach age 6 or 7, or roughly the time school begins, the games stage begins, and children start playing in team sports and games. The many players in these games perform many kinds of roles, and they must all learn to anticipate the actions of other members of their team. In so doing, they learn what is expected of the roles all team members are supposed to play and by extension begin to understand the roles society wants us to play, or to use Mead’s term, the expectations of the generalized other.

Mead felt that the self has two parts, the I and the me . The I is the creative, spontaneous part of the self, while the me is the more passive part of the self stemming from the internalized expectations of the larger society. These two parts are not at odds, he thought, but instead complement each other and thus enhance the individual’s contributions to society. Society needs creativity, but it also needs at least some minimum of conformity. The development of both these parts of the self is important not only for the individual but also for the society to which the individual belongs.

Social-Psychological Explanations: Personality and Cognitive and Moral Development

A second set of explanations is more psychological, as it focuses on the development of personality, cognitive ability, and morality.

Sigmund Freud and the Unconscious Personality

Whereas Cooley and Mead focused on interaction with others in explaining the development of the self, the great psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) focused on unconscious, biological forces that he felt shape individual personality. Freud (1933) thought that the personality consists of three parts: the id , ego , and superego . The id is the selfish part of the personality and consists of biological instincts that all babies have, including the need for food and, more generally, the demand for immediate gratification. As babies get older, they learn that not all their needs can be immediately satisfied and thus develop the ego, or the rational part of the personality. As children get older still, they internalize society’s norms and values and thus begin to develop their superego, which represents society’s conscience. If a child does not develop normally and the superego does not become strong enough, the individual is more at risk for being driven by the id to commit antisocial behavior.

Sigmund Freud believed that the personality consists of three parts: the id, ego, and superego. The development of these biological forces helps shape an individual’s personality.

Wikimedia Commons – public domain.

Freud’s basic view that an individual’s personality and behavior develop largely from within differs from sociology’s emphasis on the social environment. That is not to say his view is wrong, but it is to say that it neglects the many very important influences highlighted by sociologists.

Piaget and Cognitive Development

Children acquire a self and a personality but they also learn how to think and reason. How they acquire such cognitive development was the focus of research by Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1896–1980). Piaget (1954) thought that cognitive development occurs through four stages and that proper maturation of the brain and socialization were necessary for adequate development.

The first stage is the sensorimotor stage, in which infants cannot really think or reason and instead use their hearing, vision, and other senses to discover the world around them. The second stage is the preoperational stage, lasting from about age 2 to age 7, in which children begin to use symbols, especially words, to understand objects and simple ideas. The third stage is the concrete operational stage, lasting from about age 7 to age 11 or 12, in which children begin to think in terms of cause and effect but still do not understand underlying principles of fairness, justice, and related concepts. The fourth and final stage is the formal operational stage, which begins about the age of 12. Here children begin to think abstractly and use general principles to resolve various problems.

Recent research supports Piaget’s emphasis on the importance of the early years for children’s cognitive development. Scientists have found that brain activity develops rapidly in the earliest years of life. Stimulation from a child’s social environment enhances this development, while a lack of stimulation impairs it. Children whose parents or other caregivers routinely play with them and talk, sing, and read to them have much better neurological and cognitive development than other children (Riley, San Juan, Klinkner, & Ramminger, 2009). By providing a biological basis for the importance of human stimulation for children, this research underscores both the significance of interaction and the dangers of social isolation. For both biological and social reasons, socialization is not fully possible without extensive social interaction.

Kohlberg, Gilligan, and Moral Development

An important part of children’s reasoning is their ability to distinguish right from wrong and to decide on what is morally correct to do. Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg (1927–1987) said that children develop their ability to think and act morally through several stages. In the preconventional stage, young children equate what is morally right simply to what keeps them from getting punished. In the conventional stage, adolescents realize that their parents and society have rules that should be followed because they are morally right to follow, not just because disobeying them leads to punishment. At the postconventional stage, which occurs in late adolescence and early adulthood, individuals realize that higher moral standards may supersede those of their own society and even decide to disobey the law in the name of these higher standards. If people fail to reach at least the conventional stage, Kohlberg (1969) said, they do not develop a conscience and instead might well engage in harmful behavior if they think they will not be punished. Incomplete moral development, Kohlberg concluded, was a prime cause of antisocial behavior.

Carol Gilligan believes that girls take personal relationships into account during their moral development.

Vladimir Pustovit – Girls – CC BY 2.0.

One limitation of Kohlberg’s research was that he studied only boys. Do girls go through similar stages of moral development? Carol Gilligan (1982) concluded that they do not. Whereas boys tend to use formal rules to decide what is right or wrong, she wrote, girls tend to take personal relationships into account. If people break a rule because of some important personal need or because they are trying to help someone, then their behavior may not be wrong. Put another way, males tend to use impersonal, universalistic criteria for moral decision making, whereas females tend to use more individual, particularistic criteria.

An example from children’s play illustrates the difference between these two forms of moral reasoning. If boys are playing a sport, say basketball, and a player says he was fouled, they may disagree—sometimes heatedly—over how much contact occurred and whether it indeed was enough to be a foul. In contrast, girls in a similar situation may decide in the interest of having everyone get along to call the play a “do-over.”

Erikson and Identity Development

We noted earlier that the development of the self is not limited to childhood but instead continues throughout the life span. More generally, although socialization is most important during childhood and adolescence, it, too, continues throughout the life span. Psychologist Erik Erikson (1902–1990) explicitly recognized this central fact in his theory of identity development (Erikson, 1980). This sort of development, he said, encompasses eight stages of life across the life course. In the first four stages, occurring in succession from birth to age 12, children ideally learn trust, self-control, and independence and also learn how to do tasks whose complexity increases with their age. If all this development goes well, they develop a positive identity, or self-image.

The fifth stage occurs in adolescence and is especially critical, said Erikson, because teenagers often experience an identity crisis . This crisis occurs because adolescence is a transition between childhood and adulthood: adolescents are leaving childhood but have not yet achieved adulthood. As they try to work through all the complexities of adolescence, teenagers may become rebellious at times, but most eventually enter young adulthood with their identities mostly settled. Stages 6, 7, and 8 involve young adulthood, middle adulthood, and late adulthood, respectively. In each of these stages, people’s identity development is directly related to their family and work roles. In late adulthood, people reflect on their lives while trying to remain contributing members of society. Stage 8 can be a particularly troubling stage for many people, as they realize their lives are almost over.

Erikson’s research helped stimulate the further study of socialization past adolescence, and today the study of socialization during the years of adulthood is burgeoning. We return to adulthood in Chapter 4 “Socialization” , Section 4.4 “Socialization Through the Life Course” and address it again in the discussion of age and aging in Chapter 12 “Aging and the Elderly” .

Key Takeaways

• Cooley and Mead explained how one’s self-concept and self-image develop.
• Freud focused on the need to develop a proper balance among the id, ego, and superego.
• Piaget wrote that cognitive development among children and adolescents occurs from four stages of social interaction.
• Kohlberg wrote about stages of moral development and emphasized the importance of formal rules, while Gilligan emphasized that girls’ moral development takes into account personal relationships.
• Erikson’s theory of identity development encompasses eight stages, from infancy through old age.

For Your Review

• Select one of the theories of socialization in this section, and write about how it helps you to understand your own socialization.
• Gilligan emphasized that girls take social relationships into account in their moral development, while boys tend to stress the importance of formal rules. Do you agree with her argument? Why or why not?

Cooley, C. H. (1902). Social organization . New York, NY: Scribner’s.

Erikson, E. H. (1980). Identity and the life cycle . New York, NY: Norton.

Freud, S. (1933). New introductory lectures on psycho-analysis . New York, NY: Norton.

Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Kohlberg, L. (1969). States in the development of moral thought and action . New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Piaget, J. (1954). The construction of reality in the child . New York, NY: Basic Books.

Riley, D., San Juan, R. R., Klinkner, J., & Ramminger, A. (2009). Intellectual development: Connecting science and practice in early childhood settings . St. Paul, MN: Redleaf Press.

Sociology Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Sociological Perspectives on Religion

Learning objectives.

• Summarize the major functions of religion.
• Explain the views of religion held by the conflict perspective.
• Explain the views of religion held by the symbolic interactionist perspective.

Sociological perspectives on religion aim to understand the functions religion serves, the inequality and other problems it can reinforce and perpetuate, and the role it plays in our daily lives (Emerson, Monahan, & Mirola, 2011). Table 17.1 “Theory Snapshot” summarizes what these perspectives say.

Table 17.1 Theory Snapshot

The Functions of Religion

Much of the work of Émile Durkheim stressed the functions that religion serves for society regardless of how it is practiced or of what specific religious beliefs a society favors. Durkheim’s insights continue to influence sociological thinking today on the functions of religion.

First, religion gives meaning and purpose to life . Many things in life are difficult to understand. That was certainly true, as we have seen, in prehistoric times, but even in today’s highly scientific age, much of life and death remains a mystery, and religious faith and belief help many people make sense of the things science cannot tell us.

Second, religion reinforces social unity and stability . This was one of Durkheim’s most important insights. Religion strengthens social stability in at least two ways. First, it gives people a common set of beliefs and thus is an important agent of socialization (see Chapter 4 “Socialization” ). Second, the communal practice of religion, as in houses of worship, brings people together physically, facilitates their communication and other social interaction, and thus strengthens their social bonds.

The communal practice of religion in a house of worship brings people together and allows them to interact and communicate. In this way religion helps reinforce social unity and stability. This function of religion was one of Émile Durkheim’s most important insights.

Erin Rempel – Worship – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

A third function of religion is related to the one just discussed. Religion is an agent of social control and thus strengthens social order . Religion teaches people moral behavior and thus helps them learn how to be good members of society. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Ten Commandments are perhaps the most famous set of rules for moral behavior.

A fourth function of religion is greater psychological and physical well-being . Religious faith and practice can enhance psychological well-being by being a source of comfort to people in times of distress and by enhancing their social interaction with others in places of worship. Many studies find that people of all ages, not just the elderly, are happier and more satisfied with their lives if they are religious. Religiosity also apparently promotes better physical health, and some studies even find that religious people tend to live longer than those who are not religious (Moberg, 2008). We return to this function later.

A final function of religion is that it may motivate people to work for positive social change . Religion played a central role in the development of the Southern civil rights movement a few decades ago. Religious beliefs motivated Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights activists to risk their lives to desegregate the South. Black churches in the South also served as settings in which the civil rights movement held meetings, recruited new members, and raised money (Morris, 1984).

Religion, Inequality, and Conflict

Religion has all of these benefits, but, according to conflict theory, it can also reinforce and promote social inequality and social conflict. This view is partly inspired by the work of Karl Marx, who said that religion was the “opiate of the masses” (Marx, 1964). By this he meant that religion, like a drug, makes people happy with their existing conditions. Marx repeatedly stressed that workers needed to rise up and overthrow the bourgeoisie. To do so, he said, they needed first to recognize that their poverty stemmed from their oppression by the bourgeoisie. But people who are religious, he said, tend to view their poverty in religious terms. They think it is God’s will that they are poor, either because he is testing their faith in him or because they have violated his rules. Many people believe that if they endure their suffering, they will be rewarded in the afterlife. Their religious views lead them not to blame the capitalist class for their poverty and thus not to revolt. For these reasons, said Marx, religion leads the poor to accept their fate and helps maintain the existing system of social inequality.

As Chapter 11 “Gender and Gender Inequality” discussed, religion also promotes gender inequality by presenting negative stereotypes about women and by reinforcing traditional views about their subordination to men (Klassen, 2009). A declaration a decade ago by the Southern Baptist Convention that a wife should “submit herself graciously” to her husband’s leadership reflected traditional religious belief (Gundy-Volf, 1998).

As the Puritans’ persecution of non-Puritans illustrates, religion can also promote social conflict, and the history of the world shows that individual people and whole communities and nations are quite ready to persecute, kill, and go to war over religious differences. We see this today and in the recent past in central Europe, the Middle East, and Northern Ireland. Jews and other religious groups have been persecuted and killed since ancient times. Religion can be the source of social unity and cohesion, but over the centuries it also has led to persecution, torture, and wanton bloodshed.

News reports going back since the 1990s indicate a final problem that religion can cause, and that is sexual abuse, at least in the Catholic Church. As you undoubtedly have heard, an unknown number of children were sexually abused by Catholic priests and deacons in the United States, Canada, and many other nations going back at least to the 1960s. There is much evidence that the Church hierarchy did little or nothing to stop the abuse or to sanction the offenders who were committing it, and that they did not report it to law enforcement agencies. Various divisions of the Church have paid tens of millions of dollars to settle lawsuits. The numbers of priests, deacons, and children involved will almost certainly never be known, but it is estimated that at least 4,400 priests and deacons in the United States, or about 4% of all such officials, have been accused of sexual abuse, although fewer than 2,000 had the allegations against them proven (Terry & Smith, 2006). Given these estimates, the number of children who were abused probably runs into the thousands.

Symbolic Interactionism and Religion

While functional and conflict theories look at the macro aspects of religion and society, symbolic interactionism looks at the micro aspects. It examines the role that religion plays in our daily lives and the ways in which we interpret religious experiences. For example, it emphasizes that beliefs and practices are not sacred unless people regard them as such. Once we regard them as sacred, they take on special significance and give meaning to our lives. Symbolic interactionists study the ways in which people practice their faith and interact in houses of worship and other religious settings, and they study how and why religious faith and practice have positive consequences for individual psychological and physical well-being.

The cross, Star of David, and the crescent and star are symbols of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, respectively. The symbolic interactionist perspective emphasizes the ways in which individuals interpret their religious experiences and religious symbols.

zeevveez – Star of David Coexistence- 2 – CC BY 2.0.

Religious symbols indicate the value of the symbolic interactionist approach. A crescent moon and a star are just two shapes in the sky, but together they constitute the international symbol of Islam. A cross is merely two lines or bars in the shape of a “t,” but to tens of millions of Christians it is a symbol with deeply religious significance. A Star of David consists of two superimposed triangles in the shape of a six-pointed star, but to Jews around the world it is a sign of their religious faith and a reminder of their history of persecution.

Religious rituals and ceremonies also illustrate the symbolic interactionist approach. They can be deeply intense and can involve crying, laughing, screaming, trancelike conditions, a feeling of oneness with those around you, and other emotional and psychological states. For many people they can be transformative experiences, while for others they are not transformative but are deeply moving nonetheless.

Key Takeaways

• Religion ideally serves several functions. It gives meaning and purpose to life, reinforces social unity and stability, serves as an agent of social control, promotes psychological and physical well-being, and may motivate people to work for positive social change.
• On the other hand, religion may help keep poor people happy with their lot in life, promote traditional views about gender roles, and engender intolerance toward people whose religious faith differs from one’s own.
• The symbolic interactionist perspective emphasizes how religion affects the daily lives of individuals and how they interpret their religious experiences.

For Your Review

• Of the several functions of religion that were discussed, which function do you think is the most important? Why?
• Which of the three theoretical perspectives on religion makes the most sense to you? Explain your choice.

Emerson, M. O., Monahan, S. C., & Mirola, W. A. (2011). Religion matters: What sociology teaches us about religion in our world . Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Gundy-Volf, J. (1998, September–October). Neither biblical nor just: Southern Baptists and the subordination of women. Sojourners , 12–13.

Klassen, P. (Ed.). (2009). Women and religion . New York, NY: Routledge.

Marx, K. (1964). Karl Marx: Selected writings in sociology and social philosophy (T. B. Bottomore, Trans.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Moberg, D. O. (2008). Spirituality and aging: Research and implications. Journal of Religion, Spirituality & Aging, 20 , 95–134.

Morris, A. (1984). The origins of the civil rights movement: Black communities organizing for change . New York, NY: Free Press.

Terry, K., & Smith, M. L. (2006). The nature and scope of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests and deacons in the United States: Supplementary data analysis . Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Introduction to Sociology: Understanding and Changing the Social World Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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6 Religion and Political Socialization

Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz is a Ph.D. student in government at the University of Maryland. Her interests are in the areas of political behavior, elections, political socialization, and ethnic minority politics. Her work has appeared in several political science journals, including State Politics and Policy Quarterly, the American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics.

James G. Gimpel is a Professor of Government at the University of Maryland. His interests lie in the areas of political behavior, political socialization, and the political geography of American politics.

• Published: 02 January 2010
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This article argues that there is a poor understanding of the process by which citizens acquire political knowledge, political attitudes, and expectations concerning political activity. The article first reviews the history of political socialization as a field of study, and then describes the role that different agents have played in the socialization process. It discusses religious socialization and religion as an influence on both youth and adult political socialization. The article also provides a review of related literature that addresses how the church can serve as a socializing and mobilizing venue for politically quiescent religious groups.

Political socialization is the process by which citizens learn about political leaders, governmental institutions, and political processes, and acquire their political beliefs and practices. Socialization is developmental in nature. As individuals mature from youth to adulthood, and even during the latter, they continue to learn new political information. This ongoing process of learning serves to shape values, political commitments, and political skills, which in turn determine which policies, candidates, and political parties are favored. Put another way, the socialization process provides the conceptual tools needed to render judgment on political matters. The academic study of political socialization attempts to answer questions such as: Why do some citizens participate whereas others do not? Why do some have crystallized, well‐defined political views whereas others have ambivalent or apathetic perspectives? In short, how do individuals develop attitudes toward politics and government in the way that they do?

The research on political socialization in the American context has been based on an implicit normative foundation—namely, that positive socialization experiences communicate values conducive to the maintenance of democratic political institutions (Dennis 1968 ). Scholars assume that it is better to develop attitudes that favor political participation than to develop cynical, nonparticipatory ones; to create attitudes supportive of governmental institutions and processes than foster more negative ones; and to acquire knowledge about the political system and how it works rather than remain ignorant of its operation. Successful political socialization involves the formation of “informed” opinions on issues (Sears and Valentino 1997 ) as well as respect for the outcomes of the political process, especially when the latter are not in one's personal interest. Thus, overall, practices that further the goals of participation, knowledge, opinion holding, and support for the democratic process are deemed superior to practices that undermine these goals.

Our nation has become better educated during the past half century, with its population possessing more years of formal schooling with each successive decade. Yet, the higher educational attainment of today's young adults raises the quandary of why political participation rates have fallen during the past several decades (at least until its upsurge beginning in 2004), and why young people exhibit less political awareness and knowledge today than their parents and grandparents did at the same age (Nie, Junn, and Stehlik‐Barry 1996 ; Zukin 2000 ). In terms of normative expectations, it appears that many Americans have been “poorly socialized.”

The central argument of this chapter is that the process by which citizens acquire political knowledge, political attitudes, and expectations concerning political activity is poorly understood. This is the case despite a half century of political socialization research. In the first section of the chapter, we summarize the history of political socialization as a field of study and describe the role different agents have played in the socialization process. We also discuss religious socialization and religion as an influence on both youth and adult political socialization. In the second section, we review literature that specifically addresses how churches serve as socializing and mobilizing venues for otherwise politically quiescent religious groups. And, in the final section, we discuss possible avenues for future research.

The History of Socialization Research

Childhood political socialization.

By 1970, the subfield of political socialization was a “growth stock” within political science (Greenstein 1970 ). Between 1961 and 1968, the term political socialization went from being an occasional passing reference within the discipline to a major subfield of specialization that garnered as many section members as some of the more established areas of research in the discipline (Greenstein 1970 , p. 969). What attracted many scholars to the field was its effort to discern how the protest generation of the 1960s acquired their political attitudes, which seemed to conflict with those of their more conservative parents. As a result, leading investigators initiated studies on the causes and consequences of political learning and how it affected political activity and opinion later in life.

Much of early research was based on two major assumptions about the process of political socialization—namely, the primacy principle and the structuring principle (Searing, Schwartz, and Lind 1973 ). The primacy principle holds that what is learned early is retained the longest. And just what kinds of things are learned early? Generally, it is not specific attitudes about public policy or detailed information about institutional processes; children lack the cognitive capacity to acquire such things. Rather, conceptions of morality, broad orientations toward authority (e.g., toward authority figures, the law), and various identities (e.g., national identity, sexual identity, religious identity, partisan identity) are the phenomena learned at an early age.

The structuring principle holds that what is learned early is not only retained, but molds later learning as well—structuring the acquisition of later attitudes and behavior. Early orientations and identities serve as “filters” in terms of who and what is to be believed or trusted as well as who and what might be accordingly dismissed as untrustworthy. For example, a partisan identity acquired early in life serves as a filter in assessing candidates and issue positions as maturation takes place.

However, two alternative models of the effects of childhood socialization have subsequently emerged within the literature on political socialization: the persistence model and the impressionable years model (Sears and Levy 2003 , p. 78). The persistence model posits that residues of preadult learning persist throughout one's lifetime, perhaps becoming less susceptible to change over time. Thus, it is consistent with the contentions associated with the primary and structuring principles, but less strongly stated. On the other hand, the impressionable years model holds that one's political attitudes are particularly susceptible to influence during the years of late adolescence and early adulthood, and that such attitudes tend to persist thereafter. These two models are normally contrasted with the view that adults are more responsive to the events of their “times” (see our later discussion for a further description of these alternative models related to adult socialization).

Several major agents of socialization are typically identified as playing primary roles in learning about the political world during childhood: parents, schools, peers, and the mass media. In early socialization research, parents attracted the lion's share of the academic inquiry on how children acquire political interest and knowledge, as both the primacy and the structuring principles drew attention to parents (Beck 1977 , p. 122). Not only can parents largely determine what messages are communicated to the child early in life, but they are able to select or screen many of the other socializing agents that might affect their children. Thus, parents can work to ensure the messages communicated at home (whether about morality, orientations toward authority, or identity) are reinforced elsewhere (e.g., by selecting those churches or schools that convey similar messages). Likewise, parents can seek to prevent exposure to other socializing agents that communicate messages contrary to parental wishes (e.g., certain media programs). Not surprisingly, therefore, in his seminal review of the early socialization research, Hyman ( 1959 , p. 51) concluded: “Foremost among agencies of socialization into politics is the family.”

Nevertheless, as political socialization research unfolded, the findings did not consistently reveal the primacy of parents in the process. In the initial waves of their monumental multiwave panel study of parent–child pairings, Jennings and Niemi ( 1968 ) found that parents were not as central to the political development of children as scholars had generally assumed—at least for the particular generation of youth they were studying. For example, they found a surprisingly low correspondence between the parents' level of political interest and that of the child. And later studies revealed that, although parents appeared to transmit their party identification to their children, little else appeared to be passed on (Sears 1975 ; Jennings and Niemi 1981 ).

More recent research, however, has revealed that the relationship of political values between parent and child is generally strong among highly politicized parents, but not among those who are apolitical or only occasionally political (Beck and Jennings 1991 ; Jennings, Stoker, and Bowers 1999 ). Thus, the relatively weak associations previously found between child and parental attitudes may have been an artifact of a particular generation in which parent–child ties were strained by politically dealigning forces, rather than a generalization holding across all generations (Beck and Jennings 1991 , p. 759).

Among the early researchers on political socialization, Hess and Torney ( 1967 ) argued that schools were critical to political socialization—in part because children spent so much time there. Research on schools has focused on the effects of formal instruction and routines (e.g., civic courses), the effects of teachers, and the effects of extracurricular activities. With regard to the first, most early studies showed that the civics education curriculum did not contribute greatly to increased students' political awareness or participation among students, but simply reinforced community norms (e.g., Litt 1963 ; Langton and Jennings 1968 ). The classic study by Jennings and Niemi ( 1968 ; see also Langton and Jennings 1968 ) found that the civics curriculum increased the likelihood of participation among disadvantaged minority students, but that variation in school curricula had only a minimal effect on socialization. However, more recent studies suggest that students do gain political knowledge from the civics curriculum, although what they learn politically varies across student subgroups and is not limited to the civics curriculum (Galston 2001 ). For example, Conover and Searing ( 2000 ) examine the role of high schools in fostering civic understanding and behavior, and find that different elements of the school experience affect the civic consciousness and practice of young people. Niemi and Junn ( 1998 ) find that the recency and extent of civic coursework, along with the variety of courses studied, and the frequency of discussion of contemporary events in the classroom had significant effects on the acquisition of civic knowledge. Likewise, increased political knowledge varies by topic, with more knowledge shown in matters that have greater personal relevance, such as criminal and civil rights, than in those of less direct relevance (Niemi and Junn 1998 , p. 36 ). And what is learned politically is also shaped by the level of political heterogeneity evident within such learning environments (e.g., Gimpel, Lay, and Schuknecht 2003 ; Campbell 2006 ).

The strongest case for substantial teacher influence was made by Hess and Torney ( 1967 , p. 110) who argued: “The public school appears to be the most important and effective instrument of political socialization in the United States.” However, their study suffered from several important methodological problems (see, for example, Beck 1977 , p. 129). 1 And, when more methodologically sound studies were conducted, the results showed that teacher–student agreement was even lower than that of parents and students on all political orientations examined (Jennings, Ehman, and Niemi 1994 ). The effect of the school has been noted in other ways. Children who are involved in extracurricular activities are more likely to be involved in political activity later in life (Beck and Jennings 1982 ; McNeal 1995 ).

The findings from early studies on the influence of peers on the development of political attitudes were relatively unclear and, at times, contradictory (e.g., Campbell 1980 ; Tedin 1980 ; Rosenberg 1985 ). Langton ( 1967 ) contended that peer groups could inculcate and reinforce positive values, because heterogeneous class environments could “resocialize” lower status youngsters toward the “superior” civic values of upper income groups. Although later investigations did find that certain attributes may be more amenable to peer influence than others, political attitudes were usually not of sufficient importance to a respondent's peers to be subject to group pressures toward conformity (Campbell 1980 ). Although students often knew their parents' political attitudes, they were less likely to know those of their peers (Tedin 1980 , p. 148). And, according to reference group theory, on which investigations of peer influence were largely based (Festinger, Schacter, and Bach 1950 ), a group's influence only extends to particular domains of relevance.

With regard to the mass media as socializing agents, a number of studies have examined their influence on adolescents (Chaffee, Ward, and Tipton 1970 ; Conway, Stevens, and Smith 1975 ; Conway, Wyckoff, Feldbaum, and Ahern 1981 ; Garramone 1983 ; Garramone and Atkin 1986 ). During the 1950s and '60s, scholars largely ignored the role of the mass media as a socializing agent, but during the 1970s and '80s they saw a larger role for the news media—in fact, one scholar went so far as to term television “the new parent” (Hollander 1971 ). Given that the news media are a primary source of political information for adults (Zaller 1992 ), it is hardly surprising to learn that news consumption rises steadily as children age, and that children who are exposed to informational programming on television are more knowledgeable about politics and current events than those who are not (Chafee, Ward, and Tipton 1970 ; Garramone and Atkin 1986 ). However, although media may play a major role in cognitive learning about politics, there is little evidence beyond self‐reporting that they have a substantial direct influence in shaping political opinions and attitudes (Chaffee, Ward, and Tipton 1970 ). Evidence suggesting that media messages have “unmediated and substantive effects” are limited (Leighley 2004 , p. 169). Nevertheless, others have argued that media both molds and reinforces political position taking and participation (Ansolabehere and Iyengar 1995 ; Patterson 2002 ; Kellstedt 2003 ; Zukin, Keeter, Andolina, Jenkins, and Delli Carpini 2006 ). In addition, television exposure may alter the basis on which political evaluations are made; those who are more reliant on television than newspapers tend to base their evaluations on more affective reactions than on cognitive information, suggesting that media influence the very basis of political judgment itself (Leighley 2004 , p. 170).

The rise of the information economy, the rapid evolution of computer technology, and the explosion of the Internet are new and important socializing agents. In 1965, there were only two or three television channels from which to choose, and the six‐o'clock news was the only program available for all who chose to watch television at that time. By the early 1990s, it was common to have scores of channels from which to choose, making it easier for people to avoid news programs altogether (Zukin 2000 ). For many, network television has been replaced by cable channels and the personal computer, with its explosion of options on the Internet. Not only do presidential candidates have their own websites, they also “advertise” on sites like Facebook, a widely used site for teenagers.

Finally, unique historical events make a great deal of difference to the development of political values, offering “occasions for socialization” (Beck and Jennings 1991 ; Sears and Valentino 1997 ; Valentino and Sears 1998 ). Accordingly, each generation is conditioned by its own unique historical circumstances, resulting in political socialization that is generationally contingent. This is the case for several reasons. First, consider some of the major events that have happened between the mid 1970s and the first decade of the 21st century that might have shaped political learning: Watergate and the Nixon resignation; the Carter presidency, which was plagued by domestic economic and foreign policy crises; the Reagan–Bush era with its massive defense spending, strong economic growth, an ideological repudiation of much of the 40 previous years of domestic policy making, and the Iran–Contra scandal; the dramatic collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin wall, Tiananmen Square, and the emergence of the United States as the world's sole superpower; the first Gulf War; the Los Angeles riots of 1992; the moral scandal of the Clinton–Lewinsky affair; the shocking Columbine High School shootings; the events of 9/11; and, the current war in Iraq.

Second, not only are events and circumstances likely to vary by generation, but the meaning and significance of socialization agents can change over time as well. For example, family life has undergone dramatic change, particularly with the increase in single‐parent households. Having two parents in the household increases the likelihood that children will hear adult conversations, some of which may be about politics, therefore enhancing their exposure to political information (Niemi and Junn 1998 , p. 57).

All of this suggests that research on adolescents should be ongoing and that earlier work should be revisited regularly, because political learning may vary from one generation to the next as a result of changing events and circumstances. Nevertheless, because the field was not altogether successful in explaining gaping differences across generations, interest in childhood political socialization studies declined significantly by the mid 1980s. 2 Timeless general laws did not emerge (except that political socialization is time bound or subject to period effects). Instead, generational and subpopulation differences were discovered. Studies revealed so many inconsistent findings that researchers may have grown discouraged and abandoned the study. 3 Consequently, already by the early 1980s, some were willing to offer the study of political socialization its last rites (e.g., Cook 1985 ), and research in the subfield during the 1980s and '90s became primarily the province of a few prominent specialists (Jennings and Niemi 1981 ; Niemi and Junn 1998 ).

Unfortunately, those who turned away from its study did not realize that generational and subpopulation differences in socialization are among the main reasons why the process of political socialization is worth studying and continually in need of revisiting. Some research in the field was done more indirectly, largely under different guises such as political psychology or studies of contextual effects on political behavior, but only a few scholars openly admitted they were engaging in political socialization research—even if they were.

Childhood Religious Socialization

During the halcyon days of political socialization research, little attention was given to the study of the religious beliefs, affiliation, and behavior of youth (for exceptions, see Wuthnow 1976 ; Nelson and Provin 1980 ; Cornwall 1988 ). However, in recent years, research on religion among teens has simply exploded (for reviews of this research, see Regnerus, Smith, and Fritsch 2003 ; Smith 2003 ; Bartkowski 2007 ). 4 This research has revealed several basic and relatively consistent findings, some of which stand in contrast to prevailing assumptions about the religious character of young people today that posit an “increasing secularization of youth” (Gallup and Lindsay 1999 , p. 160).

The overwhelming proportion of youth today (85 percent) claim a denominational affiliation (e.g., Smith and Faris 2002 ; Smith and Denton 2005 ). Most such affiliations are linked to conventional forms of religious organization, with a little more than half claiming to be Protestant, and another one quarter affiliating with the Roman Catholic Church. Nor are teens generally alienated from or hostile toward organized religion (Smith 2003 ). Thus, any claims that contemporary youth are “spiritual seekers,” largely devoid of ties to organized forms of religion, appear to be incorrect (Smith and Denton 2005 ). In addition, there is evidence that youth who are religiously active do better on a variety of outcome variables related to academic achievement in school and noninvolvement in risky behaviors (e.g., drug and alcohol use, sexual promiscuity) than those who are not religiously engaged (Smith and Denton 2005 , pp. 221–223).

Moreover, most teens take their religion quite seriously. Data gathered through the Monitoring the Future study 5 revealed that, in 1996, approximately three in five high school seniors reported that religion was important in their lives, and nearly one in three claimed it was “very important”' (Smith and Faris 2002 ). On the other hand, less than one in six (15 percent) in the 1996 study stated that religion was “not important” to them (Smith and Faris 2002 ). Data subsequently gathered in 2002 through 2003 through the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR), revealed similar patterns—with more than half of the NSYR youth reporting that their faith was “extremely important” in shaping their daily lives, whereas less than 1 in 10 indicated that their faith was “not at all important” (Smith and Denton 2005 ).

American young people today not only report religious affiliations and relatively high levels of religious salience, but there is also evidence of at least modest levels of religious belief. 6 More than four out of five profess belief in God, and three in five report belief in angels and in divine miracles (Smith and Denton 2005 , chap. 2 ). Finally, there is evidence that young people are also relatively active religiously. In the 1996 wave of the Monitoring the Future study, nearly one in three high school students indicated that they attended religious services once per week or more often (Smith and Faris 2002 ), a somewhat lower level than that claimed among adults. However, such religious activity and salience varied by religious tradition, as those affiliated with more theologically orthodox traditions tended to attend religious services more frequently (Smith, Denton, Faris, and Regnerus 2002 ) and rate their faith as being more important to them (Smith 2003 ).

Religiously active youth are more likely to express moral compassion and commitment to justice than are nonreligious youth. In contrast to the latter, religiously active youth are more likely to volunteer, be civically engaged, and render service to their communities (Smith and Denton 2005 , pp. 226–232; Marcelo, Lopez, and Kirby 2007 ). Our own research from a large survey sample of youth indicated that what mattered most for racial and ethnic tolerance was the regularity of religious observance (Gimpel, Lay, and Schuknecht 2003 ). Regardless of religious tradition or denomination, those who attended church services every week were more tolerant than those who never attended or attended only occasionally. Even as early as adolescence, a significant division emerges between the religiously committed and the less committed—less so between mainline and evangelical Protestants, between Protestants and Catholics, or between Christians and non‐Christian traditions.

When examined over time, weekly attendance at worship services among high school seniors dropped from around 40 percent (1976–1981) to 31 percent in 1991, although it has remained fairly stable throughout the 1990s (Regnerus and Uecker 2006 , p. 218). However, reported attendance at religious services declines as one compares eighth graders with sophomores and sophomores with seniors (Smith et al. 2002, p. 605). On the other hand, little, if any, change has occurred between 1976 and 1996 in the general affect expressed by youth toward organized religion (Smith 2003 ). And, overall, seniors in high school “consistently agree with their parents' religious views, render a generally positive evaluation of religious institutions, express a desire for religious institutions to be influential in society, and have given or would give financially to religious organization provided they have the monetary means to do so” (Bartkowski 2007 , p. 503). In fact, in a unique 60-year‐long study of close to 200 Protestant and Catholic men and women born in the 1920s, 7 the data show that the “variation in levels of adolescent religious involvement in the 1930s and 1940s closely parallels studies of religiousness among adolescents today” (Dillon and Wink 2007 , p. 46 ).

Such religious continuity is also evident in a cross‐time replication study of college students enrolled in nine different evangelical colleges. Students enrolled in 1996 expressed the same level of religious beliefs and moral values, and they exhibited the same religious practices as students attending these same colleges in 1982 (Penning and Smidt 2002 ). What changed over time among these evangelical college students was not their religious characteristics, but their political characteristics. They became more Republican in political party identifications and more conservative in terms of ideological orientations (Penning and Smidt 2002 ). Thus, although political socialization may be largely generationally specific, with important changes transpiring over time, religious socialization may be less subject to such generational divergence. 8

Still, though there have been studies on political socialization and other studies on religious socialization, little work has been done to relate the two. Within traditional studies of political socialization, there have been only vague allusions to the role religion may play as a primary instrument of political information transmission among the young (Jennings and Niemi 1981 , pp. 182–184). As a result, questions such as how religious participation as an adolescent may affect their political participation and beliefs as they emerge into adulthood, when ties to a church may wane or lapse, remain unanswered. Moreover, aside from schools, churches are among the few places where youth interact with adults outside their family—in other words, other citizens who may expose them to information and ideas that may be absent, or poorly communicated, in their home (Smith and Denton 2005 , p. 69). How important, then, is participation in religious congregations during one's youth in the shaping of political attitudes and behavior of such adolescents when they reach adulthood? An answer to the question calls for longitudinal or cohort analysis.

Religion and Adult Political Socialization

Emphases on adult political socialization are generally based on one of two different models (Sears and Levy 2003 , p. 79). The first is the lifelong openness model. Here, individuals remain open throughout their lifetime to political influence and learning. The second is the life cycle model. This particular approach holds that people are typically attracted to certain kinds of attitudes at particular stages in their life cycle (e.g., liberalism in youth and conservatism in old age).

At least since The American Voter (Campbell, Converse, Miller, and Stokes 1960 ), political scientists have argued that the American public is largely uninformed and unsophisticated politically. Not only do many Americans lack a basic understanding of American government, they frequently fail to form clear and consistent opinions about political subjects. This situation continues to be true long after the seminal studies on the subject were published.

By the early 1990s, “political knowledge” and “political awareness” became central concepts for study, as scholars began to examine how those with greater awareness thought and behaved compared with those who were less aware and less informed (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1991 ; Zaller 1992 ; Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996 ; Converse 2000 ). As political scientists have learned more about the causes and consequences of possessing varying levels of information, researchers have again turned to examine how different agents of socialization contribute to what individuals learn about politics and how likely they are to become politically engaged later in life. This time around, however, researchers are expanding the scope of data collection and hypothesis testing beyond family and school‐related variables, incorporating measures of discussion within social networks, neighborhood contexts, as well as religious institutions, into a more complete understanding of the roots of political engagement (Verba, Schlozman, Brady, and Nie 1993 ; Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995 ; Gimpel, Lay, and Schuknecht 2003 ; Campbell 2006 ). In this more recent body of research, the school, community, and neighborhood contexts are considered essential elements of explanation, as they structure (1) exposure to the political beliefs and activities of others, (2) regulate the flow of political information, and (3) shape the character of interpersonal interaction (Huckfeldt and Sprague 1995 ; Anderson 1996 ; Alesina and La Ferrara 2000 ; Beck, Dalton, Greene, and Huckfeldt 2002 ; Gimpel, Lay, and Schuknecht 2003 ; Campbell 2006 ).

Major religious traditions express a striking degree of conformity of opinion among their congregants when it comes to political matters and political party preference, even after controlling for confounding factors such as race and socioeconomic status. For example, 68 percent of Jews identified themselves as Democrats in 2004, whereas only about one quarter of evangelical Protestants did so (Green 2007 , p. 88). A similar degree of homogeneity appears when examining ideological orientations and issue positions (Barker and Carman 2000 ; Mayer 2004 ; Green 2007 , p. 86; Wald and Calhoun‐Brown 2007 ), with differences between adherents and nonadherents greatly exacerbated on moral and cultural issues such as women's rights, gay marriage, and abortion (Wuthnow 1988 ; Hunter 1991 ; Davis and Robinson 1996 ; DiMaggio, Evans, and Bryson 1996 ; Layman 2001 ; Weisberg 2005 ). 9 In addition, strongly held religious beliefs and high levels of religious practice are associated with highly constrained political attitudes suggesting the importance of religious institutions as socializing agents.

Scholars have begun to examine the role of religion in the process of opinion formation and political participation, particularly among adults, because there is a growing recognition that adults continue to learn about politics and can be socialized and resocialized throughout the various stages of the life cycle and in a variety of institutions. For example, in recent years, religious beliefs have been cited as an important foundation for economic values (Barker and Carman 2000 ; Wald and Calhoun‐Brown 2007 ; Wilson, chapter 7 , this volume), foreign policy attitudes (Mayer 2004 ; Guth, Green, Kellstedt, and Smidt 2005 ; Guth, chapter 9 , this volume), and, most notably, views about “social” issues such as abortion, women's rights, prayer in school, homosexual unions, and sex education (Wuthnow 1988 ; Hunter 1991 ; Davis and Robinson 1996 ; Dimaggio, Evans, and Bryson 1996 ; Layman 2001 ; Wilcox and Norrander 2002 ; Weisberg 2005 ; Jelen, chapter 8 , this volume). In these matters, greater attention has been given to churches, religious media, religious interest groups, and clergy as agents of political socialization.

Churches as Agents of Political Socialization

If religious beliefs and practices have important political consequences, the primary socializing agent for these beliefs and practices is the local church. In the following section, we examine the role of the local church in this regard.

Sources of Theological Perspectives and Moral Judgments

Religious congregations are among the most important, active, and far‐reaching institutions in America (Putnam 2000 , p. 66). They are the source of theological and moral perspectives that guide judgments about public policy. Moral commitments undergird a wide variety of public policy goals (Tetlock 2000 , p. 247). These values, usually religiously informed, are expressed at the ballot box, ultimately directing political decision making on governmental matters such as the redistribution of wealth, equality, tolerance for deviance and the limits on individual freedom, the severity of criminal punishment, policies relating to family structure, gender roles, and the value of human life. Political differences that touch on competing understandings of right and wrong have come to constitute passionate divisions in contemporary politics.

With this in mind, the acquisition of specific values and value hierarchies has been described as the starting point for political socialization research (Feldman 2003 ). The question remains, however, as to what specific beliefs should be “the starting point.” Theological perspectives on God, life after death, the Bible, the historicity of Jesus Christ, and the origins of life are all possibilities. All are linked to a traditionalist–modernist divide (see chapter 1 , this volume) that could serve as the appropriate starting point for socialization research within congregations.

In addition, belief systems vary in terms of the appropriate role for both the church and the individual in society. For example, many churches focus on a moral reform agenda (see Harris 1994 ; Guth, Green, Smidt, Kellstedt, and Poloma 1997 ; Smidt, Crawford, Deckman, Gray, Hofrenning, Olson, Steiner, and Weston 2003 ; Smidt 2004 ), whereas others emphasize a social justice agenda. A variety of studies have analyzed the nature, frequency, and ability of clergy to speak their minds to their members and the public (Hadden 1969 ; Quinley 1974 ; Guth et a1. 1997 ; Olson 2000 ; Crawford and Olson 2001 ; Jelen 2001 ; Smidt 2004 ; Smith 2005 ). 10 Clergy may make political speeches from the pulpit to encourage their members to participate, and participate in a specific manner (Djupe and Gilbert 2002 ). However, the extent to which clergy address matters of public affairs varies based on differences in resources and opportunities (Guth et al. 1997 ; Olson 2000 ; Crawford and Olson   2001 ), and differences in terms of theology and ideology (Stark, Foster, Glock, and Quinley 1970 , 1971 ), although differences between evangelical and mainline Protestant clergy in addressing matters of public affairs have narrowed over time (Smidt 2004 , chap. 23).

Thus, those who voluntarily assemble for worship services and who observe and listen carefully are likely to receive certain messages about what things they should pay attention to, care about, and act upon—and often these cues are not ignored (Wald, Owen, and Hill 1988 , 1990 ; Olson and Crawford 2001 ). This is especially true when clergy address certain issues frequently and when they address issues that are salient to their congregations and to society (Djupe and Gilbert 2001 ).

Finally, clergy are generally perceived to be spiritual and moral leaders—people who are more likely than most of their congregants to be aware of, and concerned with, the moral dimensions of the problems found in the world around them. As a result, on some issues, congregation members may give more credence to a pastoral perspective than they would to an issue position heard or read in some news medium (Buddenbaum 2001 ). Thus, pastors may not only play a vital role in setting the political agenda of their congregants by the issues they choose to emphasize, but they may also serve to shape their congregants' views on such issues.

These explicit injunctions, as well as the more indirect cues given, can be particularly effective when clergy provide legitimate warrants for their positions (e.g., citing biblical support or historic confessional statements of the church that may be accepted as authoritative), and when those positions do not completely alienate congregation members from the dominant culture (Jelen 2001 ). Under such circumstances, these messages and cues are not usually ignored (Wald, Owen, and Hill 1988 , 1990 ; Penning and Smidt 2000 ; Fetzer 2001 ; Olson and Crawford 2001 ). Still, in many cases, pastors may be “preaching to the converted.” However, even under such circumstances, clergy can still influence their congregations by intensifying their attachments and reinforcing their preferences, which can in turn lead to activism (Jelen 2001 ). Much more research is needed on how different types of churches serve as sources of theological and social theological perspectives and moral judgments. Understanding the learning process will help us grasp why these beliefs have such robust relationships with political variables (Layman 2001 ).

Transmitter of Group Norms

Although religion as a font of values may provide a simple explanation for the widespread agreement among congregants on some political issues, it is less obvious why such clear policy congruence holds with regard to issues that are less easily understood in religious terms. Religious congregations and associations are important in that they are usually bound by strong affective ties and frequent patterns of social interaction. These qualities make them well suited to influence the transmission of group norms both to offspring and to new congregants, and they highlight the important difference between socialization that is assumed to generate from a “force of psychological consonance stemming directly from theology” (White 1968 , p. 25 ) and that which stems from social interaction.

As noted earlier, one of the most important ways in which political dispositions are affected by religion is through the local context that churches provide for the interaction of like‐minded individuals. In addition, congregations serve as “political communities” (Wald, Owen, and Hill 1988 ), reinforcing accepted ideas and practices and providing pressures for individuals who are ambivalent or undecided. Even if ministerial leadership does not espouse clearcut political positions from the pulpit, churches can still serve as strong socializing agents, providing members with information and skills relevant to political engagement and participation (Wald, Owen, and Hill 1988 ; Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995 ).

Religious houses of worship do this by providing opportunities for members to communicate political messages and to influence each other. The regular meeting of those who are relatively of one accord morally and religiously promotes further social interaction and communication. Moreover, departure from community norms can bring punishment. Congregations can discipline, shun, or “disfellowship” members who stray too far, although this power is more sharply constrained in contemporary times compared with earlier centuries. Particularly in “strict churches” (i.e., those that accentuate rule keeping and require members to devote substantial time to the church outside of Sunday services), members are less likely to have as extensive a social network outside of the church or to challenge the conventional political values held by members of the congregation (Finke and Stark 1992 ). As Laurence Iannacone ( 1994 ) notes, strict churches make nonchurch activity highly costly; but, in so doing, such institutions not only screen out weakly committed members, they also stimulate higher levels of involvement among those who remain.

Building Civic Skills

As politically socializing institutions, churches can directly promote engaged citizenship by providing regular attendees with opportunities to build the skills necessary to participate actively in politics (Verba, Scholzman, and Brady 1995 ). By participating in church activities beyond attendance at services, members learn skills that make them more likely to participate in politics because they perceive less cost in doing so, (in fact, it is less costly) and because they are prepared to apply organizational skills they have learned in church. Thus, developing members' skill sets is largely a by‐product of church participation. Religious traditions vary as to how likely they are to provide training opportunities for the skills essential for political participation, with hierarchically organized churches less likely to do so, whereas congregationally based churches are more likely to do so (Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995 ; but see Jones‐Correa and Leal 2001 ).

Certainly not all churches encourage their members to participate in political and civic activity. Many churches in the United States do not take an active role in the political process, and their leadership resists endorsing parties or candidates. “Activist” or “political churches,” on the other hand, see it as their mission to take an aggressive role in making the governmental system more just and enabling their congregants to participate. In these churches, congregants are in fact expected to participate and work actively to make the world a better place (Wald 2003 , p. 155). Politicized churches are also very important because political topics are discussed during worship services and worshipers receive clear political instructions and admonishments directly from their clergy (Calhoun‐Brown 1996 ; Djupe and Gilbert 2002 ).

Political scientists, as a rule, agree that the many citizens remain ignorant of basic aspects of government and politics, and are unsure about how their values align with their political preferences (Campbell et al. 1960 ; Converse 1964 ; Zaller 1992 ). Likewise, legions of Americans are unable to respond accurately to questions about how the parties or candidates are positioned on salient political topics. Recent research has found that it is only individuals who are aware of party polarization on issues that are able to make well‐reasoned decisions about which party they should belong to given their beliefs (Layman and Carsey 2002 ; Carsey and Layman 2006 ). Positions clearly enunciated from the pulpit, or in a Sunday school class, can assist those parishioners with limited information and interest in politics in making the connection between their moral values and current political debates. In addition, because clergy specifically encourage their members to vote, and some may publicly support particular candidates (although primarily off the pulpit), activist churches do motivate congregants to act on the information they receive (Guth et al. 1997 ; Djupe and Gilbert 2002 ). As noted earlier, Verba et al. ( 1995 ) found differences in the promotion of civic skills among different types of church structures. This finding is promising, but limited in terms of its application to the wide variety of churches in the United States, opening up numerous research opportunities for comparison of local churches, denominations, and religious traditions.

Loci for Direct Mobilization

Finally, churches serve as sites in which those who attend regularly may be mobilized directly to become politically engaged. Churches help to politicize and mobilize voters. Churches may sponsor voter registration drives, and pastors may encourage participation in campaigns (e.g., Harris 1999 ; Wielhouwer 2000 ; Olson, chapter 13 , this volume; Wielhouwer, chapter 14 , this volume).

Church attendance facilitates political contacting, because regular worshipers are more prone to engage in informal political discussions with friends, more likely to pick up a voter guide left in the church, or may even find themselves on some mailing list of an organization promoting a moral or social issue agenda (Guth, Kellstedt, Smidt, and Green 1998 , p. 180). The most common form of religious political contact is clergy encouraging their parishioners to register and vote, with about one half of black Protestants and evangelical Protestants reporting such urging in the 2004 election campaign (Guth, Kellstedt, Green, and Smidt 2006 , p. 162). The second most common form is the informal political discussion that takes place at church, also varying by religious tradition as well as by time—with evangelical Protestants the most likely to report such discussions and with the percentage doing so increasing monotonically over the 1996, 2000, and 2004 presidential election cycles (Guth et al. 2006 , p. 164).

Although press accounts have often highlighted the use of voter guides to provide cues to parishioners regarding how to vote, less than 10 percent in 2004 reported the presence of such guides at their houses of worship (Guth et al. 2006 , p. 165). This represents a fairly significant decline from that reported in 1996, when some 27 percent of churchgoers reported receiving some kind of information at church about candidates or parties (Kohut, Green, Keeter, and Toth 2000 ). Based on data from the American National Election Studies, Wilcox and Sigelman ( 2001 ) have also shown that the presence of such guides varies by religious tradition and that their presence has declined over time. Thus, during the past three presidential elections, it appears that political talk at church has increased, that voter guides are less common, and that the already small numbers of clergy endorsements remain relatively rare.

However, the role that churches play in political mobilization needs to be placed within a broader perspective. Given the relative weakness of party organizations in general and given the difficulty to locate and activate sympathetic voters, regular church attenders provide an inviting opportunity to contact voters who share relatively similar values and perspectives. The ability to reach such a substantial number of voters because they attend church on a regular basis is no small matter. Religious interest groups, in particular, may seek to target members of different churches based on attitude similarities among such church members. As a result, religious interest groups have become significant competitors (and sometime adjuncts) to party committees, candidate organizations, and traditional interest groups (Guth, Kellstedt, Green, and Smidt 2002 , p. 171). Nevertheless, members of religious houses of worship are more likely to be mobilized through conversations with their fellow congregational members. These “informal religious social networks” increase the likelihood of participation (McKenzie 2004 ) as well as shape political beliefs among its members (Wald, Owen, and Hill 1988 ).

In sum, churches have a significant role to play in the socialization process. They are the primary teachers of theological perspectives and moral attitudes, they transmit group norms, they build civic skills, and they provide a location for political mobilization. How churches do this and how successful they are in this regard are important avenues for future research.

African American Churches as Socializing Agents

Black churches have played an important role historically within the African American community. As a location for the political socialization of African Americans, the black church has been ideal—a safe place where communication about all sorts of topics could take place, including political communication. Political candidates, particularly Democrats, have recognized this as they regularly make appearances in black churches during the course of election campaigns. In addition, as a source of political mobilization, the church has been particularly important for African Americans, who as a group have less access to other institutions that socialize and recruit congregants for political action (Tate 1993 ; Harris   1994 ; Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995 ; Alex‐Assensoh and Assensoh 2001 ; Barnes 2005 ). Pastors in the black church have regularly enlisted their congregations to participate in political protests and demonstrations. Preachers have been the negotiators of accommodation with white society, agents of social change, and, at times, the “objects of messianic expectations of deliverance” (McTighe 2000 , p. 595).

Until recently, the careers of most prominent African American political leaders originated in the church, as ordained ministers. From Martin Luther King, Jr., to Jesse Jackson, Jr., to Al Sharpton, black political leaders have relied on the homogeneous community that the church provides as a power base and mobilizing force. Compared with other institutions, the church is arguably the fundamental unit of political mobilization within the African American community.

To be sure, the largely Protestant denominations and independent congregations present in African American communities are a different mix from those in neighborhoods with largely white residents. These denominations differ by name, doctrine, and style of worship, primarily because of the historical and cultural traditions of the communities that African American churches serve. Despite this, African Americans are consistently more liberal ideologically and aligned more fully with the Democratic Party in their economic views than are whites who belong to churches in the same denomination (Wald and Calhoun‐Brown 2007 ). This difference is attributed to the distinctive socioeconomic interests of African Americans as a group and to the fact that many of the major black congregations were founded in a direct response to racism (Lincoln and Mamiya 1990 ), with many of these congregations later serving as platforms for the civil rights movement.

Still, there are some important religious and political differences between different kinds of African American churches. For example, clergy from the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church are much more likely than pastors from the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) to approve the formation of action groups in their congregations to accomplish some social or political goal, to participate in a protest march, or to commit some act of civil disobedience. Similar differences were found between AME and COGIC clergy in terms of public policy positions and voting in presidential elections, with the COGIC pastors more conservative (see McDaniel 2004a , b ). Documenting differences in the socialization of congregants in a variety of African American churches is a fruitful avenue for future research.

Directions for Future Research

In this final section, we will explore several ideas for future research related to religion and political socialization. Rather than pointing to some very specific research questions, our discussion will focus on several broad topics that merit further scholarly analysis.

Religious and Political Socialization

First, there has been very little effort to relate religious and political socialization within childhood and early adolescence. Rather, one strand of research has basically focused on childhood and adolescent political socialization, whereas another strand has examined childhood and adolescent religious socialization. However, the extent to which the two facets reinforce each other or remain separated is not well understood. For example, when children and adolescents are socialized to accept religious authority, does such acceptance have a “spillover effect” and lead to the acceptance of political authority? Early political socialization research emphasized the president and the policeman as the points of contact where children became aware of a larger political world (e.g., Easton and Dennis 1969 ). Interestingly, much of the early images that children had of the president (e.g., he was benevolent and omnipotent) are attributes frequently associated with God within the Abrahamic faith traditions. Consequently, is socialization toward authority within the religious sphere linked to socialization in the political arena?

Likewise, we know that many religious faiths emphasize a separation between religious and political authority, so that remaining true to one's religious faith may entail the rejection of the legitimacy of authorities, or even structures of government. How do children and adolescents come to separate their religious and their political identity?

We also lack panel studies of children and adolescents that track children and adolescents into adulthood to ascertain whether the particular relationships evident between religion and political orientations and behavior during earlier years in life continue to be evident later in life. 11 Do the linkages between religious and political variables become stronger, weaker, or remain largely the same over time? And, if changes occur, what factors are associated with modifying such relationships?

Recent Immigrants and Civic Participation

New religions and greater religious diversity have arisen in the wake of the quickened pace of emigration to the United States since the late 1960s (Eck 2001 ). The presence of new immigrants provides an opportunity to study the socialization and outcomes among preadult immigrants, but also to analyze the resocialization of older adults (Jennings 2007 , p. 39 ). Recent immigrants are generally more religious here in the United States than they were in their native countries, possibly because religion facilitates the preservation of cultural identities (Smith 1978 ; Williams 1988 ).

Immigrants to the United States confront many disadvantages and obstacles to participation in the political process. They often come from countries with nonparticipatory political traditions, many of which are extremely oppressive and authoritarian. In addition, immigrants arrive without social networks to provide the information necessary to facilitate political learning and engagement. Others confront language barriers that place critical bits of political information out of their reach. In this regard, houses of worship frequently serve as “schools for living, where immigrants and others address many of the issues of living in a strange new land and acquire tools and resources, moral and spiritual as well as social and economic, for making their way in society” (Foley and Hoge 2007 , p. 22 ).

As yet, we know very little about the processes by which those affiliated with various nonwestern immigrant religions are incorporated socially and politically within American life. We continue to know very little about the power of nonwestern religious tenets on the politics of these religious minorities, particularly in terms of succeeding generations. For example, Islam does not recognize a separation of church and state, and so there is the whole issue of how first-, second-, and third‐generation Muslim immigrants to this country come to view the principle of separation of church and state within the context of American politics.

Reversing the Causal Direction

The socialization experience that churches offer their members is never a clean and neat product of religious doctrine alone. Theological systems are intricate, and typically some tenets are ignored whereas others are given great emphasis; in fact, much of the impact of doctrine may be mediated by the characteristics of a particular community that churches serve. A congregation serving a mixed‐race urban population may choose to emphasize social justice and Jesus' merciful ministry to the poor and oppressed, whereas a congregation within the same denomination serving a white suburban population may emphasize scriptural teachings against abortion, homosexuality, divorce, and sexual promiscuity.

The differences in message framing and moral emphasis within traditions pose a challenge to the dominant thrust of social scientific research on religion, which has favored running the arrow of causality from religious doctrine to political beliefs, explaining the latter in terms of the former. Churches and church leaders depend upon local populations for their financial well‐being. In settings of high mobility, many churches are in a fluid market for adherents, and must therefore present themselves in a favorable light, as local conditions may dictate. If they do not cater to the values and dispositions of local populations, they risk stagnation, or going under entirely. 12 Attending to the needs of the people in the pews may lead different congregations within the same denominational tradition to express rather different perspectives on political matters because the values of their worshipers may be dictating the content of preaching from the pulpit. If so, political differences between two congregations, just a few miles apart, will not disappear simply because the two churches share confessional tenets. Although it is unlikely that individuals pick congregations solely on the basis of their political orientations, it is conceivable that, within the same denomination or larger faith tradition, individuals may choose a particular congregation based first on consideration of their general theological or confessional perspectives, and then, within that context, select a congregation that is more congruent with their own political orientation. Where such phenomena occur, religion's influence as a socialization force may give way to local partisan and cultural influences, ceding its power as a force for individual and collective transformation. Examining this possibility will call for imaginative research designs that use a variety of techniques—lengthy periods of observation, content analysis of sermons and other types of teaching, in‐depth interviews with clergy, and surveys of congregations.

Of course, these broad arenas for research on religion and political socialization do not exhaust the possibilities for such investigation. There is clearly a need for continued research that examines the links between religion—in its various facets of expression—and political learning. Given that socialization is a process, this effort will likely test the skills that scholars in the various disciplines have to offer.

Beck ( 1977 , p. 128) notes that several methodological difficulties have hampered researchers in demonstrating the influence of schools in the political socialization process: (1) the fact that they are institutions, and not individuals, diminishes the appropriateness of measures of agreement frequently used to indicate parental influence; and (2) virtually all young adults are exposed to schools, “thus rendering the reliable statistical technique of comparing control and experimental groups inoperative.”

However, Jennings ( 2007 , p. 29 ) argues that “[i]t would be a mistake…to say that an interest in political socialization disappeared for any great length of time.” He does note that relatively few studies were published that focused on preadults between the mid 1970s and the early 1990s. By the 1990s, however, scholarly analysis of political socialization had clearly increased, although such attention “has focused on adolescents, young adults, and beyond” (Jennings 2007 , p. 30 ).

Increased difficulty in gaining access to public schools may also have been a contributing factor to the decline in socialization research.

This section draws heavily on a review of religious socialization by John Bartkowski ( 2007 ).

Monitoring the Future is an ongoing study of the attitudes, values, and behaviors of American secondary school students. Each year approximately 50,000 students in the 8th, 10th, and 12th grades are surveyed. See http://www.monitorthefuture.org for more information.

On the other hand, these more positive assessments of the religious lives of American teens are also coupled with other, less positive, findings. In particular, smost teens find it difficult to explain what they believe and what the implications of their beliefs are for their lives (Smith and Denton 2005 , p. 262).

The study of Dillon and Wink ( 2007 ) draws on a 60-year‐long study of nearly 200 mostly Protestant and Catholic men and women who were born in the 1920s but who were interviewed during their adolescence and then again each decade between the 1950s and the late 1990s.

However, Smith ( 2004 ) using National Opinion Research Center (NORC) GSS data compared those age 18 to 24 in 1997 with those of similar age in 1973 and those of similar age in 1985. Youth in the 1990s were more likely than their counterparts in the 1970s and 1980s to view the world with mistrust and cynicism. They were also more disconnected from society on a number of fronts: They were less likely to read a newspaper, attend church, vote for president, or identify with a political party than previously. In addition, they were less likely to believe people are trustworthy, helpful, or fair, and they were less likely to believe that humans are naturally good or that the world reflects God's goodness.

For example, almost 70 percent of Jewish respondents surveyed in 2004 said they supported legal recognition of gay marriages, but less than 10 percent of evangelical Protestants did so (Green 2007 , p. 80). The stands of members of different religious groups on the legal right to an abortion reveal a similar divide: Less than 10 percent of evangelical Protestants supported abortion on demand, whereas more than 50 percent of Jews did so (Green 2007 , p. 80).

The next four paragraphs draw heavily from the literature review provided by Smidt and Schaap (forthcoming).

Jennings ( 2007 , p. 38 ) notes that there are “two intriguing questions” about the influence of parents on socialization: (1) “how enduring is parental influence,” and (2) “are there differences in parental impact across generations?”

The success of megachurches in recent decades may be the result of effective attentiveness to market forces.

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Religious Socialization in America Essay

Over the years, American churches have experienced a lot of challenges. Cultural clash is among these challenges where it became hard to attract the immigrants into the churches. This was mostly due to the language barrier because the American churches preachers could only communicate in English and so the immigrants from other countries such as Spain and Mexico could not understand the language.

It was hard to find church leaders who had leadership skills to lead the masses. Also, there was not enough space to accommodate all the worshippers who attended church services. The American religious life started experiencing some changes starting from the year 1960. The American people also began experiencing some changes brought about by religious beliefs. This essay will try to explain factors that are influential in shaping the future of religion in America.

Research has shown that many Americans have no religious preference; they are confused as to which religion to follow and practice. The percentage of those with no religion is shown to increase sharply. For instance, in the year 1992, those without religion stood at 8 percent while last year (2013) the figure increased to 20 percent. Additionally, the black Americans are also believed to be more religious than the whites (Hout, Michael and Claude 4).

Many researchers have found out that religion is one of the main factors that contribute towards good behaviors among American teenagers. The process of shaping the behavior of youths in America should start from their early childhood. It should, therefore, be introduced in primary schools and kindergartens.

Parents are advised to make sure that their children comprehend the importance of religion and its impact on their life. This is because research has shown that religious teenagers are unlikely to engage in behaviors that are health-compromising such as smoking, drugs and committing suicide in a bid to avoid stress and hopelessness. Religion helps in guiding them on how to avoid all these during their adolescence stage where there are a lot of temptations (Smith 17).

Religion and health are believed to be related. The relationship between the two is accelerated by research programs conducted by researchers. It has been found out that religion can influence the outcomes of physical or mental health of individuals.

Religion offers education to people on how to regulate their lifestyle and health associated behaviors. It also helps in developing health beliefs and generating positive emotions. The American population should be informed about this relationship that will change their view towards religion (Ellison and Levin 700).

Media should be used to inform people about religion. More print journals should be published on the recent impacts of religion and its importance to the social status of Americans. This will help a big deal in the spread of religious activities. Media is one of the fastest modes of sending information and it has an effect on the wider population.

The sociology of religion should be printed on top-rated journals to generate interest among readers. They should publish their journals in various languages so as to help those who do not understand English get the information. These activities by the media will help in the distribution of religion because it is no doubt that in America religious beliefs are salient (Sherkat and Ellison 368).

Another factor that influences religious socialization is geographic mobility. Research has shown that the regional concentration of religious groups in one area has resulted in some behavioral characteristic patterns. People migrating to areas where there is less commitment to religion are believed to change their attitude towards religion.

African Americans from the rural south have strong faith in religion and are not easy to influence to change to nonreligious persons. In addition, it alters the religious affiliation such as joining other religious movements by changing the social ties of individuals. Emphasis should be on spreading the religious beliefs to all regions in America (Sherkat and Ellison 368).

Gender is another factor that is believed to have an effect on religion. Research shows that gender is historically viable; women as per the research are more religious than men. This is as a result of women being disadvantaged and lacking power in the community. Women are now looking for opportunities in religion believing that this will help them reduce their problems. This explains the increased number of women with religious conviction (Woodhead 58).

In conclusion, there are many factors that are influential in shaping the future of religion in America. These factors will either influence people to view religion negatively or positively. Some of these factors are family issues, health and well-being, politics, social life, media, and geographic mobility.

Religion is important because it helps us reduce family problems through avoiding bad politics, choosing good areas to establish a home and also socializing with good elements in society. Religious groups are advised to pass on the importance of religion to all people living in America in order to attract them into having a religious belief. This will help in shaping the future of religion in America.

Works Cited

Ellison, Christopher and Levin Jeffry. “The religion-health connection: Evidence, theory, and future directions.” Health Education and Behavior , 25.1 (1998):700-720. Print.

Hout, Michael and Claude Fischer. “Why more Americans have no religious preference: Politics and generations”, American Sociological Review , 67.1 (2002): 165-190. Print.

Sherkat, Darren and Ellison Christopher. “Recent Developments and current Controversies in the Sociology of Religion.” Annual Review of Sociology , 25.1 (1999):363-394. Print.

Smith, Christian. “Theorizing Religious Effects among American Adolescents.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion , 42.1 (2003): 17–30. Print.

Woodhead, Linda. Religion and Personal Life: Debating Ethics and Faith with Leading Thinkers and Public Figures . London: Darton Longman & Todd Ltd, 2003. Print.

• Age and the Agents of Socialization
• School as an Agent of Socialization
• Impact of Mass Media on Socialization
• Religious Observation of Societies
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• Religious Issues: Beliefs Definition
• Christianity Effect on Legal and Social Practices
• Religious Studies: Samuel Time
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4.1: Socialization and Culture

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• Erika Gutierrez, Janét Hund, Shaheen Johnson, Carlos Ramos, Lisette Rodriguez, & Joy Tsuhako
• Long Beach City College, Cerritos College, & Saddleback College via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative (OERI)

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Socialization is the process through which people are taught to be proficient members of a society. It describes the ways that people come to understand societal norms and expectations, to accept society’s beliefs, and to be aware of societal values. Socialization helps people learn to function successfully in their social worlds. How does the process of socialization occur? How do we come to adopt the beliefs, values, and norms that represent its nonmaterial culture? This learning takes place through interaction with various agents of socialization, like peer groups and families, plus both formal and informal social institutions.

Socialization is critical both to individuals and to the societies in which they live. It illustrates how completely intertwined human beings and their social worlds are. First, it is through teaching culture to new members that a society perpetuates itself. If new generations of a society don’t learn its way of life, it ceases to exist. Whatever is distinctive about a culture must be transmitted to those who join it in order for a society to survive.

Agents of Socialization

Social groups often provide the first experiences of socialization. Families, and later peer groups, communicate expectations and reinforce norms. People first learn to use the tangible objects of material culture in these settings, as well as being introduced to the beliefs and values of society.

Family is the first agent of socialization. Mothers and fathers, siblings and grandparents, plus members of an extended family, all teach a child what he or she needs to know. For example, they show the child how to use objects (such as clothes, computers, eating utensils, books, bikes); how to relate to others (some as “family,” others as “friends,” still others as “strangers” or “teachers” or “neighbors”); and how the world works (what is “real” and what is “imagined”). As you are aware, either from your own experience as a child or from your role in helping to raise one, socialization includes teaching and learning about an unending array of objects and ideas.

Sociologists recognize that race, social class, religion, and other societal factors play an important role in socialization. For example, poor families usually emphasize obedience and conformity when raising their children, while wealthy families emphasize judgment and creativity (National Opinion Research Center, 2008). This may occur because working-class parents have less education and more repetitive-task jobs for which it is helpful to be able to follow rules and conform. Wealthy parents tend to have better educations and often work in managerial positions or careers that require creative problem solving, so they teach their children behaviors that are beneficial in these positions. This means children are effectively socialized and raised to take the types of jobs their parents already have, thus reproducing the class system (Kohn, 1977). Likewise, children are socialized to abide by gender norms, perceptions of race, and class-related behaviors.

A peer group is made up of people who are similar in age and social status and who share interests. Peer group socialization begins in the earliest years, such as when kids on a playground teach younger children the norms about taking turns, the rules of a game, or how to shoot a basket. As children grow into teenagers, this process continues. Peer groups are important to adolescents in a new way, as they begin to develop an identity separate from their parents and exert independence. Additionally, peer groups provide their own opportunities for socialization since kids usually engage in different types of activities with their peers than they do with their families. Peer groups provide adolescents’ first major socialization experience outside the realm of their families. Interestingly, studies have shown that although friendships rank high in adolescents’ priorities, this is balanced by parental influence.

The social institutions of our culture also inform our socialization. Formal institutions—like schools, workplaces, and the government—teach people how to behave in and navigate these systems. Other institutions, like the media, contribute to socialization by inundating us with messages about norms and expectations.

School and classroom rituals, led by teachers serving as role models and leaders, regularly reinforce what society expects from children. Sociologists describe this aspect of schools as the hidden curriculum , the informal teaching done by schools.

For example, in the United States, schools have built a sense of competition into the way grades are awarded and the way teachers evaluate students (Bowles & Gintis, 1976). When children participate in a relay race or a math contest, they learn there are winners and losers in society. When children are required to work together on a project, they practice teamwork with other people in cooperative situations. The hidden curriculum prepares children for the adult world. Children learn how to deal with bureaucracy, rules, expectations, waiting their turn, and sitting still for hours during the day. Schools in different cultures socialize children differently in order to prepare them to function well in those cultures. The latent functions of teamwork and dealing with bureaucracy are features of U.S. culture.

Schools also socialize children by teaching them about citizenship and national pride. In the United States, children are taught to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Most districts require classes about U.S. history and geography. As academic understanding of history evolves, textbooks in the United States have been scrutinized and revised to update attitudes toward other cultures as well as perspectives on historical events; thus, children are socialized to a different national or world history than earlier textbooks may have done. For example, information about the mistreatment of African Americans and Native American Indians more accurately reflects those events than in textbooks of the past.

Religion is an important avenue of socialization for many people. The United States is full of synagogues, temples, churches, mosques, and similar religious communities where people gather to worship and learn. Like other institutions, these places teach participants how to interact with the religion’s material culture (like a mezuzah, a prayer rug, or a communion wafer). For some people, important ceremonies related to family structure—like marriage and birth—are connected to religious celebrations. Many religious institutions also uphold gender norms and contribute to their enforcement through socialization. From ceremonial rites of passage that reinforce the family unit to power dynamics that reinforce gender roles, organized religion fosters a shared set of socialized values that are passed on through society.

Mass media distribute impersonal information to a wide audience, via television, newspapers, radio, and the Internet. With the average person spending over four hours a day in front of the television (and children averaging even more screen time), media greatly influences social norms (Roberts, Foehr, & Rideout 2005). People learn about objects of material culture (like new technology and transportation options), as well as nonmaterial culture—what is true (beliefs), what is important (values), and what is expected (norms).

Socialization by Race and Ethnicity

Racial-ethnic socialization.

Racial-ethnic socialization is defined as the processes by which children acquire the behaviors, perceptions, values, and attitudes of an ethnic group, and come to see themselves and others as members of the group.

This section is licensed CC BY-SA. Attribution: Racial-Ethnic Socialization (Wikipedia) ( CC BY-SA 3.0 )

The previously stated agents of socialization such as parents, mass media, and peers are significant teachers of how children see their own race or ethnicity - as well as how they view other groups and individuals. None of us are born racist, ethnocentric, or culturally competent. Racism is a learned trait.

The American Psychological Association explains that racial socialization should be understood differently depending on the race of children:

Parents of Black children, along with parents of other ethnically underrepresented youth, are tasked with teaching their children how to navigate, and sometimes even survive, a society that may give messages that undermine parents’ efforts. Parents often must counteract messages their youth receive from broader society including the media, and the judicial, educational and health systems, to name a few. The way in which parents teach their youth how to navigate the often contradictory messages or teach them what it means to be Black is called racial socialization (Gaskin, 2015).

Though parents may tailor these messages to their children differently depending on a child's skin tone, gender, age, or sexual orientation, Gaskin (2015) identifies the following communication that parents may have with their children of color:

• Messages emphasizing pride in being Black or a person of color
• Warnings about racial inequalities
• Messages that de-emphasize the importance of race (sometimes called a “color-blind” approach) and instead may emphasize that hard work will ensure someone can overcome racism
• Mistrust of other ethnic groups
• Silence about race and racial issues

White parents are generally unlikely to discuss race or racism for that matter in any direct fashion with their white children, but of some white families do have these discussions. More frequently, the norm for many white children is learning color-blindness, which sociologists identify as a form or racism (discussed in this Chapter 4.4 ) or white silence. Additionally, white racial socialization tends to be a process by which white youth "learn what it means to be white in a society that currently values whiteness" (Michael & Bartoli, 2014). With their focus on racial socialization provided by schools, Michael & Bartoli (2014) explain that schools should be educating children on the following: understanding systemic racism, learning how anti-racist action is relevant to all, and understanding stereotypes and their counternarratives (stories that counter the stereotypes). Ultimately, this learning would align with critical race analysis (see critical race theory in Chapter 2.2 ).

As evidenced in Figure 4.1.1 below, many young white Americans were actively involved in the nationwide protests in the summer of 2020, in support of Black Lives Matter, representing a unique moment in U.S. history, a unique moment in the socialization of white Americans.

Cultural Hierarchies

Cultural distinctions make groups unique, but they also provide a social structure for creating and ranking cultures based on similarities or differences. A cultural group’s size and strength influences their power over a region, area, or other groups. Cultural power lends itself to social power that influences people’s lives by controlling the prevailing norms or rules and making individuals adhere to the dominant culture voluntarily or involuntarily.

Culture is not a direct reflection of the social world (Griswold, 2013). Humans mediate culture to define meaning and interpret the social world around them. As a result, dominant groups are able to manipulate, reproduce, and influence culture among the masses. Common culture found in society is actually the selective transmission of elite-dominated values (Parenti, 2006). This practice known as cultural hegemony suggests, culture is not autonomous, it is conditionally dictated, regulated, and controlled by dominant groups. The major forces shaping culture are in the power of elite-dominated interests which make limited and marginal adjustments to appear as though culture is changing in alignment with evolving social values (Parenti, 2006). The culturally dominating group often sets the standard for living and governs the distribution of resources.

Social and Cultural Capital

Social and cultural relationships have productive benefits in society. Research defines social capital as a form of economic (e.g., money and property) and cultural (e.g., norms, fellowship, trust) assets central to a social network (Putnam, 2000). The social networks people create and maintain with each other enable society to function. However, the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1972) found social capital produces and reproduces inequality when examining how people gain powerful positions through direct and indirect social connections. Social capital or a social network can help or hinder someone personally and socially. For example, strong and supportive social connections can facilitate job opportunities and promotions that are beneficial to the individual and their social network. Weak and unsupportive social ties can jeopardize employment or advancement that are harmful to the individual and social group as well. People make cultural objects meaningful (Griswold, 2013). Interactions and reasoning develop cultural perspectives and understanding. The “social mind” of groups process incoming signals influencing culture within the social structure including the social attributes and status of members in a society (Zerubavel, 1999). Language and symbols express a person’s position in society and the expectations associated with their status. For example, the clothes people wear or car they drive represents style, fashion, and wealth. Owning designer clothing or a high performance sports car depicts a person’s access to financial resources and worth. The use of formal language and titles also represent social status such as salutations including your majesty, your highness, president, director, chief executive officer, and doctor.

People may occupy multiple statuses in a society. At birth, people are ascribed social status in alignment to their physical and mental features, gender, and race. In some cases, societies differentiate status according to physical or mental disability as well as if a child is female or male, or a racial minority. According to Dr. Jody Heymann, Dean of the World Policy Analysis Center at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, "Persons with disabilities are one of the last groups whose equal rights have been recognized" around the world (Brink, 2016). A report by the World Policy Analysis Center (2016) shows only 28% of 193 countries participating in the global survey guarantee a right to quality education for people with disabilities and only 18% guarantee a right to work.

In some societies, people may earn or achieve social status from their talents, efforts, or accomplishments (Griffiths, Keirns, Strayer, Cody-Rydzewsk, Scaramuzzo, Sadler, Vyain, Byer, & Jones, 2015). Obtaining higher education or being an artistic prodigy often correspond to high status. For example, a college degree awarded from an “Ivy League” university weighs higher in status than a degree from a public college. Similarly, talented artists, musicians, and athletes receive honors, privileges, and celebrity status.

Additionally, the social and political hierarchy of a society or region designates social status. Consider the social labels within class, race, ethnicity, gender, education, profession, age, and family. Labels defining a person’s characteristics serve as their position within the larger group. People in a majority or dominant group have higher status (e.g., rich, white, male, physician, etc.) than those of the marginalized or subordinate group (e.g., poor, Black, female, housekeeper, etc.). Overall, the location of a person on the social strata influences their social power and participation (Griswold, 2013). Individuals with inferior power have limitations to social and physical resources including lack of authority, influence over others, formidable networks, capital, and money.

Social status serves as method for building and maintaining boundaries among and between people and groups. Status dictates social inclusion or exclusion resulting in cultural stratification or hierarchy whereby a person’s position in society regulates their cultural participation by others. Cultural attributes within social networks build community, group loyalty, and personal and social identity.

People sometimes engage in status shifting to garner acceptance or avoid attention. As discussed in Chapter 1.1 , DuBois (1903) described the act of people looking through the eyes of others to measure social place or position as double consciousness . His research explored the history and cultural experiences of American slavery and the plight of Black folk in translating thinking and behavior between racial contexts. DuBois’ research helped sociologists understand how and why people display one identity in certain settings and another in different ones. People must negotiate a social situation to decide how to project their social identity and assign a label that fits (Kottak & Kozaitis, 2012). Status shifting is evident when people move from informal to formal contexts. Our cultural identity and practices are very different at home than at school, work, or church. Each setting demands different aspects of who we are and our place in the social setting.

This short video summarizes Pierre Bourdieu's (1930-2002) theory of cultural capital as the cultural knowledge that serves as currency that helps us navigate culture and alters our experiences and the opportunities available to us. The video discusses three different forms of cultural capital: embodied state, objectified state, and institutionalized state with examples of each type that students can apply to their own lives. At the end of the video, discussion questions are included to assist students in applying the concept of cultural capital to what is happening in the world today.

Sociologists find cultural capital or the social assets of person (including intellect, education, speech pattern, mannerisms, and dress) promote social mobility (Harper-Scott & Samson, 2009). People who accumulate and display the cultural knowledge of a society or group may earn social acceptance, status, and power. Bourdieau (1991) explained the accumulation and transmission of culture is a social investment from socializing agents including family, peers, and community. People learn culture and cultural characteristics and traits from one another; however, social status effects whether people share, spread, or communicate cultural knowledge to each other. A person’s social status in a group or society influences their ability to access and develop cultural capitol.

Cultural capital provides people access to cultural connections such as institutions, individuals, materials, and economic resources (Kennedy, 2012). Status guides people in choosing who and when culture or cultural capital is transferable. Bourdieu (1991) believed cultural inheritance and personal biography contribute more to individual success than intelligence or talent. With status comes access to social and cultural capital that generates access to privileges and power among and between groups. Individuals with cultural capital deficits face social inequalities (Reay, 2004). If someone does not have the cultural knowledge and skills to maneuver the social world she or he occupies, then she or he will not find acceptance within a group or society and access to support and resources.

Thinking Sociologically

Cultural capital evaluates the validity of culture (i.e., language, values, norms, and access to material resources) on success and achievement. You can measure your cultural capital by examining the cultural traits and patterns of your life. The following questions examine student values and beliefs, parental and family support, residency status, language, childhood experiences focusing on access to cultural resources (e.g., books) and neighborhood vitality (e.g., employment opportunities), educational and professional influences, and barriers affecting college success (Kennedy, 2012).

• What are the most important values or beliefs influencing your life?
• What kind of support have you received from your parents or family regarding school and your education?
• How many generations has your family lived in the United States?
• What do you consider your primary language? Did you have any difficulty learning to read or write the English language?
• Did your family have more than fifty books in the house when you were growing up? What type of reading materials were in your house when you were growing up?
• Did your family ever go to art galleries, museums, or plays when you were a child? What types of activities did your family do with their time other than work and school?
• How would you describe the neighborhood where you grew up?
• What illegal activities, if any, were present in the neighborhood where you grew up?
• What employment opportunities were available to your parents or family in the neighborhood where you grew up?
• Do you have immediate family members who are doctors, lawyers, or other professionals? What types of jobs have your family members had throughout their lives?
• Why did you decide to go to college? What has influenced you to continue or complete your college education?
• Did anyone ever discourage or prevent you from pursuing academics or a professional career?
• Do you consider school easy or difficult for you?
• What has been the biggest obstacle for you in obtaining a college education?
• What has been the greatest opportunity for you in obtaining a college education?
• How did you learn to navigate educational environments? Who taught you the “ins” and “outs” of college or school?

Cultural Hegemony

The very nature of cultural creation and production requires an audience to receive a cultural idea or product. Without people willing to receive culture, it cannot be sustainable or become an object (Griswold, 2013). Power and influence play an integral part in cultural creation and marketing. The ruling class has the ability to establish cultural norms and manipulate society while turning a profit. Culture is a commodity and those in a position of power to create, produce, and distribute culture gain further social and economic power.

Culture producing organizations such as multinational corporations and media industries are in the business of producing mass culture products for profit. These organizations have the power to influence people throughout the world. Paul Hirsch (1972) referred to this enterprise as the culture industry system or the “market.” In the culture industry system, multinational corporations and media industries (i.e., cultural creators) produce an excess supply of cultural objects to draw in public attention with the goal of flooding the market to ensure receipt and acceptance of at least one cultural idea or artifact by the people for monetary gain.

The culture industry system produces mass culture products to generate a culture of consumption (Grazian, 2010). The production of mass culture thrives on the notion that culture influences people. In line with the humanities’ perspective on culture, multinational corporations and media industries, believe they have the ability to control and manipulate culture by creating objects or products that people want and desire. This viewpoint suggests cultural receivers , or the people, are weak, apathetic, and consume culture for recognition and social status (Griswold, 2013). If you consider the cultural object of buying and owning a home, the concept of owning a home represents attaining the “American dream.” Even though not all Americans are able to buy and own a home, the cultural industry system has embedded home ownership as a requisite to success and achievement in America.

In contrast, popular culture implies people influence culture. This perspective indicates people are active makers in the creation and acceptance of cultural objects (Griswold, 2013). Take into account one of the most popular musical genres today, rap music. The creative use of language and rhetorical styles and strategies of rap music gained local popularity in New York during the 1970s and entered mainstream acceptance in mid-1980s to early ‘90s (Caramanica, 2005). The early developments of rap music by the masses led to the genre becoming a cultural object.

Latinos are the largest and fastest growing ethnic group in the United States. The culture industry system is seeking ways to profit from this group. As multinational corporations and media industries produce cultural objects or products geared toward this population, their cultural identity is transformed into a new subculture blending American and Latinx values, beliefs, norms, and practices. Phillip Rodriguez is a documentary filmmaker on Latinx culture, history, and identity. He and many other race and diversity experts are exploring the influence of consumption on American Latinx culture.

• Research the products and advertisements targeting Latinos in the United States. Describe the cultural objects and messaging encouraging a culture of consumption among this group.
• What type of values, beliefs, norms, and practices are reinforced in the cultural objects or projects created by the culture industry system?
• How might the purchase or consumption of the cultural objects or products you researched influence the self-image, identity, and social status of Latinos?
• What new subculture arises by the blending of American and Latinx culture? Describe the impact of uniting or combining these cultures on Latinos and Americans.

Today, rap music like other forms of music is being created and produced by major music labels and related media industries. The culture industry system uses media gatekeepers to regulate information including culture (Grazian, 2010). Even with the ability of the people to create popular culture, multinational corporations and media industries maintain power to spread awareness, control access, and messaging. This power to influence the masses also gives the hegemonic ruling class, known as the culture industry system, the ability to reinforce stereotypes, close minds, and promote fear to encourage acceptance or rejection of certain cultural ideas and artifacts.

Agents of Socialization (7 Examples + Definitions)

Ever wonder why you think the way you do or why certain norms feel almost second nature to you? You didn't come up with these ideas on your own; they were shaped by the world around you. In this article, you're going to learn about the critical forces that mold your behavior, values, and beliefs from a young age to adulthood.

Agents of socialization are the key institutions, groups, and individuals that influence your development and help you navigate the maze of societal norms, customs, and expectations.

By the end of this read, you'll have a solid grasp on the elements that have shaped who you are and how they work in concert to form the complex structure of society.

What Are the Agents of Socialization?

What exactly are agents of socialization? Simply put, these are the different influences that shape you into the person you are today. They're like the architects of your identity, sketching out the blueprint of how you think, feel, and interact with the world.

The term "socialization" refers to the lifelong process of learning the rules, norms, and values of your community. It's a bit like learning the rules of a game; you can't really play effectively until you understand how it works. Agents of socialization are the "coaches" guiding you through this game of life.

It's not just one or two things that mold you. Multiple agents work together, each contributing a unique piece to the puzzle that is you. Some are more obvious, like your family or school, while others, such as media and religion, work more subtly.

What kind of emotional and practical support a person receives will be influenced by what agents they have in their lives. For instance, parents social class influences children behaviors because it will contribute to how much time and attention the parents can spend with their child.

There are also formal and informal social institutions. Formal social institutions are things like schools and religious institutions. Informal social institutions are things like peer groups, media consumption, and a society's material culture.

Additionally, an agent of socialization can be either a primary or secondary agent.

Primary agents of socialization, like your family, are the early and immediate influencers in your life. They lay down the basics and give you your first sense of identity.

On the other hand, secondary agents of socialization, such as schools and peer groups, come into play as you grow and begin to step out into the world. While primary agents set the foundation, secondary agents add complexity, challenging and building upon the initial values and beliefs you've absorbed.

Let's look at the agents in the general order they appear in your life.

First Agent: Family

Let's start where it all begins: your family. Before you even stepped foot in a school or made your first friend, your family was already shaping your views and behaviors.

Your parents or caregivers teach you the basic skills you need to function. We're talking about fundamental stuff here, like language and basic manners. These are your building blocks, the foundation on which everything else will be built.

It's not just about socializing children learning to say "please" and "thank you," though. Your family instills in you the values, beliefs, and cultural norms that guide your actions throughout your life. The family teaches everything from parental gender norms to how children participate in the family structure and how the age norms established impact the child's role.

This is not to say that your family's influence is set in stone. As you grow, other agents of socialization start coming into the picture. But the family's role remains pivotal. They're your first teachers, and their lessons often stick with you for a lifetime.

Second Agent: Education

After your family has laid the groundwork, the next major player to enter the scene is usually the educational system.

Schools are a type of secondary agent of socialization . While your family focuses on basic values and beliefs, schools introduce you to a broader world. You learn not just math and science but also how to interact with people from different backgrounds.

Teacher expectations, grading systems, and even the hidden curriculum—that is, the unwritten, unofficial lessons that you pick up—play roles in socializing you. The school and classroom rituals are a big part of the socialization process too.

How teachers evaluate students leaves a big impact - are they nice, strict, forgiving? That will teach the child what to expect in the rest of their lives regarding feedback and development.

Hidden curriculum prepares children to understand social norms. How kids act on the playground teach younger children things like gender norms,

Class related behaviors also teach one to uphold gender norms, emphasize obedience, and prepare kids for the "adult world".

Schools teach you about hierarchy, competition, and cooperation. They show you that actions have consequences, like grades or detentions.

So, as you go through the educational system, you’re not just collecting facts and skills. You're picking up social cues and learning how to function in a community. And just like that, another layer gets added to the complex person that is you.

Third Agent: Friends

Your peers are the people around your age who have interests, social positions, or backgrounds similar to yours. Think of peer groups as mirrors that reflect back aspects of yourself, but with a few tweaks and differences thrown in.

Peer group socialization begins as early as children take part in informal institutions. Whether it's daycare or time at the park with other kids, these peer groups provide adolescents with various norms. Who children spend time with and in what social institutions will greatly influence their character.

In many ways, peer groups serve as a testing ground. Your friends provide a space where you can try out new ideas, attitudes, and even identities. This is where you figure out what works and what doesn’t.

Peer pressure is a part of this picture; it can be both positive and negative, pushing you to conform to the group’s norms.

Here's the thing: While families and schools usually aim to socialize you in a structured way, peer groups offer a kind of 'free-form' socialization. There are fewer rules and more room for experimentation.

However, the influence of peers can sometimes conflict with what you've learned from primary agents like family or secondary agents like schools.

Fourth Agent: Media

Now, let’s shift gears to an agent that you might not immediately think of as a socializer: the media. Whether it's the shows you binge-watch, the news you follow, or the social media platforms you scroll through, media plays a subtle but powerful role in shaping your view of the world.

Media literacy is crucial here. This means being able to think critically about what you see and hear in the media .

For instance, how do commercials shape your idea of what's "cool" or "important"? Or how do news outlets influence your opinions? Mass media doesn't just offer stories and products; it sells values, viewpoints, and lifestyles.

While family, schools, and peers are like hands-on coaches in your life, the media is a bit more distant. Its effects can be more subtle, but also far-reaching, affecting not just you but entire societies at large.

A society's material cultures socialize children differently from each other. Material culture refers to the physical objects, resources, and spaces that people use to define their culture and environment. These can range from buildings and artwork to technology and clothing, serving as tangible expressions of a society's values, beliefs, and customs.

A child's behavior patterns profoundly influence what media and material culture they engage with, as does their family, peer groups, and other social context. But what media they have access to depends on where in the world they are.

Swedish children will have different material culture and mass media than Japanese children, for instance. So while the media is a big part of someone's socialization, it is very much an informal teaching mode.

With the average person spending a significant part of their days consuming media of some kind, we see how much of an impact this can have on their development.

Fifth Agent: Religious Institutions

Whether it’s a church, temple, mosque, or any other place of worship, these spaces often provide more than just spiritual guidance. They're like the moral compass on your life's journey, pointing you toward what the community sees as right or wrong.

Religious teachings often offer a set of rules or guidelines. Just like how a school has a syllabus, religious institutions have doctrines or holy books that outline ethical behavior and social norms. These teachings influence how you think about big topics like life, death, and your place in the universe.

The sense of community in these religious spaces is also crucial. They offer a supportive network, not unlike what a family or peer group provides. The primary difference is that this support often comes with an ethical or spiritual framework.

Essentially, it's another layer of socialization, one that can sometimes echo what you've learned at home, or challenge it, enriching your moral and ethical understanding.

Sixth Agent: Workplace

Now that you’ve got a good grasp of how various agents shaped your younger years, let's look at a place where adult socialization commonly happens: the workplace.

The workplace teaches you about hierarchy and the value of teamwork. You learn how to navigate power dynamics and office politics, sort of like an advanced level of the schoolyard, but with paychecks instead of grades.

You also get to experience diversity, meeting and working with people from various backgrounds, which adds different shades to your social palette.

The term " occupational socialization " might sound like jargon, but it simply refers to the way you adapt to the norms and expectations of your workplace. Just like you had to learn how to be a student in school, you have to learn how to be an employee, a manager, or a leader in the world of work.

Seventh Agent: Life Milestones

As we wrap up our exploration of agents of socialization, let's not overlook something crucial: life events and transitions. We're talking about significant events like graduation, marriage, becoming a parent, or even experiencing loss or hardship.

These events force you to adapt and grow, challenging the norms and values you've picked up from other agents of socialization.

For instance, becoming a parent makes you a primary agent of socialization for someone else. You now pass on values and norms, coming full circle in the socialization process.

Other transitions, like entering retirement, shift your role in society and make you reevaluate your self-concept.

While these milestones might seem like an effect of the socialization you've already been through (i.e. choosing to marry or not), they also help mold you moving forward.

The History of Socialization Theories

So, you're interested in how people turn out the way they do. You're not alone! The idea of socialization—how we make children learn to fit into society—has been a hot topic for thinkers, researchers, and even everyday people like parents and teachers for quite a while.

Let's start with Emile Durkheim , a French sociologist active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is often credited with laying the groundwork for modern sociology. Durkheim emphasized the role of social institutions like education in fostering social solidarity and shared values.

Other early theories in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, like those by Charles Cooley and George Herbert Mead , further laid the groundwork. They introduced concepts like the " looking-glass self " —which is basically how you see yourself based on how you think others see you.

Erik Erikson , a German-American psychologist active in the mid-20th century, expanded our understanding by introducing the idea of psychosocial stages. Erikson believed that each stage of life comes with its own social and emotional challenges, influencing our personality and behavior.

In the 1960s, Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman introduced the concept of " dramaturgy ," suggesting that social life is like a theatrical performance where we play different roles. This idea touched upon how agents of socialization teach us to perform these roles effectively.

More recently, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, researchers like Patricia Hill Collins have explored how socialization is affected by intersecting factors like race, class, and gender. Collins' work has been pivotal in introducing the idea of intersectionality into socialization theory.

In modern sociology, we recognize that someone's social class, economic class, and gender will all have an impact on what society expects of them, and thus how they are taught to behave. These social factors affect a person's role and character development.

For instance, working class parents will likely send their kids to state run education systems because that's all they can afford. Whereas middle class parents tend to send their children to more specialized institutions. And wealthy parents tend to send their kids to private schools.

Class and other societal factors will impact the adolescent peer influences a child has access to. Organized religion fosters different socialization than someone who comes from a family who isn't religious.

Socialization includes teaching all of the norms that a society expects, and also the ones that a particular family desires. So two children raised in the same town may have wildly different socialization.

That's not to say that everyone is limited by their place in society. But there are sociologists and psychologists who have taken issue with the Agents of Socialization theory.

Challenges to the Agents of Socialization Theory

So far, you've been learning about the generally accepted ideas on agents of socialization. But like any field of study, there are alternative viewpoints that challenge mainstream understanding.

One of these alternative views is individual agency , the idea that you're not just a passive recipient of socialization. Instead, you actively engage with and interpret the messages from these agents.

Another perspective that shakes up traditional ideas is the interactionist approach . This view holds that socialization is a two-way street, with individuals also influencing the agents that are supposed to be shaping them. This approach puts more emphasis on the dynamic, ever-changing nature of the socialization process.

Then there’s cultural relativism , which challenges the idea that the agents of socialization are universal. What might be a significant agent in one culture may not hold the same weight in another. For example, in collectivist societies, the extended family might play a much larger role in socialization than in individualistic societies.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1) what are agents of socialization.

Agents of socialization are the key influences that help shape our beliefs, values, and behaviors as we grow. These can range from family and school to media and workplace settings.

2) Are agents of socialization the same for everyone?

No, the impact and relevance of different agents can vary from person to person and culture to culture. For instance, religious institutions might play a bigger role in socialization in certain societies compared to others.

3) What is individual agency?

Individual agency is the concept that people are not just passive recipients of socialization. Instead, they actively engage with and interpret the messages they receive from various agents.

4) What is the interactionist approach?

The interactionist approach suggests that socialization is a two-way street. Not only do individuals get influenced by agents like family and schools, but they also influence these agents in return.

5) How do life events affect socialization?

Life events such as marriage, parenthood, or retirement serve as significant milestones that require us to adapt and reshape our understanding of social norms and values.

6) Is media a powerful agent of socialization?

Yes, media can be a subtle but impactful agent that influences our perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors, often in ways we may not immediately recognize.

7) Can workplaces serve as agents of socialization?

Absolutely. Workplaces teach us about hierarchy, teamwork, and expose us to a diversity of opinions and backgrounds. They play a vital role in adult socialization.

8) Do religious institutions only provide spiritual guidance?

No, religious institutions often offer a set of ethical and moral guidelines that influence your behavior and thinking, extending their role beyond mere spiritual guidance.

9) Are there alternative viewpoints to the mainstream understanding of socialization?

Yes, theories like individual agency, interactionist approach, and cultural relativism offer different perspectives that challenge and enrich the mainstream understanding.

10) Why is understanding agents of socialization important?

Recognizing the roles of different agents in shaping your thoughts, actions, and beliefs can provide valuable insights into your own behavior and help you understand the functioning of society as a whole.

You've journeyed through a complex landscape, from the nurturing environment of your family to the larger influences of educational systems, peer groups, media, religious institutions, workplace, and life events.

All of this combines to make you unique, influenced but not dictated by these various threads.

Understanding this complex web is not just academic. It's practical. It gives you insight into why you think the way you do and why society functions as it does. Armed with this understanding, you can become a more informed, empathetic individual.

As you move forward, remember that socialization is an ongoing process. New threads will be added to your tapestry, and old ones might fade, but they all contribute to who you are and how you interact with the world.

Related posts:

• Social Institutions (Definition + 7 Examples)
• Nuclear Family (Definition + History)
• 53+ Deviance Examples in Sociology (Definition + Theories)
• 151+ Social Norms Examples (Cultures + Travel Tips)
• 37+ Social Construct Examples (Definition + Game)

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Understanding Socialization in Sociology

Charlotte Nickerson

Research Assistant at Harvard University

Undergraduate at Harvard University

Charlotte Nickerson is a student at Harvard University obsessed with the intersection of mental health, productivity, and design.

Learn about our Editorial Process

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

On This Page:

Socialization is the process whereby the young of society learn the values, ideas and practices and roles of that society.

The socialization process is a semi-conscious one, in that the primary agency of socialization, the family, would not necessarily see itself in this role, while some secondary socialization agencies such as education are deliberately set up for this purpose.

The socialization process is never total, as the young take on some lessons, but reject, adapt, or expand on others. In this way, societies retain some of the continuity but also progress.

One example of primary socialization is gender roles. Gender socialization is the process by which children learn about gender roles and come to understand what it means to be a boy or a girl.

Children are taught about gender roles from a very early age, and these messages come from a variety of sources, including family, friends, teachers, the media, and religion.

For example, girls may be given baby dolls to care for while boys may be socialized to play with action or building-oriented toys. This ingrained gender socialization can continue into adulthood.

For example, as an adult learns and meets people who identify with alternate gender identities, they may become more accepting of the idea that genders are not necessarily only male or female (Cromdal, 2006).

What is Socialization?

• Socialization is the process through which individuals become members of society. It includes the processes of acquiring knowledge, skills, attitudes, beliefs, values and behaviors necessary to function within society. Socialization begins at birth and continues throughout life.
• Children often copy the behavior they observe in others, but they are also active participants in the socialization process and are responsible for making choices about their own behavior.
• There are a multitude of types of socialization, ranging from primary and secondary to developmental, anticipatory, desocialization, resocialization, organizational, and forced.
• Sociologists have defined five stages of socialization: investigation, socialization, maintenance, resocialization, and remembrance.

The Purpose of Socialization

Socialization prepares individuals to participate in a group by illustrating the expectations of that group. Through socialization, people are taught the language, values, and behaviors that are accepted within a group and learn to control their natural impulses.

For example, a child may have the natural impulse to keep a toy, but learns through socialization that sharing is expected and beneficial behavior (Cromdal, 2006).

Socialization is essential to the development and functioning of societies because it is through socialization that we learn the norms and customs that hold society together. Furthermore, Socialization allows people to interact with others and form relationships necessary to acquire social capital and resources (Cromdall, 2006).

These sum up to three primary goals: teaching impulse control and developing a conscience, preparing people to perform certain social roles, and cultivating shared sources of meaning and value (Arnett, 1995).

While socialization is often thought of as something that happens to children, it is a lifelong process. Adults need socialization when they enter new groups or organizations.

For example, a woman who has been a stay-at-home mother for several years may feel uncomfortable and out of place when she enters the workforce. She will go through a period of socialization in which she learns the expectations and norms of her new workplace.

A similar process of socialization may happen when someone moves, for example, to a new country with a dramatially different culture. This ongoing, life-long process is generally considered to be secondary socialization (Cromdall, 2006).

Types of Socialization

Primary socialization occurs between the child and those people in his/her life with whom he/she has primary relationships. These people are usually parents, siblings, grandparents, friends, teachers, coaches, etc. Secondary socialization occurs when we interact with people outside our family.

Primary Socialization

Primary socialization occurs between the child and those people in his/her life with whom he/she has a close, personal, and intimate face-to-face relationship.

For most people, the first primary relationships they form are with their parents, siblings, grandparents, and other family members. The family provides children with a sense of moral values, teaching the difference between right and wrong behavior, and how to relate appropriately to others (family, friends, strangers, etc.).

However, it is important not to see children as passive recipients of information, but instead as active participants in the creation of their own identity. Children are constantly making choices about what kind of person to become.

Parents play an important role in helping children to choose the right path. But parents cannot force their children to behave in certain ways. Instead, parents should help children to understand why they should behave in particular ways.

As children get older, they start forming primary attachments with friends and then with other adults through things like marriage, work, etc.

Secondary Socialization

Secondary socialization occurs between the individual and those people in their life with whom they have secondary relationships. A secondary relationship is one in which the individual does not have a close, personal, intimate or face-to-face relationship with the people that are responsible for the socialization process.

It is through secondary socialization that people learn how to behave in different situations and come to see themselves as members of specific groups, such as their religious community, their workplace, or their country.

Secondary relationships involve teachers, coaches, priests, television personalities, rock stars etc. These relationships help individuals understand what is expected of them, how to behave appropriately, and how to interact with others.

In some cases, such as school and teachers, we are in daily, face-to-face contact with the people who are socializing us without ever developing a primary attachment to them.

One example of secondary socialization is when a student enters college and must learn to navigate the new social and academic environment. This could include a new schedule, new ways of behaving in class, and ways of negotiating with and adjusting to classmates (Cromdal, 2006).

These forms of communication are not always direct, but they can influence us nonetheless. For example, when we watch a movie, we see someone else doing something and we imitate that behavior. When we listen to a song, we hear someone else singing and we mimic that behavior.

Secondary socialization is necessary because it represents the way that we start to learn about the nature of the social world beyond our primary contacts.

Secondary socialization is important because it teaches you how to interact with people who aren’t emotionally close to you, which is the majority of the people we will come into contact with in our adult lives.

Developmental Socialization

Developmental socialization is a learning process wherein the focus in on developing social skills or on learning behavior within a social institution. For example, a shy person may go through developmental socialization in order to learn how to be more outgoing.

This type of socialization can happen at any point in life, but is often thought of as happening during childhood and adolescence.

It is during these years that children learn important social skills like how to communicate with others, how to resolve conflict, and how to make friends (Cromdal, 2006).

Anticipitory Socialization

Anticipatory socialization is the process by which people learn about future roles and expectations in order to prepare for them.

It often happens before a person enters into a new social situation, such as starting a new job. For example, imagine that someone is about to start working in an office for the first time.

She may do some research on what to expect in order to anticipate the dress code, workplace culture and other aspects of her new environment.

Or, a child who is about to enter kindergarten may go to a “meet the teacher” day in order to learn about what will be expected of them in the classroom (Cromdal, 2006).

Differential Socialization

Differential socialization is the process by which people of different groups are socialized differently. This can be due to their class, race, or gender. For example, girls are often socialized to be more passive and nurturing, while boys are socialized to be more active and aggressive.

This can lead to different expectations and experiences for girls and boys as they grow up. This socialization occurs through a variety of agents, such as parents, teachers, the media, and peers.

It is important to note that differential socialization does not necessarily mean that one group is superior to another. Rather, it simply reflects the different expectations and behaviors that are associated with each group (Cromdal, 2006).

Desocialization Socialization

Desocialization is the process by which someone experiences role loss and an accompanying loss of associated power or prestige. It can happen when a person leaves a job, goes through a divorce, or retires.

For example, imagine that someone has just retired from a high-powered executive position. She may find herself feeling lost and without purpose, as she no longer has the same sense of importance or authority that she did in her previous role. This can be a difficult transition, as the person must learn to adjust to a new way of life (Cromdal, 2006).

Resocialization Socialization

Resocialization is the process by which someone learns new norms, values, and behaviors. Most typically, this involves partially or completely redefining the traits of the role that a person had previously occupied.

Resocialization often happens when a person enters into a new social situation, such as starting a new job. For example, imagine that a former business executive becomes a bakery owner. She will need to learn new norms, values , and behaviors in order to be successful in her new role. This could include learning how to bake, decorate cakes, and deal with customers (Cromdal, 2006).

Organizational Socialization

Organizational socialization is the process by which people learn about, adjust to, and change the knowledge, skills, attitudes, expectations, and behaviors needed for a new or changing organizational role.

Business sociologists Bueuer et al. (2007) call this “the process by which newcomers make the transition from being organizational outsiders to being insiders” (Cromdal, 2006).

Organizational socialization can be characterized along six dimensions (Van Maanen & Schein, 1977):

collective or individual

formal or informal

sequential or random

fixed or variable sequencing: whether or not the socialization process has a stated timetable

serial or disjunctive: the degree to which existing workers help socialize and mentor newcomers

investiture or divestiture: the degree to which a newcomer’s identity is affirmed versus stripped away

Forced Socialization

Forced socialization is a type of socialization that happens when an individual is placed in an environment where they have no choice but to conform to the norms and values of the group.

This can happen through coercion, manipulation, or even physical force. For example, imagine that someone is kidnapped and taken to a foreign country.

They may be forced to learn the language, customs, and values of their captors in order to survive This type of socialization can be very traumatic and lead to long-term psychological damage (O’Lynn, 2009).

Domestically, forced socialization often takes place in institutions such as prisons, mental hospitals, and military units.

What is an Agent of Socialization?

An agent of socialization is a person or group of people who teaches people the values, beliefs, and behaviors that are expected in their society.

The family is usually the child”s first and most important agent of socialization.

Children learn language, manners, and how to behave in their culture from their parents and other adults in the home.

As they grow older, children are exposed to other agents of socialization, such as the media, schools, religious institutions, and peer groups.

Each of these agents plays a role in shaping the child”s self-identity and worldview (Ochs, 1999).

To take an example of a concept that agents of socialization can teach, consider gender.

Gender is the socially constructed notion of what it means to be a man or a woman.

Children learn about gender roles and expectations from their parents, the media, their peers, and other adults in their lives.

Over time, they internalize these messages and use them to construct their own sense of self (Ochs, 1999).

Stages of Socialization

Investigation.

The first stage of socialization is known as the investigation stage. This is when a person is exploring different groups and trying to figure out which one they want to belong to.

During this stage, people are more likely to conform to the norms and values of the group because they want to be accepted.

For example, imagine that a teenager is trying to decide whether to join a gang. They may try out different types of behavior to see if it gets them the approval of the group. If it does, they are likely to continue doing it, even if it goes against their personal values (Levine & Moreland, 1994).

Socialization

The second stage of socialization is, repetitively, called the socialization stage. This is when a person has decided which group they want to belong to and they start to conform to the norms and values of that group.

For example, imagine that a teenager has joined a gang. They will now start to dress like the other members of the gang, replicate their speech patterns, and behave in the ways that are expected of them — such as through committing acts of vandalism or refusing to develop relationships with opposing gang members (Levine & Moreland, 1994).

Maintenance

During the maintenance stage of socialization, the individual and the group negotiate what contribution is expected of members. This is called role negotiation.

While many people stay in this stage until their membership in a gorup ends, some individuals are not satisfied with their role in the group or fail to meet the group”s expectations. This is called divergence (Levine & Moreland, 1994).

For example, imagine that a member of a gang wants to leave because they are tired of the violence. The gang may try to convince them to stay, but ultimately it is up to the individual to decide whether to stay or leave.

If they do leave, they may find it difficult to readjust to life outside of the gang because they have lost their previous community and close social ties.

Resocialization

If a group member reaches the divergence point during the maintenance stage of socialization, the former group member may take on the role of a marginal member and must be resocialized. This is when a person leaves a group and then joins another group.

For example, imagine that a person has left a gang and is now trying to join the military. They will have to go through a period of resocialization where they learn the norms and values of the military.

There are two possible outcomes of resocialization: differences can be resolved and the individual becomes a full member again, or the group expels the individual or the individual decides to leave. The first of these is called convergence, and the second, exit (Levine & Moreland, 1994).

Remembrance

Finally, during the rememberance stage of socialization, former members talk about their memories of the group and come to make sence of their departure. This is a process of reminiscing and self-reflection.

For example, imagine that a person has left a gang and is now trying to join the military. They may talk about their experiences in the gang with their friends and family, and reflect on what they have learned from the experience. If the group of ex-group members reaches a consensus on their reasons for departure, conclusions about the overall experience of the group become part of its tradition (Levine & Moreland, 1994).

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between formal and informal socialization.

Formal socialization is the process by which people learn the values, beliefs, and behaviors that are expected of them in their culture.

This type of socialization usually takes place in institutions, such as schools, religious institutions, and the military. For example, children learn how to read and write in school, and they learn about their country”s history and government, as well as how they should interpret and react to that history (Ochs, 1999).

In contrast, informal socialization is the process by which people learn the values, beliefs, and behaviors that are not formally taught but that are transmitted through everyday interactions with others. For example, children learn how to speak and behave through their interactions with their parents and other adults in their lives.

Similarly, they learn about the roles and expectations of their social class through their exposure to the media, their peers, and other aspects of popular culture (Ochs, 1999).

What is the Difference Between Socialization and Enculturation?

Enculturation is the process by which people learn the norms and values of their culture. It is a type of socialization that occurs as people grow up and come into contact with their culture”s customs and beliefs.

Socialization, on the other hand, is a much broader concept that refers to all the ways in which people learn to become members of their society. This includes learning not just the norms and values of one”s culture, but also the skills and knowledge needed to function in society (Tan, 2014).

While enculturation is a relatively passive process that happens without much conscious effort, socialization is the active process of acquiring culture in general. For example, parents may actively enculturate their children into the norms and values of their culture through stories, traditions, and religion as part of socialization.

What is the Difference Between Socialization and Education?

Socialization is the process of learning the norms and values of one”s culture. Education, on the other hand, is the process of learning academic knowledge and skills.

While socialization is necessary for the stability and survival of any society, education is necessary for the advancement of society (Cromdal, 2006).

People can be socialized by the process of education. As they acquire knowledge and attitudes, they may also learn the norms, beliefs, values, and standards of society.

For example, in a math class, students might learn the correct way to solve a problem, but they might also learn that it is important to be precise and justify one”s reasoning when making arguments. The first of these is education, and the second is socialization.

When does socialization begin?

The family is traditionally considered to be the first agent of socialization . This is because it is the first group that a child interacts with and learns from.

The family teaches children basic norms and values, such as how to speak, behave, and think. It is also the first group to provide emotional support and care.

Further Information

• Examples of Socialization
• Social Institutions
• Agents of Socialization

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Bugental, D. B., & Goodnow, J. J. (1998). Socialization processes .

Cromdal, J. (2006). Socialization .

Grusec, J. E., & Lytton, H. (1988). Socialization and the family. In  Social development  (pp. 161-212). Springer, New York, NY.

Levine, J. M., & Moreland, R. L. (1994). Group socialization: Theory and research. European review of social psychology, 5 (1), 305-336.

Maccoby, E. E. (2007). Historical overview of socialization research and theory.  Handbook of socialization: Theory and research ,  1 , 13-41.

Mortimer, J. T., & Simmons, R. G. (1978). Adult socialization.  Annual review of sociology , 421-454.

Ochs, E. (1999). Socialization. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 9 (1/2), 230-233.

O”Lynn, C. (2009). Who is in need of socialization?. Journal of Nursing Education, 48(4), 179.

Tan, L. Y. C. (2014). Enculturation .

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