Study guides › P/S › Sociology

Culture & Socialization

This chapter covers the elements of culture, how groups relate to the dominant culture and to other cultures, how people are socialized, and how Cooley, Mead, and Bandura explain the development of the self. You will match each term and theorist to a scenario.

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What this chapter covers

• Elements of Culture. Culture questions test precise vocabulary: values versus norms, folkways versus mores, and material versus nonmaterial culture.
• Cultural Variation & Contact. Subculture versus counterculture and assimilation versus multiculturalism are classic distinction questions.
• Socialization & Its Agents. Socialization questions ask you to identify the type of socialization or the agent responsible in a short scenario.
• Development of the Self: Cooley, Mead & Bandura. Cooley, Mead, and Bandura each explain how social experience builds the self; the exam gives a scenario and asks whose idea it illustrates.

Key points to know

• Values are broad ideals; norms are specific behavioral rules
• Folkways are mild customs; mores carry moral weight
• Subculture accepts the mainstream; counterculture opposes it
• Ethnocentrism (Sumner) judges by own culture; relativism (Boas) understands in context
• Primary = family in childhood; secondary = later settings
• Anticipatory = rehearsing a future role; resocialization = replacing norms
• Cooley: looking-glass self, built from imagined judgments of others
• Mead: role-taking; stages preparatory, play, game; 'I' and 'me'

Try a practice question

Which statement best describes mores?

1. Casual customs that carry little consequence
2. Laws passed by legislatures
3. Norms tied to moral standards, whose violation provokes strong disapproval
4. Objects created by a society

Common questions

21 original practice questions accompany this chapter in the app. Spaced review brings missed ideas back at the right time; it helps memory but cannot promise you will not miss an idea again.