How do our interactions with individuals and groups impact our social development in both adulthood and childhood? Discuss significant others, reference groups, and role models in your answer
What will be an ideal response?
Interactions with individuals and social groups are critical to the development of a child into a fully functional person. We are socialized primarily by three different types of agents: significant others, reference groups, and role models. Significant others are individuals close enough to us to have a strong capacity to motivate our behavior; an example of a child's significant other is a parent. Reference groups are those collections of people who we compare ourselves to in terms of social position and preferences; an example of a reference group for a child is a little league team. Role models are people who we model our behavior after, even though we may not know them; a child's role models could include parents, professional baseball players, or celebrities.
It is a common misconception that an individual is fully socially developed upon adulthood. In fact, we continue to develop throughout the life course. Adults develop socially through significant others, reference groups, and role models, just as children do. A spouse may take the place of a parent in terms of the significant other. Likewise, reference groups, such as coworkers or bowling teams, may take the place of our childhood reference groups. While they may not have as great an impact on adults, role models certainly influence our developing sense of style and elements that we would like to incorporate into our own personality.
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A. inclusion. B. exclusion. C. differentiation. D. adaptive upgrading.
Until fairly recently, many people believed that ethnic and religious subcultures should learn and adopt the ways of the dominant group. Such people were advocating:
a. multiculturalism. b. assimilation. c. countercultures. d. cultural diffusion.
Which of the following is a characteristic of deviance?
A) ?Perceptions of deviance remain the same across all human beings irrespective of age, caste, ethnicity, gender, or religion. B) ?Traits and beliefs are not considered as deviance. C) ?Perceptions of deviance are defined by every individual instead of being defined or influenced by laws. D) ?Perceptions of deviance can change over time. E) ?Public attitudes and perception of deviance are independent of each other.
When it is not apparent which variable is the independent variable or dependent variable, it is common for researchers to
A. take the average percentage across the rows. B. average the percentages across the columns. C. rely exclusively on the column percentages. D. calculate both the row and column percentages.