Where does socialization collide?

The lifelong process through which a person learns and takes in the norms, values, language, and expected behaviors of the society or group they belong to, so that an external social order comes to feel like their own way of being. Berger and Luckmann's 1966 The Social Construction of Reality distinguished primary socialization, the early childhood learning that makes a person a member of society at all, from secondary socialization, the later learning of the specialized worlds a person moves into. The referent is a broad cultural process by which whole populations reproduce their way of life across generations, not one firm's induction of a new hire and not a developmental window in a young animal.[1]

Unit

One person's uptake of a group's shared norms and values

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Studied through longitudinal surveys, ethnography, and interviews that trace how values and behaviors are transmitted across generations

The process by which a newcomer to an organization acquires the knowledge, skills, norms, and role behavior needed to take part as an effective member, moving from outsider to insider. Van Maanen and Schein's 1979 Toward a theory of organizational socialization set out the tactics an employer can use to shape this passage, for example whether newcomers are processed together or alone and given a fixed timetable or not, and Bauer and colleagues' 2007 meta-analysis linked such adjustment to job satisfaction, commitment, and staying with the firm. The referent is a bounded transition into one workplace over weeks or months, narrower than a society-wide cultural process and unrelated to an early bonding window in an animal.[2][3]

Unit

One newcomer's adjustment into a specific organization and role

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Assessed through newcomer surveys of role clarity, task mastery, social acceptance, and outcomes such as commitment and turnover

A limited developmental period, usually early in an animal's life, during which it readily forms social attachments and learns to behave normally toward its own kind and, in domestic species, toward humans. Scott's 1962 Critical periods in behavioral development framed this as a time-bounded window of heightened sensitivity, and Freedman, King, and Elliot's 1961 study of puppies showed that dogs isolated past about fourteen weeks of age withdrew from people and could not thereafter form normal bonds. The referent is a biological window fixed by an animal's maturation, measured in weeks, quite unlike a lifelong human cultural process or a hire's passage into a firm.[4][5]

Unit

One animal's developmental window for forming social attachments

Recovery means

Largely closes once the window ends, and attachments not formed in time are hard to establish later

Measured by

Studied by exposing young animals to conspecifics or humans at different ages and recording later approach or withdrawal behavior