The Need for Love
Studies that compare children reared in orphanages with those reared in traditional families show that the former are more likely to develop emotional problems.
Harry Harlow showed that infant monkeys reared apart from other monkeys grew up to be aggressive, violent, and incapable of nurturing their own infants.
Today most sociologists agree that while genetic and other biological traits establish broad boundaries for individual achievement, the environment in which a person is raised can cause her or his potential to be realized more or less fully within those boundaries.
The Social Construction of the Self
Interactionist theories of personality formation focus on how the self is “constructed” through social interaction.
Charles Horton Cooley developed the concept of the “looking-glass self”-the reflection of ourselves that we think we see in the behaviours of others toward us.
George Herbert Mead believed that the self could emerge only through the use of language. Culture, therefore, is at the centre of the formation of the self.
- Mead believed that role taking, the ability to look at social situations from the standpoint of another person, develops in three stages: the preparatory, game, and play stages.
- A significant other is an important person in an individual's environment; the generalized other is a composite of all the roles of significant others.
In playing the roles for which they have been socialized, people adhere to the rules of interaction known as “face work”. They seek to present a positive image of themselves, their “face”, and to avoid being embarrassed or "losing face."
Jean Piaget studied children’s notions of morality. Lawrence Kohlberg built on Piaget's research in devising his theory of stages of moral development in children.
In Kohlberg's theory, preconventional morality is based on the desire for reward and the fear of punishment; conventional morality is based on an understanding of right and wrong as embodied in social rules or laws; and postconventional morality is based on a sense of relativity and moral principles.
Carol Gilligan has demonstrated the propensity of females to base moral choices on considerations of caring as well as justice or law.