What is Socialization? Understanding Stages of Cognition Maturing

What exactly is socialization? In fact, socialization is not easy to understand completely for ordinary people and it should be an ongoing controversial process throughout life. In addition, there are many different stages to cognition maturing for socialization, so in this post we will try our very best to explain them as clear as possible.

Sigmund Freud, an infamous psychologist who studied socialization, believed that biology pays a critical part in human cognition maturing development. He stated that for cognition maturing, humans have two simple needs. The first one is a need to bond together, while the second one is an aggressive drive in which he coined as death instinct. Freud also thought that these are two opposing forces that works in unconscious level and causes some internal torment. Such unconscious theory of psychology can be both debatable and controversial as there is really no concrete proof that it really exists.

Freud had then combined basic drives and personality into 3 separate parts which were known as id, ego, and superego. What is id meant? The id is an individual's basic drives in unconscious mind, and it demands attention from people. One popular example for this is why a young child demands a bundle of materialistic objects or attention. However, this is usually neutralized and also explains why one of the common words added to an individual's dictionary is no. In order to avoid being unsatisfied or getting angry, a child most come to think with rational abilities consciously. It will be impractical and illogical if a child could get everything they want, and thus this is known as the ego stage. The last part is known as superego and this happens when an individual use cultural norms to help make decisions. This can happen during conscious stage as well, and an obvious example is studying hard to get good exam grades for getting accepted into university.

Although the superego and id parts will always have a battle with each other, with a socially adjusted individual the ego helps balance these two out. The superego is a critical socialization stage because if an individual do not have it then they will develop an attitude that center around themselves and, as a result, would not be willing to make sacrifices in life.

During Freud's time, sex was a controversial topic and was not viewed as a basic drive for human beings. Although things have already changed quite significantly nowadays, it is still quite controversial for socialization because it shines women in a negative light.

Jean Piaget, another psychologist who studied advanced socialization, did great discoveries for cognition maturing development of children around their environment. He was a Swiss psychologist with main concentration on cognition maturing, learning or mental processes of individuals. He put together the following 4 basic socialization stages for cognition maturing:

(i) The first cognitive stage was known as senorimotor stage. During this cognitive stage, an individual (still a little baby of course) experiences things solely through their senses such as listening, tasting and smelling.

(ii) The second cognitive stage was called preoperational stage. This cognitive stage normally occurs around age two when a person starts talking or using signals such as the classic 'good bye' wave. In this 2nd socialization stage, an individual still lacks abstract cognitive development. For example if you pull liquid into two separate containers and one is wide while another is tall, then children in this cognitive stage will assume automatically that the taller glass contains more liquid even if the amount of fluid in both containers is the same.
 
(iii) The third cognitive or concrete operational stage was which individuals could experience a more logical connection to their surroundings. An easy example for this cognitive stage is when an individual can learn and note that a day can be of more significance. If it is Sunday than not only do an individual go to church but it also represents a no-school day.

(vi) The last cognitive stage was known as formal operational stage. In this final cognition maturing stage, an individual already has the ability to think very abstractly. They have a deeper understanding of things that can solve some logic problems or concrete maths. Even though Piaget based his socialization theories on cognition maturing, he did not really point out some individuals do not go through all socialization stages owing to the effect that society would put on an individual's cognitive development stages. In some parts of the world especially in some very traditional cultures, there are concrete evidences that individuals do not go through all socialization stages.

We wish the above post can at least help you understand different stages of cognition maturing, which should make it clearer what exactly socialization is all about. Due to the complicated nature of this controversial topic, we will go into further details about socialization theories, advanced psychological ideas as well as cognition maturing development for socialization etc in our coming blog post(s).