Socialization For Equality: Human Behaviorism vs Theory of Evolution

Many people usually ask two simple questions: Are we born equal? What is actually equality? Although we have discussed quite a few topics about socialization and socialization process in this website, we still have not mentioned about equality of human beings. In this post, we shall discuss with you some interesting and theories ideas about socialization for human equality.

Current U.S. economic system has led certain people to trust that some bad behaviors could just occur very 'naturally', for example, some guys are born as financial criminals, and men tend to think in a more rational way while women often think a bit too emotionally. Some people have still applied these logics for centuries in order to justify their own 'ethnocentric' feeling on public society against equality. They also claimed that people lived in a technologically inadequate world were simply not as biologically advanced as they are, so these people should be classified as 'less human'. Why they cannot exploit other people who appeared to be not as human as them or just less evolved? A famous example is the well-known 'Theory of Evolution' by Charles Darwin that could lead people to think in this way against human equality.

A socialization psychologist in the twentieth century, John B. Watson, saw the flaw about this and help explained further such behavior about equality. He developed his theory about 'Human Behaviorism' which could refute the 'Theory of Evolution' we just mentioned above. This human behaviorism theory suggested that behavior shall not be something that human beings are born with, and shall be more learned from external (environmental) factors. John also suggested that people here around the world are born as equally human beings, but they just have difference in cultures.

This socialization psychologist John B. Watson also had his unique ideas about equality because he did agree that biology should still play its vital role on human behavior. For example, children usually should share some biological traits, such as hair color or height, with their own parents. For similar reasons, genetic makeup of their parents should also affect their intelligence levels or artistic talents like music, painting, art etc. However, as again it actually deals with socialization process, he trusted that individual could not develop his personality without ever interacting with others. This could somehow explain why children usually tend to pick up certain habits via years of socialization process from their own parents.

In addition, it is known but interesting to understand that human brains could not completely develop if people did not utilize them before they were no longer young. So we can say it is still quite useful to let your children learn from puzzles or mysterious games because these activities can obviously help them build up a more elastic and a more powerful brain. This also explained why, from socialization or equality point of view, avoid interacting with people should never be a good idea for your children.

The above two theories, 'Human Behaviorism' and 'Theory of Evolution', are just basic socialization ideas about equality. In our coming posts, we would want to discuss more studies regarding socialization that can help you understand a bit deeper about human equality.