“Mirror mirror on the wall whose the fairest of them all?” The famous line from SnowWhite encompasses much of what we learned this week in sociology. We learned about the “looking-glass self”, a part of socialization in which people form their personality and who they are based on what people think of them or tell them. As a result people try to edit that image or create a better image for themselves. The witch in Snow White is told by this mirror that she is not the most beautiful. She internalizes it and then proceeds to kill Snow White, which is her way of creating a better image for herself. Although we probably don’t go to that extent we do edit our image, and as we pointed out in class social networking sites without a doubt is the most popular way.
We watched a video in class about the growing importance of “Myspace” in the lives of adolescents today. We pointed out that several parts of the video were invalid or outdated, but we also the aspects of the film that carried over into today. For instance we pointed out how it’s not possible to recreate you’re image online but it’s still possible to keep people from seeing any bad images. In this way we are still creating a self-image, and that personality or self image would not be the same if we were raised somewhere else.
One of the 1st lessons we learned about socialization is that it is how we are taught how to act and think as human beings. In the article we read this week we read about how people thought genetics played into success and who they came out to be. People who were members of a lower socioeconomic class thought that it had a larger affect than people in higher socioeconomic classes. Part of the reason the reason that the researchers believed that they believed that is because people in lower socioeconomic classes hadn’t had nearly as much higher education. College and Universities are major places of socialization in the dominant beliefs for the reasons in the outcomes of social success. Even though both groups thought it had little to do with how one’s personality ends up or how successful they are, it is obvious that even in our society there are different levels of socialization.
