Selective Exposure, Modeling, Reward and Punishment and Nurturance and Identification

Study Notes

1. In prehistoric, pre-literate (and so-called primitive) societies, education usually meant enculturation, or the process of transmitting culture from one generation to the next.

2. Since culture is created and learned rather than biologically inherited, all societies must somehow ensure that their culture is adequately transmitted from one generation to the next.  

3. This transmission process is known as enculturation, and it begins soon after birth. The first agents of enculturation in all societies are the members of the household a person is born into.  

At first, the most important member of this household is the newborn's mother, but other household members soon play roles in the process. just who these others are depends on how households are structured in the particular society.... In many societies, grandparents, other wives of the father, brothers of the father or sisters of the mother, not to mention their children, also are likely key players in the enculturation process...

4. As the young person matures, individuals outside the household are brought into the process.  

These usually include other kin, and certainly the individual's peers. The latter may be included informally in the form of play groups or formally in age associations, in which children actually teach other children...In many societies, however, children are pretty much allowed to learn through observation and participation at their own speed....

5. Enculturation begins with the development of self-awareness -- the ability to identify oneself as an object, to react to oneself, and to appraise or evaluate oneself. 

6. People do not have this ability at birth, even though it is essential for existence in human societies. Self-awareness permits individuals to assume responsibility for their conduct, to learn how to react to others, and to assume a variety of roles. 

An important aspect of self-awareness is the attachment of positive value to the self. Without this, individuals cannot be motivated to act to their advantage rather than disadvantage; self-identification alone is not sufficient. .(Haviland, William, "Anthropology" Harcourt College Publishers, 2000, pps 437-452)

7. Enculturation. The process by which a society's culture is transmitted from one generation to the next.

8. Self-awareness. The ability to identify oneself as an object, to react to oneself, and to appraise oneself.

9. So how were children in prehistoric and early civilized societies taught?

Social scientists point to several sub-processes in the larger process of enculturation. Taking evidence from cultural studies of primitive and modern societies, some have concluded that selective exposure, modeling, reward and punishment, and nurturance and identification were principal instructional methods in "primitive" and prehistoric societies.

10. Selective Exposure [and Selective Perception and Retention.: We expose ourselves to information that reinforces rather than contradicts our beliefs or opinions. Parenting ideas and beliefs are deeply ingrained within us from impressions we experienced in our childhood. Also, people often choose to seek advice from family elders and from those who share their parenting philosophies.

Selective Retention - the third basic psychological defense, is that we tend to remember those things that reinforce our beliefs better than those that oppose them.

Children

• are exposed to roles, behaviors and attitudes considered desirable, and
• are sheltered from those regarded undesirable.
• are shielded by the parents (or agents of socialization) from "bad influences." Parents etc., try to maximize exposure to "good influences."

11. Modeling: Children repeat behavior to which they are repeatedly and systematically exposed. This process is called modeling (or imitation prior to Albert Bandura's social learning theory).. Modeling

• begins with attention to the behavior of parents or significant others
• is built upon the retention of the images of such behavior in a person's memory.
• is imitation, or the reproduction of that behavior.

12. The behavior is repeated until it becomes a habit, and is repeated in situations different than those in which it was originally observed. The child develops attitudes and beliefs supportive of that behavior.

13. Reward and Punishment: When children imitate and repeat behaviors they learned from significant others, more often than not these others respond with approval. 

Approval is a kind of reward e.g. something given or received in recompense for worthy behavior or the return for performance of a desired behavior; positive reinforcement. 

Conversely, when children imitate and repeat behaviors that do not meet the approval of parents or agents of socialization, they are often punished. Punishment is the infliction of some kind of pain or loss on an individual for a misdeed, or wrongdoing.

• Approval can be verbal or nonverbal, sometimes taking the form of a concrete reward,
• Such rewards reinforce the modeling of significant others behavior.
• Punishment can be verbal, nonverbal or physical.
• The processes of reward and punishment reinforce what is already being learned through selective exposure and modeling.
• Both behavior and the expression of attitude can be rewarded or punished by the parents or agents of socialization.

13. Selective exposure/modeling and reward and punishment are more effective if the child identifies with the parent or the person who is acting as the agent of socialization. 

14. Identification is the conscious or unconscious modeling of one's self upon another person. Conscious analogs of identification are intentional imitation of others and volitional (will) efforts to conform to a group. Identification is 

• the positive feelings held by the child toward the parent (agent) that makes the child want to be like that individual.

These feelings are built in large part by the parent's (agent's) nurturant behavior toward the child. The love for and care about the child from these are the child's main source of support.  When parents (agents) help the child, he or she feels obligated to cooperate. All of this leads the child to love, admire and want to please them.

Dependence Training

15. Dependence training promotes compliance in the performance of assigned tasks and favors keeping individuals within the group. 

This pattern is typically associated with extended families, which consist of several husband-wife-children units within the same household and which are most apt to be found in societies with an economy based on subsistence farming. Such families are important, for they provide the large labor force necessary to till the soil, tend whatever flocks are kept, and carry out other part-time economic pursuits considered necessary for existence. These large families, however, have built into them certain potentially disruptive tensions. For example, one of the adults typically makes the important family decisions, which must be followed by all other family members. In addition, the in-marrying spouses-husbands and/or wives--must subordinate themselves to the group's will, which may not be easy for them.

16. Dependence training helps to keep these potential problems under control and involves both supportive and punitive aspects. On the supportive side,

• indulgence is shown to young children, particularly in the form of prolonged oral gratification.
• Nursing continues for several years and is virtually on demand.

17. This may be interpreted as rewarding the child for seeking support within the family, the main agent in meeting the child's needs. Also on the supportive side,

• children at a relatively early age are assigned a number of child-care and domestic tasks, all of which make significant and obvious contributions to the family's welfare

. Thus, family members all actively work to help and support one another.

18. On the punitive side,

• Behavior adults interpret as aggressive or sexual is apt to be actively discouraged.
• adults tend to be quite insistent on overall obedience, which is seen as rendering the individual subordinate to the group.

19. This combination of encouragement and discouragement ideally produces individuals who are obedient, supportive, noncompetitive, and generally responsible and who will stay within the fold and not do anything potentially disruptive. Indeed, their very definition of self comes from their affiliation wlth a group, rather than from the mere fact of their individual existence. (Haviland, William, "Anthropology" Harcourt College Publishers, 2000, pps 437-452)

Independence Training

20. By contrast, independence training emphasizes individual independence, self-reliance, and personal achievement. It is typically associated with societies whose nuclear families, consisting of a husband, wife, and their offspring, are independent rather than a part of a larger household group. Independence training is particularly characteristic of industrial societies such as that of the United States, where self-reliance and personal achievement, especially for men, are important traits for survival.

21. Again, this pattern of training involves both encouragement and discouragement. On the negative side,

• little emphasis is placed on prolonged oral gratification, and feeding is prompted more by schedule than demand....
• [A]s soon after birth as possible, children are given their own private space away from their parents.
• Infants do not receive the amount of attention they so often do in non-industrialized societies.
• Collective responsibility is not encouraged in children; they are not given responsible tasks to perform until later in childhood, and these are generally few.
• the contribution of the tasks to the family's welfare is often not immediately apparent to the child, to whom the tasks appear arbitrary as a result. Indeed, children often are encouraged to perform tasks for play, rather than as contributions to the family's welfare.

22. [Positively?] displays of aggression and sexuality are encouraged or at least tolerated to a greater degree than where dependence training is the rule.

• [C]ompetition is emphasized individuals are encouraged to seek help and attention, rather than to give it, and to try to exert individual dominance.

Such qualities are useful in societies with social structures that emphasize personal achievement and where individuals are expected to look out for their own interests.(Haviland, William, "Anthropology" Harcourt College Publishers, 2000, pps 437-452)

The six central dimensions of child rearing identified by Barry et al (1959) and believed to be common to all societies

1. Obedience training: The degree to which children are trained to obey adults.
2. Responsibility training: The degree to which children are trained to take responsibility for subsistence or household tasks.
3. Nurturance training: The degree to which children are trained to care for and help younger siblings and other dependent people.
4. Achievement training: The degree to which children are trained to strive towards standards of excellence in performance.
5. Self-reliance training: The degree to which children are trained to take care of themselves and to be independent of assistance from others in supplying their needs or wants.
6. General independence training: The degree to which children are trained (beyond self-reliance as defined above) toward freedom from control, domination, supervision.