Understanding Psychosocial Processes, Socialization, and Personality

Posted on Mar 12, 2025 in Psychology and Sociology

The Individual and Psychosocial Processes

  1. The Individual as a Subject of Psychosocial Processes
  2. The social groups we belong to influence our personality.
  3. Psychosocial ideas are acquired socially.
  4. A key difference between humans and other animals is that our approach to reality is shaped by the culture and society we are part of. Our identity as individuals is formed within the context of the group.
  5. There are two types of realities:
    • External Reality: The things that surround us, that we can see and feel (not directly linked to us).
    • Inner Reality: What we think about the things around us (subjective reality) is more important than the external or objective reality. These are our values, ideas, tastes, and interests, and they are more real to us than the material world. Our actions are driven by our thoughts.
  7. Our culture determines how we think.
  8. Socialization is the process by which an individual internalizes their social environment.
  9. The family is our most important social influence.

Socialization and Culture

  1. Socialization and Culture
  2. There are three views that define the word “culture”:
    • Humanistic or Aesthetic: This view suggests that an individual or group is esteemed when they excel in the arts and humanities (development of the spirit, inner development of man). According to this view, some groups are more cultured than others.
    • Sociological: This view defines culture as the knowledge that an individual or group possesses and how they apply it to manage their quality of life. It also suggests that some individuals are more educated than others.
    • Anthropological: Culture is the way of life of an individual or group, meaning everyone has a culture. This view is applied in municipalized education. Managing common symbolism is the definition of culture (cultural groups), including common language and shared values.
  4. Socialization: the transmission of culture, is an educational process.
  5. Personal identity is how you identify yourself or perceive yourself, as socially acquired, making it difficult to be authentic.
  6. Two types of socialization:
    • Primary Socialization: This is the first and most important stage. The family imparts language, dress, values, habits of cleanliness, obligations, and the importance of fighting for our rights.
    • Secondary Socialization: This begins when we start going to school. We learn the lifestyle of our colleagues and our school. We learn to be more sociable, dress differently, adopt new hairstyles, and are influenced by the neighborhood, television, newspapers, magazines, and religion.
  2. Socialization is a lifelong process.

Personality Development

  1. Personality
  2. It encompasses all that we are: our thoughts, feelings, intelligence, tastes, motivations, and values.
  3. There is a classical theory of personality.
  4. It belongs to Allport and is considered classical because it is one of the earliest.
  5. It posits that each of us is a combination of two things: temperament and character. Everyone has a temperament, while character is learned.
  6. Temperament is our instinctive, animalistic nature that we cannot control, driven by the pursuit of pleasure.
  7. We learn patterns of behavior.
  8. Sigmund Freud conducted many studies in personality theory, emphasizing the importance of sexuality (psychoanalytic theory).
  9. He proposed that sexuality exists from birth, such as when a baby puts their finger in their mouth, or in our adult behaviors, which Freud attributes to the unconscious and sexual pleasure.
  10. He believed we have a conscious and a subconscious, with the unconscious determining the conscious. He placed great importance on the sexual aspect (unconscious), stating that our personality is largely determined by libido, the sexual energy that emerges in adolescence.
  11. Erik Erikson, a disciple of Freud, realized that our great struggle is learning from an early age that we cannot do everything we want in our society. The social conflicts we face throughout our lives, and how we resolve them, determine our personality. Society imposes brakes on our desires.