Social Isolation and Human Development

Socialization is the process through which humans learn the values, behavioral norms, knowledge and skills of their societies. This process teaches humans to be humans in a culturally specific way while reproducing a society's culture. Socialization is necessary for human development because humans are not guided by instincts in the same way that other animals are. For example, instinct might tell a human that he or she is hungry and needs to get out of the cold, but no instinct tells humans exactly what to eat or how to catch and prepare it, and no instinct tells humans how to build shelter. Sociologists believe that socialization cannot occur in isolation; humans need to be socialized by other people to become fully functioning members of their societies. Studies of isolated and institutionalized children suggest that growing up without the cognitive and emotional stimulation provided by other humans can severely stunt a child's development. Sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists and biologists have competing theories explaining why isolation during development is so detrimental to normal functioning. Social psychologists, especially symbolic interactionists, believe that the self is acquired through interaction. Freudian psychologists believe that for the self to develop fully, it must internalize culture by forming a superego that will control the innate biological urges embodied by the id. In contrast, some developmental psychologists and sociobiologists believe that socialization and development of the self are innate stages, perhaps hardwired into our biology.

Keywords Ego; Human Development; I and "Me"; Id; Innate Behavior; Looking-Glass Self; Nature versus Nurture Debate; Social Isolation; Sociobiology; Superego

Socialization > Social Isolation & Human Development

Overview

Socialization is the process through which people learn to be competent in their societies; it therefore teaches people their own society's definition of human behavior while also transmitting the society's idea of culture. Without socialization, there could be no societies. Sociologists believe that socialization is impossible without human contact. Studies of children who have been raised in isolation or confined to institutions suggest that contact with other people, especially contact that provides cognitive, physical and emotional stimulation, are crucial for human development. Studies of animals raised in isolation support these claims. While there is generally agreement that isolation stunts development, the manner in which contact with others influences development is debated by sociologists and other scientists.

What is Socialization?

Socialization is the process through which humans learn the values, behavioral norms, knowledge, and skills of their societies. Socialization serves two important functions for a society; it teaches new members of the society how to act according to social expectations, and it also transmits the society's culture to a new generation. The socialization process is interactive and lifelong — humans never finish the process of mastering new areas of cultural competence and learning new roles. As humans mature, their agents of socialization change. Initially socialization takes place within the family, and later it is continued by schools, religions, peers, the media and the workplace.

Human Nature & Isolation

Humans are less governed by instinct and more governed by culture than other animals. As Geertz (1973) says,

Biological stimuli might tell humans that they need to eat, that they need shelter, or that they are of an age to reproduce, but the knowledge and skills that allow them to accomplish these needs are culturally dictated. Because in many areas of life, humans rely on culture where other animals rely on instincts, socialization is vital to human development and survival. Up for debate, though, is the question of what humans might be without culture. This is referred to as the "nature versus nature" debate, and it considers which human characteristics are innate (inherited, biological, genetic) and which are influenced by interaction with the environment and other humans.

What would a human be like if raised in isolation? This question has intrigued sociologists, biologists, anthropologists and psychologists, yet it of course remains unanswerable since there is no ethical way to conduct isolation experiments on human infants. There is evidence to suggest that humans raised in isolation would lack many of the features that we generally think of as "human." This evidence comes from studies of children who have been raised in extreme isolation, studies of institutionalized children, and studies of isolated animals.

Applications

Isolated & Institutionalized Children

While cases of socially isolated children are rare, a few exist that show the deleterious effects of lack of human contact. One of the earliest documented cases is the "Wild Boy of Aveyron," a boy called Victor found in 1798 when he was seven years old. He was supposedly raised by animals in a rural area of France, and was captured in January of 1800. Modern speculation suggests that he was probably an abandoned child, and might be the first documented case of autism. He died at the age of 40 at an annex of the Paris Institution des Sourds-Muets (Appelbaum & Chambliss, 1997).

One of the most recent cases of isolation to achieve widespread publicity is the case of Genie. Genie was discovered on November 4, 1970. She had been locked in a room by herself, tied to a toilet seat and physically abused by her father for about ten years. When she was discovered, she understood very few words. After she was removed from her home, her mental and physical capacities improved but she never developed a grasp of grammar and sentences and never understood norms of interaction (basic rules about touching, space, and private versus public behavior). Her care after rescue was uneven; she was studied intensively by researchers, but was returned to state care — including placement in an abusive foster home — once funding for her study ran out (Henslin, 2002; Hughes, Kroehler, & Vander Zanden, 2002).

Two of the more famous cases of isolated children — two girls known as Anna and Isabelle — were used by Kingsley Davis (1949, 1993) to illustrate issues involving social isolation. The lives of the girls provide evidence for the need for human contact and also provide a little hope that in some situations children may be able to recover from neglect. Both girls were born to unwed mothers in the early 1930's; the stigma of illegitimacy contributed to each girl's isolation. Anna's mother lived with her own father, who disapproved violently of his illegitimate granddaughter, causing Anna to be moved from unhealthy foster home to unhealthy foster home as an infant. Returned to her mother's home around the age of six months old, she was kept in a bed in an attic and fed only milk. Apparently her mother ignored her and rarely moved or cleaned her. When she was discovered around the age of six years old, she could not walk or talk. After two years spent in various institutions she learned to walk and could comprehend simple words, although she did not speak herself for another two years and her speech never progressed beyond the level of a two-year-old. It is not clear how far her progress would have continued since she died from jaundice when she was ten.

Isabelle's case was remarkably similar, insofar as she was illegitimate and locked in a room for her first six years. However, she had company — her mother who was deaf and mute stayed in the room with her and by all accounts tried to look after her. When she was discovered (as in Anna's case, this happened around the age of six), Isabelle could not talk, was so unresponsive to aural stimuli that people wondered if she could hear, and generally scored at the level of an infant on most tests. However, she made amazing strides toward recovery. Although the specialists working with her first thought that she was hopelessly feebleminded, she was able to reach a normal level of development by the time she was eight and a half years of age.

These four cases suggest that social isolation of children can prevent them from developing the most basic skills needed to function in society. Talking and even walking upright are human traits that need to be learned from others. The differences between the cases — the lack of recovery of Anna, Victor and Genie, compared to Isabelle's remarkable change — raise many questions. It is not clear whether the differences were caused by some innate problems in the former three (some believe that Anna, Genie and Victor were born with mental deficiencies), by the higher quality of Isabelle's post-discovery treatment, or by the emotional nurturing that Isabelle received from her mother, compared to the early neglect and abuse of the other three (Davis, 1949; Henslin, 2002; Hughes, Kroehler, & Vander Zanden, 2002).

One study that supports the claim that emotional nurturing is necessary to human development was conducted by H. M. Skeels and H. B. Dye in the 1930's. These two psychologists questioned why children raised in orphanages had lower IQs and more trouble establishing relationships than children raised in families. Believing that the problem was the lack of emotional and cognitive stimulation found even in the better orphanages, they took thirteen infants who had been labeled severely retarded out of a "good" orphanage and placed them in an institution for mentally retarded women, giving one child to each ward. The children received a high level of attention and cuddling from the women. After two years, when Skeels and Dye compared these infants to a slightly less retarded control group, they found that the infants who had been moved had on average gained 28 points on their IQ tests while the infants left behind lost 30. When the children reached adulthood, these differences became more pronounced — the children who had been raised with more emotional and physical stimulation were much more highly educated, much more likely to be married, and much more likely to hold a job (Henslin, 2002). This study, like Isabelle's case, suggests that isolation is a multi-faceted phenomenon. Even when a child's physical needs are cared for, lack of stimulation and interaction can affect the ability to form bonds and integrate fully into society, and can also negatively affect intelligence.

Animal Studies

Harry and Margaret Harlow (1958) conducted studies with rhesus monkeys raised in isolation. Baby monkeys were given two "mothers" — one made of soft terrycloth, and one mother made of wire that provided food via a baby bottle. When startled by experimenters, the monkeys would run to their cloth mothers instead of their wire mothers, which showed that the "cuddling" -comforting physical contact — not the ability to provide food, was seen as more important by the baby monkeys. In another experiment, the Harlows showed that baby monkeys could recover social skills affected by short periods of isolation, but not from being isolated for more than six months (Harlow, 1958; Henslin 2002).

Viewpoints

Theories of Socialization

The above studies suggest that human contact — socialization into a society — is necessary for proper development. This is a basic point of argument for many sociologists, psychologists and biologists. However, the mechanism through which this development occurs is heavily debated. Most sociologists (especially symbolic interactionists) argue that the self is acquired through interaction with others, psychologists put more emphasis on the unconscious nature of this process, and sociobiologists believe that behavioral patterns have a biological root.

Symbolic Interactionism

Sociologists who study symbolic interaction (a branch of social psychology that explores how people create meanings and socially construct and order their worlds) believe that social interaction is needed to create the self; there can be no social self that arises in isolation. This idea was developed by Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929) through the concept of the looking-glass self. Cooley theorized that people see themselves indirectly, through the reflection of the impressions they make on others. There are three steps to this process: people imagine how they look to others, they imagine the reactions that others have to them, and then they experience some sort of self-feeling about this — pride, shame, satisfaction and so on, which gradually develops their self-concepts.

The idea that the self was developed through interaction with others was further developed by George Herbert Mead (1863-1931). Mead believed that the self is a process, an ongoing conversation between two parts — an "I" and a "me." The "I" — the part of the self that reacts to stimuli, the spontaneous part — is related to consciousness while the "me" -the self-aware part that is responsible for social control — is related to self-consciousness. After it acts, the "I" enters into the awareness of the "me." When the "I" reacts to a situation, it brings out the "me" as the self immediately interprets its own action from the point of view of others. The "I" and the "me" are in constant interaction within the self. Thought is this inner conversation in which the self is the object to itself.

Mead believed that the "I" and the "me" are developed throughout early life. Small children begin to develop selves through play. When playing, children take on the roles of others — firefighters, astronauts, nurses, mothers and fathers — and begin to learn that other people have different perspectives. Children thus learn to see themselves from the viewpoints of others through play. When they have mastered the play stage of development, they move to the game stage. In a game such as softball, participants must not only be able to take the role of others to participate, but they must also be able to have a sense of the viewpoint of every other player on the field simultaneously. They must understand the game's rules and internalize all possible roles that are involved in the game. Mead called this ability to assume the viewpoint of the entire community the acquisition of a "generalized other." Once a child has mastered the game stage and acquired a sense of the generalized other, he or she has developed a social self. For Mead and Cooley, then, development of the self was a social process; in the absence of others, neither the looking glass self not the "I" and "me" could form.

Psychological Theories

Freud & Erikson

Like Cooley and Mead, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) believed that the self developed during interaction with the world. Unlike them, he believed that much of people's response to the world happened on an unconscious level. Freud's theory focused on how a child's personality is developed when he or she is an infant, a process that is the result of the child attempting to control his or her physical urges. In Freud's model the self is divided into three parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. The id is the host for the person's innate biological urges. The ego — the conscious part of the self — assists the individual with understanding the world rationally. The superego develops as children learn to control the oral, anal and phallic impulses of the id — as they learn to eat on a schedule, become toilet trained, and absorb society's restrictions on sexuality. The superego is responsible for providing the person with an understanding of what is acceptable in society and urges the person to value moral and ethical decisions. As with Mead's and Cooley's theories of the self, Freud's theory saw the completed self as being developed through interaction. Unlike the symbolic interactionists, he visualized society as potentially damaging to the budding self.

Freud's work was extended by Erik H. Erikson, who believed that ego development continued throughout the entire life cycle. He separated this development into eight stages of ego development. Each stage presents new problems; if these identity crises are resolved successfully, then the person moves on to the next stage and next crisis. Erikson's eight stages are

1) Trust versus mistrust in infancy,

• 2) Autonomy versus shame and doubt as a toddler,
• 3) Initiative versus guilt in the preschool years,
• 4) Industry versus inferiority from ages 6-13 (approximately),
• 5) Identity formation versus confusion in adolescence,
• 6) Intimacy versus isolation as a young adult,
• 7) Generativity versus self absorption as a mature adult, and
• 8) Integrity versus despair as an older person (Erikson, 1963).

Piaget

Some theorists have given less prominence to the role of society in human development. For example, Jean Piaget (1896-1980) developed a theory that focused less on children's imitation of others as a major factor in socialization. He pointed out that all the children he studied passed through the same phases when they were learning to talk — that is, they made the same sorts of mistakes at the same point in the process, and these mistakes were not the result of imitating adults. This suggests that there are some factors in human development that are innate — the stages of linguistic development in this case. In Piaget's scheme, children first develop sensory-motor intelligence as they learn to deal with the physical world, then progress to intuitive operations as they learn to think creatively and imagine. This is followed by a concrete operational stage in which they learn to think logically, and a formal operational stage in which they learn to think abstractly (Henslin, 2002).

Sociobiologists also place more emphasis on the role of heredity and less emphasis on environment. Some, like Edward Wilson, believe that complex behavioral patterns evolved over time through natural selection (Wilson, 1978). Others focus more narrowly on topic such as the biological basis of gendered behavior.

Terms & Concepts

Ego: Freud's term for the rational part of the self.

Human Development: The study of how people develop on physical, intellectual and social levels.

"I" and "Me": Mead's terms to describe the two parts of the self; the "I" acts, and the "me" is self-aware and judges the "I."

Id: Freud's term for the part of the self that embodies innate biological urges.

Innate Behavior: Behavior which normally occurs in all members of a species even when environmental influences fluctuate.

Looking-Glass Self: Cooley's concept that the self is understood and developed as people imagine how their actions appear to others.

Nature versus Nurture Debate: Debate regarding the importance of heredity and environment in a person's development and socialization process.

Social Isolation: The separation of individuals or groups resulting in the lack of social contact and/or communication.

Sociobiology: Area of sociology that believes that human behavior can be explained at least partially in terms of biology.

Superego: Freud's term for the conscience that develops through socialization and renunciation of urges.

Bibliography

Appelbaum, R., & Chambliss, W. (1997). Sociology: A brief introduction. New York: Longman.

Baker, J. K., Fenning, R. M., & Crnic, K. A. (2011). Emotion socialization by mothers and fathers: Coherence among behaviors and associations with parent attitudes and children's social competence. Social Development, 20, 412–430. Retrieved November 1, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=59953394

Cooley, C.H. (1902). Human Nature and the Social Order. New York: Scribner.

Davis, K. (1940). A case of extreme social isolation of a child. American Journal of Sociology 45: 554-564.

Davis, K. (1949). Human society. New York: Macmillan Company.

Davis, K. (1947). Final note on a case of extreme isolation. American Journal of Sociology 50: 432-437.

Erikson, E. (1963). Childhood and society(2nd ed). New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Freud, S. (1949). An outline of psychoanalysis. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books.

Haas, J., & Shaffir, W. (1978). Shaping identity in Canadian society. Scarborough, Ontario: Prentice-Hall of Canada

Harlow, H. (1958). The nature of love. American Psychologist, 12, 673-685.

Henslin, J.M. (2002). Essentials of sociology (4th ed). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Hughes, M., Kroehler, C.J., & Vander Zanden, J.W. (2002). Sociology: the core. 6th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Killen, M., Mulvey, K., & Hitti, A. (2013). Social exclusion in childhood: A developmental intergroup perspective. Child Development, 84, 772–790. Retrieved November 1, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=87498799

Mead, G.H. (1934). Mind, self and society. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Meyer, D., Wood, S., & Stanley, B. (2013). Nurture is nature: Integrating brain development, systems theory, and attachment theory. Family Journal, 21, 162–169. Retrieved November 1, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=85937130

Wilson, E.O. (1978). On Human Nature. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

Suggested Reading

Cattan, M., White, M., Bond, J., & Learmouth, A. (2005). Preventing social isolation and loneliness among older people: a systematic review of health promotion interventions. Ageing & Society, 25, 41-67.

Freud, S. (1961). Civilization and its discontents. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Hawthorne, G. (2006). Measuring social isolation in older adults: Development and initial validation of the friendship sale. Social Indicators Research, 77, 521-548.

Paik, A., & Sanchagrin, K. (2013). Social isolation in America: An artifact. American Sociological Review, 78, 339–360. Retrieved November 1, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=87909218

Pavlov, I. (1927). Conditioned reflexes: An investigation of the physiological activity of the cerebral cortex. London, England: Oxford University Press.

Pedersen, P., Andersen, P., & Curtis, T. (2012). Social relations and experiences of social isolation among socially marginalized people. Journal of Social & Personal Relationships, 29, 839–858. Retrieved November 1, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=79467069

Watson, J. (1928). The ways of behaviorism. New York, NY: Harper & Brothers Pub.