Socialization and social adaptation

The concept of social adaptation

Social adaptation is an integrative indicator of an individual’s state, reflecting his ability and ability to perform social functions, which include:

appropriate perception of the surrounding world and one’s body;
an adequate system of relationships with others, the ability to learn, work, and organize recreation;
adaptability of behavior in accordance with the role expectations of other people.

Social adaptation is the process and result of an individual’s active adaptation to the conditions of a new social environment.

Content of social adaptation: the maximum possible convergence of value orientations and goals of the group and the individual belonging to this group. The individual’s assimilation of traditions, norms, and culture of the group, integration into the role structure of the group.

Socio-psychological adaptation is accompanied by the individual’s adaptation to new conditions, the realization of his interests, aspirations, and needs. Having entered a new social environment, a person becomes a full member of it, develops individuality and asserts himself.

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Socio-psychological adaptation is accompanied by the development of social qualities of behavior, communication, and activity accepted in society, thanks to which the individual realizes his needs, aspirations, and interests.

Signs of social maladjustment

Attention! Despite the complex work of socialization institutions, social adaptation is not always a natural result of the process of growing up. Sometimes a child, having become an adult, from a pedagogical point of view, remains socially unadapted.

Social maladjustment in psychology

Signs of unsuccessful completion of the socialization and adaptation program are:

A person has poor knowledge of the laws of functioning of the market and the socio-economic sphere;
An individual cannot decide on the choice of profession, remaining unemployed for a long time, despite having a professional education;
A person takes an illegal path, acts as a person organizing crimes, and serves time in prison.

Attention! Disabled and elderly people cannot be considered socially maladapted. At one time they were successful in the social environment. Disabled people cannot perform certain functions, but this does not mean that they cannot undergo rehabilitation.

Interdependence of socialization and social adaptation

The processes of socialization and social adaptation are interconnected; they reflect a single process of interaction between the individual and society.

Definition 1

Socialization is the process of an individual’s active reproduction of social experience, realized in activity and communication, the development of the individual under the influence of society, social institutions and agents of socialization. The process of socialization contributes to the development of psychological mechanisms of interaction between the individual and the environment, which are formed in the process of adaptation.

During socialization:

the individual is an object that perceives, assimilates, norms, traditions, roles characteristic of a given society;
formation, development and formation of personality occurs;
ensures the normal functioning of the individual in society;
the individual adapts to society.

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Social adaptation is an important mechanism of socialization. Social transformation is a change in both external social relations and the inner world of a person.

It is necessary to take into account the ambiguous, complex nature of adaptation, the socio-political means that ensure its successful occurrence.

Note 1

An important condition for mass adaptation is the creation of material, economic, social, and organizational conditions that provide the opportunity to adapt to changes, use their positive opportunities, and mitigate emerging difficulties. Macrosocial and macroeconomic transformations must be understandable to the population. Often, for people to adapt, it is enough to create conditions conducive to benefiting from a new situation. A feeling of unadaptability and dissatisfaction to new situations can arise due to the inaccessibility of social and material benefits, due to psychological discomfort, inertia of consciousness, and the unfamiliarity of new forms of life.

Social adaptation is sustainable if there are no serious discrepancies between ideological foundations and private adaptive strategies of different social groups.

Sustainable adaptation to new conditions based on old means and goals is unlikely. With the spontaneous development of adaptive processes in society, the formation of only unstable adaptation is possible.

Social adaptation largely depends on the nature of interaction between society and the individual, which is explained by the discrepancy between the nature of psychological and social changes. The main reason for the delay in adaptive reactions to emerging situations is temporary barriers that impede the implementation of adaptive processes.

Adaptive processes relate to ideological foundations, the change of which involves a long period and is accompanied by changes in the value base of the individual.

If, in the process of life, a person easily develops adaptive strategies that allow him to effectively interact with different social institutions and communities, without coming into conflict with the norms, laws and traditions of society, while maintaining emotional satisfaction and psychological stability, we can talk about adaptation as a fait accompli.

The interaction of a person with society is denoted by the concept of “socialization,” which has an interdisciplinary status and is widely used in pedagogy. However, its content is not stable and unambiguous.

The concept of socialization as a process of complete integration of the individual into the social system, during which its adaptation occurs, developed in the structural-functional direction of American sociology (T. Parsons, R. Merton). In the traditions of this school, socialization is revealed through the concept of “adaptation”.

The concept of adaptation, being one of the central concepts of biology, means the adaptation of a living organism to environmental conditions. This concept was extrapolated into social science and began to denote the process of human adaptation to the conditions of the social environment. This is how the concepts of social and mental adaptation arose, the result of which is the adaptation of the individual to various social situations, micro and macro groups. Using the concept of adaptation, socialization is considered as the process of a person’s entry into a social environment and its adaptation to cultural, psychological and sociological factors.

The essence of socialization is interpreted differently in humanistic psychology, whose representatives are A. Allport, A. Maslow, K. Rogers, etc. In it, socialization is presented as a process of self-actualization of the “I-concept”, self-realization by an individual of his potentials and creative abilities, as a process of overcoming negative environmental influences that interfere with her self-development and self-affirmation. Here the subject is considered as a self-forming and self-developing system, as a product of self-education.

These two approaches are to a certain extent shared by domestic sociologists, psychologists and teachers. Although priority is often given to the first (I.S. Kon, B.D. Parygin, A.V. Mudrik, etc.).

Observations show that these approaches also take place in pedagogical practice, when the role of one of the factors is absolutized: either the social environment or self-education. This absolutization is explained by the fact that many researchers and practitioners do not realize the two-sided nature of socialization (G.M. Andreeva, B.F. Lomov).

Society, in order to reproduce the social system and preserve its social structures, strives to form social stereotypes and standards (group, class, ethnic, professional, etc.), and patterns of role behavior. In order not to be in opposition to society, the individual assimilates this social experience by entering the social environment, the system of existing social connections. The tendency of social typification of personality allows us to consider socialization as a process of adaptation and integration of a person in society through the assimilation of social experience, values, norms, attitudes inherent both in society as a whole and in individual groups.

However, due to its natural activity, a person retains and develops a tendency towards autonomy, independence, freedom, the formation of his own position, and unique individuality. The consequence of this trend is the development and transformation of not only the individual himself, but also society. The tendency towards autonomization of the individual characterizes socialization as a process of self-development and self-realization of the individual, during which not only the actualization of the acquired system of social connections and experience occurs, but also the creation of new ones, including personal, individual experience.

The concept of personal self-development is associated with a process that is aimed at overcoming contradictions in the pursuit of achieving spiritual, physical and social harmony. Self-realization acts as a manifestation of internal freedom, conditioned by awareness of one’s spiritual and physical capabilities, and as adequate self-control in changing social conditions.

Both of these trends of social typification and autonomization of the individual, which explain socialization, remain stable, ensuring, on the one hand, the self-renewal of social life, i.e. society, and on the other hand, the realization of personal potentials, inclinations, abilities, reproduction of spirituality and subjectivity.

So, the essential meaning of socialization is revealed at the intersection of such processes as adaptation, integration, self-development and self-realization. Their dialectical unity ensures optimal personality development throughout a person’s life in interaction with the environment.

Socialization is not a one-time or one-time process. A person lives in a constantly changing social environment, experiences its various influences, is involved in new activities and relationships, and is forced to perform different social roles. This leads to the fact that during his life he acquires new social experience, and also simultaneously reproduces certain social relationships, influencing his environment in a certain way.

Socialization is a continuous process that lasts throughout life. It breaks down into stages, each of which “specializes” in solving certain problems, without which the subsequent stage may not occur, may be distorted or inhibited.

In domestic science, when determining the stages (phases) of socialization, they proceed from the fact that it occurs more productively in work activity. Depending on the attitude towards work activity, the following stages are distinguished:

pre-labor, which includes the entire period of a person’s life before the start of work. This stage, in turn, is divided into two more or less independent periods: early socialization, covering the time from the birth of the child to his entry into school; youth socialization, including education at school, technical school, university, etc.;
labor – covers the period of human maturity. However, the demographic boundaries of this stage are difficult to determine, since it includes the entire period of a person’s working activity;
post-work, which occurs in old age due to the cessation of labor activity (G.M. Andreeva).

Noting that socialization is a continuous process that lasts throughout life, one cannot fail to recognize the particular importance for the development of personality of the working stage, when the main basic values are laid, self-awareness, value orientations and social attitudes of the individual are formed.

In the process of socialization, a person tries on and performs various roles, which are called social. Through roles, a person has the opportunity to express himself, reveal, represent. Based on the dynamics of the roles performed, one can get an idea of those entries into the social world that the individual has gone through. A fairly good level of socialization is evidenced by a person’s ability to enter various social groups organically, without demonstrativeness and without self-deprecation.