How Selves Get Built
Nobody is born an accountant, a negotiator, or even a 'team player.' Socialization is the lifelong process by which people internalize their culture's values, norms, and roles — and build a self out of them.
The agents, in rough order of appearance:
- Family: first language, first norms, first sense of what people like us do.
- School: beyond curriculum, the hidden curriculum — punctuality, queuing, being graded, obeying impersonal rules. School is a rehearsal for bureaucracy.
- Peers: the first sphere where status must be earned among equals.
- Media: models of success, consumption, and aspiration, on industrial scale.
- Workplace: the adult chapter — and business's home turf.
The self is social. Cooley's looking-glass self: we imagine how we appear to others, imagine their judgment, and feel pride or shame accordingly — the self is assembled from reflected appraisals. Mead added the generalized other: maturity is internalizing not one judge but the whole community's expectations.
Professional socialization is the same machinery aimed at an occupation: the medical student learns detachment, the consultant learns the deck-speak, the trainee auditor learns professional skepticism. It proceeds through anticipatory socialization (adopting the role's norms before holding it — the student already dressing like a banker), formal training, and informal absorption from colleagues.
Resocialization is the sharp version: total institutions (Goffman) — barracks, monasteries, and to a degree intense corporate onboarding programs — strip the old identity (uniforms, schedules, new language) and rebuild a new one.
Key idea: The self = internalized others + rehearsed roles.
The managerial insight: onboarding is not paperwork — it is identity work. Firms that design it deliberately get members; firms that don't get employees who happen to badge in.
The agents of socialization
| Agent | What it teaches |
|---|---|
| Family | First language, first norms, first identity |
| School | The hidden curriculum: rules, grading, queuing |
| Peers | Status earned among equals |
| Media | Models of success and aspiration at scale |
| Workplace | Occupational selves — the adult chapter |
Tip: Onboarding a new hire is textbook socialization: symbols (badge, laptop), rituals (first stand-up), language (the acronyms), sanctions (the look when you're late). Design it deliberately — it happens anyway.