# Socialization and Professional Identity Business I · Sociology · https://tryals.app/learn/business-i/socialization-and-professional-identity ## How Selves Get Built Nobody is born an accountant or a team player. **Socialization** is the lifelong process by which individuals internalize cultural values, norms, and roles to build a self. **The self is social.** Cooley's **looking-glass self** means we imagine our appearance to others, weigh their judgment, and feel pride or shame based on reflected appraisals. Mead's **generalized other** shows maturity is internalizing the whole community's expectations. | Agent | What it teaches | | --- | --- | | **Family** | First language, norms, and sense of identity | | **School** | **Hidden curriculum**: punctuality, queuing, and obeying impersonal rules | | **Peers** | Status earned among equals | | **Media** | Industrial-scale models of success and aspiration | | **Workplace** | Occupational selves and adult roles | ## Professional & Resocialization **Professional socialization** aims this machinery at an occupation. It uses **anticipatory socialization** to adopt a role's norms before holding it, such as students dressing like bankers. **Resocialization** is the sharp version in **total institutions** like barracks or intense onboarding. It strips old identities via uniforms and schedules to rebuild new ones. > **Pitfall:** Onboarding is identity work, not paperwork. Firms that ignore intentional design get clock-watchers instead of deeply aligned members. ## Practice questions 9 of this lesson's 14 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app. ### 1. Order the stages of becoming a professional. **Answer:** 1. Anticipatory socialization: dressing and talking the part as a student 2. Formal training: courses, certifications, onboarding 3. Informal absorption: learning "how things are really done" from colleagues 4. Internalization: the role’s standards become self-applied 5. Transmission: the veteran now socializes newcomers **Why:** Rehearse, train, absorb, internalize, transmit, the identity assembly line, ending with the product becoming a machine operator. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/business-i/socialization-and-professional-identity/order-the-stages-of-becoming-a-professional ### 2. An MBA student copies executive dress before holding any such job. Why does anticipatory socialisation happen before the role does? A. Because the student has already been given the role informally B. Because dress codes are enforced in business schools C. Because it reduces the cost of the transition once the role arrives D. Because adopting a group's markers is how admission is won **Answer:** D. Because adopting a group's markers is how admission is won **Why:** The signal helps produce the outcome it anticipates. This is also why it reproduces advantage: knowing which markers to adopt is itself learned from proximity to the group. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/business-i/socialization-and-professional-identity/an-mba-student-copies-executive-dress-before-holding-any-such-job ### 3. According to Cooley, the self we experience is substantially built from how we imagine others judge us. **Answer:** True **Why:** The looking-glass self: imagine your appearance to others, imagine their verdict, feel the resulting pride or shame. The mirror is social, which is why a new job, with new mirrors, can noticeably change who you are. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/business-i/socialization-and-professional-identity/according-to-cooley-the-self-we-experience-is-substantially-built ### 4. Complete Goffman’s concept. **Answer:** A **total** institution strips the newcomer’s old identity and rebuilds it through uniforms, schedules, and a new **language**. **Why:** Total institutions control the whole day and the whole self; language replacement — new titles, acronyms, forms of address — is the subtlest tool in the kit. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/business-i/socialization-and-professional-identity/complete-goffmans-concept ### 5. Order Cooley’s looking-glass process as it happens in a salary negotiation. **Answer:** 1. You imagine how your request appears to the manager 2. You imagine the manager’s judgment of it 3. You feel confidence or embarrassment accordingly 4. You adjust your self-presentation for the next exchange **Why:** Imagine, judge, feel, adjust, the mirror loop that runs beneath every high-stakes conversation, usually faster than awareness. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/business-i/socialization-and-professional-identity/order-cooleys-looking-glass-process-as-it-happens-in-a-salary ### 6. Formal curriculum or hidden curriculum? Sort what school teaches. **Answer:** - Formal curriculum: Long division, The history of Rome - Hidden curriculum: Arriving before the bell, Accepting evaluation by strangers, Competing under uniform rules **Why:** The hidden curriculum — punctuality, impersonal evaluation, rule-bound competition — is the part employers rely on most and no diploma mentions. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/business-i/socialization-and-professional-identity/formal-curriculum-or-hidden-curriculum-sort-what-school-teaches ### 7. Match each concept to its author and meaning. **Answer:** - Looking-glass self → Cooley: self built from imagined judgments - Generalized other → Mead: internalizing the community’s expectations - Total institution → Goffman: identity stripped and rebuilt - Anticipatory socialization → Adopting a role’s norms before holding it **Why:** Cooley’s mirror, Mead’s chorus, Goffman’s barracks, and the rehearsal before the part, the theory of how selves are manufactured. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/business-i/socialization-and-professional-identity/match-each-concept-to-its-author-and-meaning ### 8. A first-year consultant starts using the firm’s jargon, wearing its unofficial uniform, and judging her own slides by "what the partners would say." Which concept fits best? A. Resocialization in a total institution B. Ethnocentrism C. Professional socialization D. A personal trouble in Mills’ sense **Answer:** C. Professional socialization **Why:** She has internalized the firm as her generalized other: an invisible partner audits every slide. That is ordinary professional socialization, powerful, voluntary, and mostly unnoticed by the person it rebuilds. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/business-i/socialization-and-professional-identity/a-first-year-consultant-starts-using-the-firms-jargon-wearing-its ### 9. A new nurse learns not just procedures but what counts as a good nurse, and comes to feel discomfort when the standard slips. What has happened? A. Compliance, since the nurse follows the rules to avoid sanctions B. Role conflict between the nurse's personal values and the job C. Internalisation: the norm has become part of the self D. Habituation, in which repeated action becomes automatic without any change in values **Answer:** C. Internalisation: the norm has become part of the self **Why:** The standard is enforced from the inside now, which is why the feeling appears with no supervisor present, compliance ends when observation does. Professional socialisation aims at exactly this transfer, and it is why licensing bodies care about training culture as much as curriculum. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/business-i/socialization-and-professional-identity/a-new-nurse-learns-not-just-procedures-but-what-counts-as-a-good