Response 3

Ralph Papillon

Intro to Sociology – Response 3

Socialization is a process taught in sociology that helps explain the formation of our own personalities. Attitudes, behaviors, values, and norms are all part of the process in which we are socialized. Ultimately socialization is how different aspects of society ends up forming our individual personalities. The aspects of society that help do this are: families, schools, peer groups, workplaces, religion, government, mass media, and technology.

In the last two days I have been exposed to a plethora of media that has attempted to socialize me. The first media that I was able to take note of were several insurance commercials I have seen such as State Farm, Geico, and Progressive. All of them socialized the norm of the importance of finding cheap insurance to me. Although I myself do not pay for car insurance yet, seeing these commercials makes the experience of viewing auto insurance commercials as anticipatory socialization. A sanction that can be observed with Progressive Auto Insurance is their accident forgiveness policy. The formal norm that would be performed for this sanction is having avoided accidents for a period of time. The positive sanction for this formal norm of driving safely would be getting much lower insurance rates. Since Auto insurance commercials are found so frequently on televisions across most channels, I consider owning auto insurance to be an informal norm, it is simply expected that everyone would have it.

Another way media socialized me was a cell phone advertisement through a best buy commercial. The commercial was advertising the use of 4G enabled phones and the many uses it could have when you are on the go. Some of the additional uses that the advertisement mentioned were watching sports, browsing the internet, and using a GPS. Even if I did not plan on owning one of those phones, I would simply accept it as a norm to see someone using one of those phones. If I never saw advertisements socializing the idea of 4G enabled phones, I would find it strange to meet people who were using those phones, maybe even feel a bit culture shocked because the idea would be so strange to me. The rapid growth of smartphones can be viewed as a subculture since the devices affect the lives of the owners in some ways. Right now 4G phones are not owned by many people but slowly the phones will be diffused over to all phone users as it becomes more popular.

Another interesting advertisement I observed from a sociological stand point was a new exercise machine called The Rack. The commercial emphasized the importance of helping the consumer get the body they want, abs and more muscle throughout their body. This ad shows that a lot of people probably put a lot of value on their own physique and the creators of The Rack are targeting that mindset.

Direct TV, Sunday ticket promotion is an advertisement that shows an obvious subculture. The promotion allowed customers to have access to Sunday games that are not even playing in their region. The subculture that can be observed from the commercial is the religion-like fanaticism of Sunday football. The norm within this subculture is the big hype of Sunday football games. The norm of watching football every Sunday falls under the category of a folkway. It is simply expected that all football enthusiasts will be watching a game on Sunday.