Socializing

Socialization of attitudes and values among young people in Finland

HELENA HELVE

The socialization process and the formation of attitudes and values

Youth studies encompass attitudes, leisure-time activities, social and geographical mobility and youth culture. The perspectives are numerous, as are the theories behind the investigations. In the 1960s the attitudes and values or the worldviews of young people were not yet studied generally. In Finland the first psychological studies in this field were made in the 1970s, when Maijaliisa Rauste von Wright carried out a comparative study of the worldviews of young people (see the summary report, Rauste-von Wright, 1987). Erja Nyman (1982) wrote her dissertation in psychology on the values of the young. Kalevi Tamminen was interested in the views of life of the young and the underlying attitudes and values from the point of view of religious pedagogy (see summary, Tamminen, 1988). In the early 1980s Annika Takala led a project entitled 'Education and the forming of the worldview' at the University of Joensuu. The results of my follow-up study of the world views of young people were published as my doctoral dissertation in 1987 (Helve, 1987; see also Helve, 1989).

The process of socialization is studied within anthropological, educational, psychological, and sociological frames of reference where socialization theories differ from each other. Sociological reseach focuses on socialization in the context of society; cultural anthropology on how the culture is transformed from one generation to another, and social psychology focuses on socialization as an interaction process. The developmental psychologist's interest is in socialization as a developing process in young people. Socialization involves both society at large and maintenance of membership in salient groups. It must be looked at from the perspective of society and its groups, as well as that of the individual.

In today's industrial and post-industrial...