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The Influence Of Perceived Youth Culture On Social Orientation Of Undergraduates
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1.1 Theoretical
Background Several theories explain what influences social
orientation of youths in our institutions of learning and the society at
large. Some of these theories will offer the theoretical basis of this
study. They include: consensus, conflict and interactionist theories of
youth culture and symbolic interaction and social influence theories as
related to the youths social orientation. The symbolic-interaction
theory by Mead (1990) assumes that social interaction can best be
understood by studying humans, because people evidently possess the
ability to think, reason and plan, which is not possessed by other
animals. Thus, the theory calls attention to cognitive processes and
therefore has a psychological base. The approach is likewise very
sociological in that one of its major concerns is to understand the
cooperative dimensions of human social behaviour, which was the essence
of society. The theory further suggests that people mentally explore the
possible reactions of others to specific behaviours and uses this
information to decide how to act toward other people. However, the self
is a central concept here. People can interact with themselves just as
they do, with others. This explains why we have the ‘crowd’ and ‘gang’
amongst the youth whose function according to Nwachukwu (1993) is its
provision of a group identity for the individual adolescents
– the ‘we’ feeling which separates him/her from the parents of the family. Social influence theory
– The Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) according to Aaron (1994) proposes that human behaviour is influenced by two factors:
- attitudes towards the behaviour
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the influence of social environment and general subjective norms on the
behaviour. Social norms are determined by examples that significant
others set for us and by the attitudes they convey to us. However,
according to Lewin in Turner (1991), group decision studies once showed
how difficult it is to change individuals behaviour in isolation from
the norms they share as group members. He further said that we develop
attitudes toward behaviour and understand social, norms through
learning. Social influence or interaction between people who are related
to each other psychologically as members of positive reference groups
or culture gives rise to shared social norms in relevant areas. Early
studies in youth culture were mainly produced by functionalist
sociologists, and focus on youth as a single form of culture. In
explaining the development of the culture, they utilized the concept of
anomie. Parsons (1994) argued that as we move from one pattern of
behaviour to another (from the family to work, for example) the concept
of ‘anomie’ comes into play. He further added that though the family
group is the primary unit of socialization in the society, the behaviour
learnt within the family group is unlikely to be considered appropriate
in other social groups (such as education or work). This is because the
values and norms we learn during childhood within the family are not
totally appropriate to the norms we need to display in later life in
other institutions. And this brings about an “anomic situationâ€
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]The study examined the influence of youth culture on the social orientation of adolescents in University of Lagos, Akoka Lagos.The descriptive research survey was employed to assess the opinions of the respondents. A total of 120 (one hundred and twenty) students were sampled for this study.Four null hypotheses were formulated and tested using the t-test and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) at 0.05 level of significance.At the end of the analyses, the following conclusions were reached: Hypothesis o ... Continue reading---
