LOOKING-GLASS SELF THEORY

 

LOOKING-GLASS SELF

 

Charles Cooley was a sociologist who was born in 1864. He attended the University of Michigan, while he got his undergraduate degree in engineering. He returned later to study sociology. In 1918, he served as the president of the American Sociological Association. Cooley is most famous for his theory of the looking-glass self.

What Is the Looking-Glass Self?

The concept of the looking-glass self can be understood through three main concepts that all relate to how we create our self-image.

The term looking glass self was created by American sociologist Charles Horton Cooley in 1902, and introduced into his work Human Nature and the Social Order.

It is described as our reflection of how we think we appear to others. To further explain would be how oneself imagines how others view him/her. 

An example would be one's mother would view their child as flawless, while another person would think differently. Cooley takes into account three steps when using "the looking glass self".

Step one is how one imagines one looks to other people.

Step two is how one imagines the judgment of others based on how one thinks they view them.

Step three is how one thinks of how the person views them based on their previous judgments.

 

THREE MAIN COMPONENTS

He, looking-glass self comprises three main components that are unique to humans .

• Ø We imagine how we must appear to others in a social situation.
• Ø We imagine and react to what we feel their judgment of that appearance must be.
• Ø We develop our sense of self and respond through these perceived judgments of others.

The result is that individuals will change their behavior based on what they feel other people think about them, even if not necessarily true.

In this way, social interaction acts as a "mirror" or a "looking-glass," since one's sense of self and self esteem is built off of others.

 For example, an individual may walk into a job interview with confidence and attempt to display this confidence. A person in this situation most often examines the reactions of the interviewers to see if they are positively or negatively reacting to it. If the individual notices positive reactions, such as nodding heads or smiles, this might further develop the individual's sense of self-confidence. If the individual notices negative reactions, such as a lack of interest, this confidence in self often becomes shaken and reformed in order to better oneself, even if the perceived judgments were not necessarily true.

Reference 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking-glass_self