The Looking-Glass Self
Charles Horton Cooley’s The Looking-Glass Self elucidates that we can see ourselves by imagining how others see us. It explains that the reactions and apparent judgments of other people against us provide us the feedback about ourselves in which we develop our sense of self. Thus, self-image is created in the social arena because of the interaction between how we see ourselves and how others see us.
The social-self, on the other hand, is simply an idea or system of ideas pinch from the communicative life that the mind cherishes as its own. Self-feeling has its principal span within the general life. The emotional aspect of self-feeling finds its prime field of exercise in a world of personal forces. These personal forces are reflected in the mind by the world of personal impressions.
Looking-Glass Self has three elements. First is our imagination how we seem to appear to others. Second is the thought of how that appearance is judged by others. And lastly is the feeling or the reaction we experience on that perceived judgment.
Our feeling and reaction from that professed conclusion is not from us. It is from the way the other people think against us or the way we are reflected in their minds. This is then projected in how we see ourselves and how we behave.
Furthermore, we modify our actions to fit with that imagined judgment that is being reflected to us. We see our selves through the eyes of other people and we incorporate their views against us into our own self image. Then, we act accordingly.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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