Looking Glass Self
Reflection Activity
9/10
Good focus on your feelings as a result of others actions. In order for you to become good at this game, you had to first imagine yourself as you wanted to appear to the group. Then, people reacted to you. Finally, these reactions produced a good, competent feeling.
Directions: Answer the Pre-Reading questions using Chapter 5 Section 2 Guided Reading Notes. When finished, read the article The Looking Glass Self: Who Holds Our Reflections. Read the short article and answer the Guided Reading questions. Finally, write a response to the journal activity.
Pre-Reading:
1. According to Charles Horton Cooley, how do people develop their personality?
We develop personality or self-based on how we think other perceive us.
2. What are the steps in this process?
1. Imagine how we want to appear to other.
2. Looking at how other react to our actions.
3. We react to our assumptions of how people judge/perceives us.
The Looking Glass Self; Who Holds Our Reflections?
An interesting discussion is about the theory of the Looking Glass Self by Charles Horton Cooley. Cooley thought that an individual and society do not exist separately, but rather the individual is the product society and society is the product of the individual. There are three parts to the concept; how a person thinks the other(s) perceives him, how the person thinks the other(s) judges that perception, and the reaction of the person to the assumed perceptions and judgments.
I can imagine what a group of diverse people sitting around discussing this may argue, both for and against the theory. What a lively debate it could be, mixing young and old, liberal and conservative, and experienced and inexperienced into the same group. Ah, how many of those individuals, I wonder, would have dressed to convey an image to the others, would speak in certain manners in order to impress or distress, or would consider what the importance of their...