Summary 5

The looking glass self: An empirical test and elaboration
King-To Yeung, John Levi Martin. Social Forces. Chapel Hill: Mar 2003. Vol. 81, Iss. 3; pg. 843, 37 pgs
This article stresses the causes behind the looking-glass self. It tries to hypothesize and make generalizations based on tests. Researchers tested the hypothesis made by Charles Cooley and Mead which was “that one's self-perceptions are an internalization of the perceptions of the views of others.” They used a great amount of network data consisting of information from about 56 naturally occurring communities. During the study, researchers discovered that there is common argument associated with symbolic interactionism which is that the self is a result of the social process whereby we learn to see ourselves as others do. Cooley argued that we are influenced by those whom we see as "ascendant" over us: "In the presence of one whom we feel to be of importance there is a tendency to enter into and adopt, by sympathy, his judgment of ourself.”