Question

Discuss Charles Cooley concept of “Looking class self” as it relates to the elderly.

Answer 1

Charles Cooley came up with “Looking Glass Self” in the early 1900s. He was a sociologist and was primarily concerned in studying the behaviour of individuals and their interactions with the world around them. This particular concept refers to how a person observes and understands himself through the eyes of others. Imagine a person standing in front of 3 mirrors placed next to each other. Though the person is realistically looking at the same image( of himself) in all 3 mirrors, his concept of how he looks at himself changes with regard to who he thinks is looking at him. For example, he might define himself differently in terms of how he thinks his parents think of him compared to what his friends think of him. It is important to note here that it depends on his personal subjectivity and not necessarily what the other person really thinks of him. A series of experiments on children were conducted to show how a persons behaviour changes based on the person who is looking at him or even when he introspects himself. This concept starts developing from as young as social interactions themselves start at. For example, if parents raise their child with a concept that he is a very smart child, and keep giving him reassurances of the same, the child would end up believing that he is indeed smart. Similiarly, it can go the other way if the parenrs label the child as dumb and the child ends up that even if in reality it is the contrary. As a result, the social context that we adhere to can actually be more of an illusion than a reality. By experiencing so many interactions as we keep growing up, we emerge as the person that society portrays us to be when we become elderly. It is at that point that true self introspection happens to see whether this portrayed illusion is actually indeed the reality. However, if a person even at this elderly stage does not have a realistic innerlook of himself, he would still be subjected to the looking glass self.