The Looking Glass Self, By Charles Cooley

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Culture and socialization are key aspects that make an ideal society. Culture is what gives new generations a framework of what the morals and norms are within any society there is. Socialization is also a very important part of an ideal society as it connects individuals with others outside of their families. These teach individuals how to effectively communicate and interact with others. Socialization will help individuals to expand on their cultural beliefs and helps them learn good behaviors. However, through socialization and cultural standards, the individuals will learn sanctions like the social control that will in most cases stir them in the right direction of what an ideal society wants. In an ideal society, cultural beliefs will be respected and subcultures and …show more content…

The looking glass self is a concept by Charles Cooley that has three steps. The first step is how an individual imagines how they appear to others, secondly, they imagine what judgments people have of them based on their appearance, and the third is how they imagine what a person feels by the judgments that were made about them (Vogt Isaksen, 2012). Basically, individuals will conform to how they think others see them. For example, if a parent or family member constantly degrades a child, the child will start to believe that they are not worthy of anything and vice versa. George Mead believed in the study of “self” that a person will learn through social interactions (Keirns et al., 2015). Meads believed that this is a learned process and that children learn it through imitation. In doing this it will lead the way for an individual to be able to view the world from different perspectives and to help them become self-aware. Cooley and Mead’s theories believe that through socialization individuals will develop who they will become and what cultural beliefs they will

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