receiving other messages through play. Besides how to work an electronic device, what other messages might this child be learning?
© iStock.com/quintanilla
A baby is born with the potential to develop a self, the main product of the socialization process. Fundamentally, self refers to the perceptions we have of who we are. This process starts at birth. Throughout the socialization process, our self develops largely from the way others respond to us—praising us, disciplining us, ignoring us, and so on. The development of the self allows individuals to interact with other people and to learn to function at each level of the social world.
Humans are not born with a sense of self. It develops gradually, beginning in infancy and continuing throughout adulthood as we interact with others. Individual biology, culture, and social experiences all play a part in shaping the self. The hereditary blueprint each person brings into the world provides broad biological outlines, including particular physical attributes, temperament, and a maturational schedule. Each person is also born into a family that lives within a particular culture, illustrating that nature is shaped by nurture. This hereditary blueprint, in interaction with family and culture, helps create each unique person, different from any other person yet sharing the types of interactions by which the self is formed.
Most sociologists, although not all, believe that we humans are distinct from other animals in our ability to develop a self and to be aware of ourselves as individuals or objects (Irvine 2004). Consider how we refer to ourselves in the first person—I am hungry, I feel foolish, I am having fun, and I am good at basketball. We have a conception of who we are, how we relate to others, and how we differ from and are separate from others in our abilities and limitations. We have an awareness of the characteristics, values, feelings, and attitudes that give us our unique sense of self (W. James [1890] 1934; G. Mead [1934] 1962).
Thinking Sociologically
Who are some of the people who have been most significant in shaping your self at different stages in your life? How have their actions and responses helped shape your self-concept as musically talented, athletic, intelligent, kind, assertive, clumsy, or any of the other hundreds of traits that might make up your self?
The Looking-Glass Self and Role-Taking
Ty: “Hi! What’s up?” (Ty has had his eye on this girl in his class, so he approaches her before class.)
Valerie: “Nothin’ much.”
Ty: “So what do you think of our sociology class?”
Valerie: “It’s OK.” (She turns around, spots a friend, and walks away.) “Hey Julie, did you get your soc assignment done?”
Ty is left to reflect on how to interpret Valerie’s response. Take this common interaction and apply it to interactions you have had. First you approach someone and open a conversation (or someone approaches you); second, the person takes you up on the conversation—or not; third, you evaluate the individual’s response and modify your behavior based on your interpretation. These steps make up the process called the looking-glass self, and they are repeated many times each day. We now explore these seemingly simple interactions that are key to developing our self through the socialization process.
The looking-glass-self idea is part of symbolic interaction theory and offers important insights into how individuals develop the self. Two of the major scholars in this approach were Charles H. Cooley ([1909] 1983) and George Herbert Mead ([1934] 1962). Cooley believed that the self is a social product, shaped by interactions with others from the time of birth. He likened interaction processes to looking in a mirror, whereby each person reflects an image of the other.
Each to each a looking-glass
Reflects the other that doth pass (Cooley [1909] 1983:184; Emerson, 1904).
For Cooley ([1909] 1983), the looking-glass self is a reflective process that develops the self based on our interpretations and on our internalization of the reactions of others ([1909] 1983). In this process, Cooley believed there are three principal elements, shown in Figure 4.1: (1) We imagine how we appear to others, (2) others judge our appearance and respond to us, and (3) we react to that feedback. We experience feelings such as pride or shame based on what we imagine this judgment of others means, and respond based on our interpretation. Moreover, throughout this process, we actively try to manipulate other people’s view of us to serve our needs and interests. This is one of the many ways we learn to be boys or girls—the image we see reflected back to us lets us know whether we have behaved in socially acceptable ways according to gender expectations in our social setting. The issue of gender socialization in particular is discussed in Chapter 9. Of course, this does not mean our interpretation of the other person’s response is correct, but our interpretation does determine how we respond.
Thinking Sociologically
Think about a recent conversation you had with someone you don’t know well. What might be several interpretations of that interaction?
▼ Figure 4.1 The Looking-Glass-Self Process of Self-Development
Our self is influenced by the many “others” with whom we interact, and our interpretations of their reactions feed into our self-concept. Recall that the isolated children failed to develop this sense of self precisely because they lacked interaction with others, and the kidnapped girls had negative socialization experiences during captivity.
Taking the looking-glass-self idea a step further, Mead explained that individuals take others into account by imagining themselves in the position of that other, a process called role-taking. When children play mommy and daddy, doctor and patient, or firefighter, they are imagining themselves in another’s shoes. Role-taking allows humans to view themselves from the standpoint of others. This requires mentally stepping out of our own experience to imagine how others experience and view the social world. Through role-taking, we begin to see who we are from the standpoint of others. In short, role-taking allows humans to view themselves as objects, as though they were looking at themselves through the eyes of another person. For some individuals, role-taking helps develop empathy for others—the bullied student, the homeless person on the street, the person with a disability. For Mead, role-taking is a prerequisite for the development of our sense of self.
The Sociology in Our Social World above describes a situation experienced by Brent Staples, an African American journalist. It illustrates the relationship between our development of self through the looking-glass self and role-taking, and stereotypes. Many stereotypes—rigid images of members of a particular group—surround young African American males in the United States. Think about the human cost of stereotypes and their effect on the socialization process as you read the essay. If one’s sense of self is profoundly influenced by how we see others respond (the looking-glass self) and one’s ability to role-take by imagining oneself in another’s shoes, how might the identity of a young African American boy be affected by news reports and public images of Black males?
Sociology in Our Social World
Black Men and Public Space
By Brent Staples
