The looking-glass self, or how others shape our identities?
In 1902, the American sociologist Charles Cooley came up with the concept of the looking glass self, which he described in his work “Human Nature and the Social Order.” It’s based on the idea of the so-called “reflected appraisals,” which is one of the main psychological theories about how we form opinions of ourselves.
The assumption behind the looking-glass self is quite simple. It states that our self-views form as a result of our perceptions of other people’s opinions of us.
That is, what we learn and know about ourselves comes from others, from the outside world.
This notion is especially applicable to the way children form their self-esteem. For instance, if parents or teachers praise the child for their math skills, s/he will infer that they are good at math, and their confidence will increase.
Most of the time, however, as studies have found, it’s not the real opinions that go into our self-views, but rather — our apprehension of these. Of course, it’s not hard to grasp that these perceptions can be very biased. But nonetheless, the theory states, they have the power to influence the way we see ourselves in a rather big way.
