For interactionists society consists of people interacting with one another. To understand society we must understand social interaction.
Charles Horton Cooley was one of the founders of what sociologists refer to as the interactionist perspective. In Cooley’s view, we are not born with a self, nor does the self emerge merely because we mature biologically. Instead, the self is a social product. It develops through our interactions with other people. According to Cooley, an important dimension of these interactions involves people’s ideas of how others view them or their behavior. He coined the term looking-glass self to refer to the process through which we develop our sense of self based upon the reactions of other people to ourselves or our actions. There are, Cooley maintained, three basic steps in the “looking-glass” process. First, we imagine how our selves or our behavior appear to other people. We may feel pride if we imagine a good evaluation or shame if we think that it is bad. We engage in this process continuously. Thus, every time we are aware of someone reacting to us in any way as smart or dumb, nice or mean that person either reinforces or contradicts our concept of ourselves. In this way, our self-concepts are developed and then maintained or changed.
Cooley reasoned that some elements of our self-concepts, such as our sexual identity and our sense of self-worth, are formed during childhood and remain fairly stable throughout life. For such elements, the development of self is more important in childhood than at other times in our lives. Nevertheless, Cooley emphasized that the looking-glass process functions throughout the life span. Every time we enter a new social situation, develop new social relationships, or take on new statuses, the reactions of others influence our self concepts.
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