hi everyone and welcome back to our lecture this week on socialization I'm going to cover some of the overview of socialization some of the different theoretical perspectives of socialization but it is a lifelong study because we're constantly shifting and evolving as human beings how we socialize different methods of socializing you know when I was growing up we didn't have cell phones or social media or computers so our socialization was actually going out and climbing trees and throwing the ball around and doing chores and hanging out at friends houses and talking and making up games and driving people crazy in today's world you have young people that are almost entirely before Corona even almost entirely online their socialization process especially after the first few years of formative years is all done through a video game or a little box that we look at which is called our phone I've seen parents hand their toddlers a iPhone to entertain them to serve as a babysitter well oftentimes that's one of their first exposures to the outside world I mean really interactively and so a lot of that socialization process what they call their friends is how many people they have in their Facebook account or how many people they uh play video games with online those are their friends and I'm I'm not saying that one is better than the other you know you get some old school tradition directed individuals who say well you know kids should be falling out of trees and breaking their arms that's a normal growing up okay don't break your arm and other people are saying it's perfectly fine they're actually interacting with people from all over the world they're interacting with hundreds and hundreds of people that they may never have an opportunity to meet and interact even if it is online and so you get all these different arguments well where do those arguments come from a different socialization that we uh arrived at or that we were taught throughout our life older folks you know saying no I don't want to accept this new way of socialization or it's not the best way for kids to socialize are kind of stuck in that era where people who are kind of pro the next Greatest Latest thing they're focused differentially on technology because that's the world they grew up in it was normal to grow up for many of you who had your phone before you know your parents had a cell phone before you were even born I don't remember when cell phones came out you know publicly about 20 25 years ago we didn't even have texting texting did not exist until about 11 12 years ago on the mass scale that it is today and yet we've had to learn a new language how we interact with one another so not only my point is and sorry I'm not trying to digress too far but my point is not only are we constantly re-socializing and socializing to the world around us but it is also in terms of everything that we have experienced up till now and that then tells us what is acceptable unacceptable the Norms the values language all these kind of things that we've been talking about so far in the semester and so in sociology we don't necessarily there's a right or wrong way but we have very definitive viewpoints one of the first viewpoints is the argument between nature and nurture and you might have heard this before you've probably had a high school teacher even a middle school teachers brought it up but I'm going to cover it just briefly again because it's really it's it's one of those chicken or the egg who came first kind of an argument it's an unwinnable argument but you have two very diametrically opposed uh positions that the biologists and and and physiologists and people like that you know in the so-called heart Sciences which we've already discussed that they're everything's nature nature in this sense just simply means that which is hereditary so that which is based on our DNA that which is based on our hormone levels that those things that are instinctual or reflexive in our life as you saw on that last homework so from their perspective and I encourage you to listen I really do don't just take sociology for it I encourage you to look at all different theories out there and decide for yourself but the nature argument says men or men because that's the way we're born women are women that's the way they are born and so there is a distinct difference between a woman being more emotional or nurturing and a man being more stoic and competitive and aggressive and it's all tied to our biology there is no real influence to society around us not ultimately and what it boils down to is if you have a differentiation between differences of men and differences of women or something like that and I don't mean between men and women I mean among women or among men if there's differences that exist is because they have a different level of hormone influence or a different a brain chemistry or a different genetic mapping that's caused them to behave in a certain way okay well it's a perfectly valid argument and they spent years arguing with those particularly in the social sciences who say absolutely everything is nurture absolutely everything and that's the sociological framework nurture says we're born a blank slate yes there is hormones obviously and there's a difference in genitalia but the brain develops based upon our interaction all those neural connections that we see are hereditary in the nature argument it depends on our interactions because if you don't interact we do not develop the synapses to uh create the ability to have language to be able to comprehend that that from the moment even before we're born these connections are made you will find supporters of this say play music to your unborn child while still in the womb um talk to your child they hear the voice they hear the tone they don't understand language obviously but they hear the tone they become familiar with a sound so that way when that child is born into the world then it has that beginning recognition well that didn't happen out of just sheer nature according to Sociology because if you don't talk to your child if you don't let them hear your tone they come out not recognizing who's daddy who's mommy who's anything well obviously Mommy because they were in the tummy and they heard mommy talking all the time um but my point is that they don't have any kind of a quote-unquote instinct to turn towards that which they recognize even that was part of their socialization of course nature says no no they're going to turn to a vocal sound and that sound is going to cause them to look over towards that and then make that recognition based on pheromones based upon some genetic connection a genetic history um you know you came as an offspring from this individual so that a child will recognize that individual nurture says not really uh Robin Williams he said it very very well a long time ago you know insert your deity bless his soul one of my favorite actors and comedian of all time he said it one time I loved when my kid first started calling me dada and I was so proud that he started calling me Daddy he looked up at me with those great big eyes and he said dada and then he turned to the dog and he said dada was it instinctual or was it learned that's the position of the nurture argument that everything everything is taught to us it's our interpretation as I've been talking about all these lectures that everything even our understanding of life and death is our interpretation of when life begins and when life ends and that's constantly shifting and evolving we have a consensus View of when somebody dies and I'm not trying to be morbid here we have a consensus view that the body anyway dies when there's no brain activity or when the heart stops bumping how do we know how do we know that there isn't a soul how do we know that that Essence whether you want to look at it from a religious uh Viewpoint or just a secular Viewpoint how do we know that that Consciousness that makes you you and me me isn't still existing whether it's in nature whether it's in an afterlife whether we don't know we cannot definitively even say what death is we have our consensus Viewpoint of what death is nature argument says when death occurs but can we prove it you know I always use an argument just to make us think not to try to convince anybody of anything but just to make us think they have actually done studies of uh and I'm sorry I'm really not trying to be morbid today folks but it serves a really good example because death is one of the biggest fears it's a universal in every ethnicity every social class throughout history because it is so unknown did you know that they have actually taken people who are they're going to die they're they're a death's door they're dying of natural causes they're you know sick and so forth and on that hospital table they have had um like uh because you can't move a person who's dying you know very deathly illness cancer or something you can't move them over to take their weight and so they have underneath all the bedding and the padding and everything that they have a scale and scientists have actually measured what happens at that second of death at that millisecond of death what happens with that body now obviously they've had them on the scale to measure their weight to make sure if they need some more nutrition you know because the body is struggling and so forth again sorry I'm not trying to be morbid um but what they found is right at that moment of death the weight of that person changes now it's only a change of about a pound a little less than a pound but where's the change come from the body expires and yet at that moment of the body expiring it isn't just release of air and it isn't release of bodily fluids or anything like that because it's still on the table the weight Still Remains the Same they already knew what all the blankets and all this and all that weighed before the person passed why did that person's weight change the moment that they arrived at what we would determine that store you stop breathing heart stopped functioning brain wave stopped why was there a change of about a pound difference some have said maybe that's the soul leaving the body maybe it's a release of the Consciousness if you don't believe in a soul but there is a definitive scientific evidence noetic science is the one that really really focuses part of noetic Sciences really looks at some of this stuff and much more so than sociology I'm just using this as an example if that holds true and we're talking totally theoretical here if that holds true then even death is a social definition because we just don't know now if we're ever able to conclude what causes that shift and that change wouldn't our understanding of death also change so even something and I know it is morbid but even if something is seemingly finite and definitive and understandable according to the nature argument because it's biological there's so much we still don't even know because we only have the knowledge that we've learned according to the nurture argument everything that we see the world around us everything that is what matters or doesn't matter everything that holds a value or doesn't hold a value every definition that we have comes because of our interaction with the world around us and that's what the nurture argument suggests because that's what's given to us over our life courts and we pass it on and then we arrive perhaps in a new discovery and then it changes and it filters out to the rest of the populace which then socializes the populace think about the way we think about medicine today versus the medicine 500 years ago and we thought that the person who was sick was inhabited by evil spirits most people today would say Noah virus is a virus is not an evil spirit it may seem pretty evil it may feel like it's attacking us but it's measurable it's a virus that's the power of the nurture argument again I'm not saying nature is completely without any validity I'm just saying this is a Sociology class so I'm kind of arguing it more from the nurture side because that's what sociology dictates now I would be remiss however if I didn't give you guys the complete picture now this argument nature versus nurture has been going on since thinkers began uh probably Socrates Aristotle I mean this argument has been going on forever and I honestly don't think it's a winnable argument because there's evidence that supports both sides there's a lot of other theorists that have kind of jumped on this bandwagon as well and they came up with a new bridge theory and said why is it one or the other why do we keep always trying to say it's one or the other what if it was a combination of the two hence the term socio-biology now those of you that are sitting here watching please make sure to note what's in red here you'll notice on the Powerpoints that I posted online for you guys to read and use the study that doesn't have the red this is your benefit for watching these videos there's little built-in things and I don't think I need to tell you why it's in red and why I'm drawing attention to it I think you probably probably understand why I'm drawing your attention to it as a way of explaining the social biological model says perhaps we do have nature obviously there's differences in hormone levels there's differences in genetics there's differences you know of how a fetus develops there's differences and I mean these things exist whether you agree or not death exists life exists whether you agree when life begins that's subjective to interpretation but life itself begins as we understand it so therefore you have a component of nature that is undeniable but then isn't it always shaped by the environment the nurture so you have the the nature that occurs the biology and then the nurture is what Alters that biology remember my earlier example of someone born with the addictive gene they may or may not even though they have that biological gene they may or may not become an addictive personality themselves why not what was different between them and their sibling or even a twin who was born in the same household with the same genetic makeup as close as we genetically can be to another human being why does one become an alcoholic and the other doesn't maybe there was a hundred different influencing factors maybe one you know saw Dad or Mom in a really drunken rage they hate alcohol maybe the other one you know saw them always and they were in a good mood and they were happy and lovey and so they were look at it more positively that could affect the outcome it's those interactions if you even take those same twins don't parents interact differently with even identical twins even if it's very subtle just their language the way they interact how many of you know and of course I can't see your hands but think about how many of you know a set of identical twins and in the beginning if they're really closely identical you may not or have difficulty telling them apart but the minute you start getting to know them you can tell them apart based on their personality now if they were to stand there totally still no emotions on their face as possible well then it'd be much more difficult but the minute they start talking I I knew when I was growing up uh Jan and Joe they were identical twins and I mean they were identical twins if they just set their Frozen face you couldn't tell the difference between them but the minute they started talking Jan was kind of a sweet personality she was a little shy she was really open Joe she's she was great though I mean Joe she was aggressive she was a leader she she was incredibly intelligent not that jam wasn't intelligent Jan just didn't mind not being the leader she just had kind of a softer personality so the minute you were interacting with them you instantaneously knew who was Jan and who was Joe if you knew them how did that happen if they are virtually identical on a nature level how do those differences occur now nature would say well then there's a difference in their makeup at some level on some hormonal levels some genetic level you know something was different between the two Nate nurture the sociological perspective in psychological and anthropological and and communication and family human development everybody else who's on the nurture side would say no as part of their interaction because personality develops over the life course because of these interactions that we have that's the essence of sociology in fact our personality is a very big study both in Psychology and in sociology both love to look at the development of how we interact with one another how we arrive at who we are as a human being but there's one key difference and I really want you to pay attention between psychology and sociology now social psychologists they kind of bridge the gap a little bit and they give a little bit more emphasis towards sociology even though their roots are in Psychology but they really give more of an emphasis that the sociological or societal influence is very present but if you look at the strict discipline of sociology and psychology they have a lot of overlap they both obviously agree that uh personality develops that we're not born with our personality we don't have a predisposition unless you're into the socio-biological model remember the sociobiological model splits the differences as we have a predisposition we're born with but that it has changed over our life course and shaped by society that we grew up in hence biology socio sociobiology okay I can't remember if I mentioned at the beginning so I just want to clarify that now psychologists believe that the personality develops after we're born but it gets pretty fixed by the time we're about seven eight years old now these aren't like a cut off day oh you turned eight your personality is the way it is it's an average you know so you get a few that are less and a few that are more and then average right around that but for most people according to psychology [Music] of a person's personality being an introvert or an extrovert being open and warm or cold in distance and cynical um uh someone that is kind of motivated and and a natural-born leader and someone who may just be a bit more of a follower and a support structured person neither one right or wrong please I'm not trying to say that at all but just a small difference in our personality and then it's pretty well set and this could come from learning from um our parents how our brain develops how all those synapses that we're born with then add on and get created the more we learn language the more we learn right and wrong the more we learn morality and so forth It's kind of constructing our brain as we grow and it's pretty well set by the time you're seven or eight years old differentially sociology says no it's a lifelong experience that your personality develops but let's say you get to be 30 years old and all of your life you have been trusting and open and warm and that's kind of your basis that that pattern of who you are as a person your personality is pretty everybody would describe you that way you're open you're warm you're friendly you you trust very easily and then you get in a relationship when you're 30 and you really love this individual and you get married to this individual and let's say that that individual devastates your whole world maybe they cheated on you maybe they took all your money maybe they were abusive all those things that you didn't even believe was possible and this person out of seven and a half billion people on the planet that you fell in love with or grew to love you married this person has shattered your trust has shattered boy I'm kind of being morbid today sorry folks but I'm hopefully it illustrates my point they shatter everything about you you don't think that they're now going to be a heck of a lot less trusting that that hurt doesn't have a huge impact on how they interact with other people around them they may still have a component of that basis that they grew up with for the first 30 years of their life but it's going to impact that shift that change that re-socialization is going to shift every one of their interactions whether it's a friend whether it's a significant other someone that they're dating they're going to be less trusting perhaps they're going to be less open perhaps understandably so understandably but hasn't their personality gone through a pretty big shift in a change what if later in life they find somebody that re-socializes excuse me excuse me that that re-socializes them again and now they found that partner that is perfect for them and kind of reestablishes some trust but they also have that maturity now and they have that life experiences so they're now kind of maybe developing a personality It's a combination of who they are who they've been in the past now that's a very important thing because later on in the second lecture this week we're going to look at the I and the me so remember this thought okay now that's not saying psychology is wrong and sociology is right or anything like that it's just a different way of viewing it psychology is more our you know our personalities kind of hardwired and set remember the nature argument says it's already done and predetermined before we're even out of the womb it's already set psychology and sociology agree no it's something that develops as we interact with people and as we interact with the world around us sociology just says it goes on for a lifetime Emile durkheim if you recall that guy Emil durkheim the arguably father of sociology he even made a stipulation in his studies that said Society itself can only exist because it gets inside that human being it can only even exist everything that you know in society out there all the social institutions all the norms and the values and the interactional patterns and the behaviors and the roles and all these different things and don't worry I'm going to Define roles by the end of the week for you folks Society itself can only exist because its values its ideas it's Consciousness its morality which has developed from our interacting with it regardless of the theoretical perspective you lean towards it gets inside the human being in other words we're socialized we understand the world that we see around us whether you're looking at it from Superior Wharf in its language whether you're learning it from it's experiential that Society gets inside of us and then that reflexively creates and reinforces the social structure around us which then we interact with and we achieve that consensus view of this is the reality that we're interacting on and that process allows society's rules its values its ways of defining that which is a social definition becomes our own Society becomes our view remember at the beginning of the semester I said I'm going to ask you guys to slowly pull back the blinders to look at the world around you in ways that you may not have ever thought of before why did you even have blinders on well according to Sociology that's not your fault that's not a wrong or good or bad thing that's because you can only know the world in your experience and the more you experience whether it's at College whether it's traveling to another country whether it's learning another language whether it's going to an environment that you may have been a little shy about but then you went and you learned and you found out wow it's a really cool thing boom your blinders open a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more but Society according to Sociology is only as real to us as our experiences and that my friends is the essence of socialization now there's three components that we have to make sure that we understand before we go through the rest of the semester and all these different institutions one is simply the self the self is the ability in a sense to step outside of yourself and see yourself as a social creature an infant doesn't have that capability an infant cannot see themselves or reflect back if I do this this thing person whatever is going to act this way because they don't think of themselves as even I'm hungry they just feel the need to eat something hurts and they scream out they don't know even who's going to feed them it isn't like oh Mom and Dad that's our perspective see and then we see the baby and we see our baby cry so then we come running over and we interpret that that baby must know that it is is wet or needs to be picked up or needs to be fed because we understand even that thought process when we're hungry we tell somebody we're hungry when we need a hug we say can I have a hug because we're reflecting it back on ourselves a child doesn't even have that capability a child is not aware of self they're not aware of even being alive because they don't know what alive is and I know it's kind of hard to put yourself in the position of an infant to really understand that the very concept of self the ability to know I I hurt I hunger even that concept is a socially arrived taught concept it's taught to us by our interactions I'm not saying Somebody went down and says oh you are now six months old so you need to think of yourself as an IT and an eye and a human being no we learn it through our interactions that if I cry because I'm hungry even though I don't know what hunger is sooner or later somebody puts food in my mouth and I feel better okay so the next time I have this same feeling I cry somebody comes in and puts it tastes good I like this feeling that must be and we don't know the word hunger but it satiates whatever is hurting us at that moment and then when it's consistent it's the same person that keeps bringing into the same two or three people that keep bringing in the food that makes us feel better now we start to recognize when I cry people come that's the concept of self it's just simply that awareness that we are a social product look around the world how many people don't really see the world and and really see that other people's perspective their concept of self is equal to our own most people walk around with just seeing my perspective and they think everybody sees through their eyes I will get students who will email me and I'm not talking about my students who live overseas who you know or email me in their afternoon but it's the middle of the night here I'm talking about people who are on campus emailing me at 10 o'clock at night and then at midnight they send me another email saying I haven't heard from you yet um folks I'm like probably sleeping or watching a movie or hanging out with friends or something I mean this is my job not my entire life there's still not really seeing another person's self now this is going to come back here in just a second when we talk about the Looking Glass self we talk about the development of the eye and the me and we talk about you know medes different theories and Piaget and so forth and so on and there's different perspectives that I seek to explain it but I just want to give you guys a basic understanding of what the self is the self is at awareness so it isn't any descriptors the minute you start to say I'm a good person now that's a self-concept a self-concept is how you view yourself is the viewing of yourself as a social creature so these two are very closely interrelated to each other but when you're a baby and you develop this idea of self that you exist and that when somebody goes around the corner they still exist that's the concept of self mommy is nice daddy is nice that is a reflection of an adjective put upon another person's self when we do the same thing to ourselves that's how we see ourselves I'm an outgoing person I'm a friendly person I really don't like people I'm kind of cynical I don't really believe anybody I'm gregarious I'm overbearing I'm descriptive I'm overly talkative yeah I've thought that about myself many times that's a self concept now even then it doesn't have a value placed upon it it's an adjective all those descriptors that you would use I'm pretty I'm not I'm average I'm not so good looking you know whether it's real or not doesn't really matter because sometimes our self-concept is skewed sometimes we over inflate our opinion of ourselves sometimes we under inflate we tend to under inflate particularly when it comes to looks a lot more so than we over inflate I mean even people that we would Define according to Social definition as being beautiful still have days or even months or most of the time that they're like am I pretty enough today am I handsome enough today I don't know I don't know are they out of my league are they you know that's your self-concept some people have a really overblown ego and think everybody's beneath them well that's comes from their self-concept how they see themselves so think of self as an awareness self-concept is when you add in adjectives or descriptors how you see yourself now there's one more thing that's not on the printed slide and that's self-esteem make sure you put a big star by and write this down in your notes okay the self-esteem takes it one step further with the self-concept and says now it's a value so the self I exist self-concept I'm a pretty happy-go-lucky person self-esteem says I like being a happy-go-lucky person people really are appreciative so I feel good about myself that's a value I feel good about being a happy-go-lucky person I'm comfortable with kind of being cynical it keeps the idiots at Bay I'm kidding I'm kidding but that's maybe how they perceive it so they're selfish I exist their self-concept is I'm kind of standoffish self-esteem is I don't like that about myself or I like that about myself it's the value that we place on the descriptors or the adjectives so they're all interrelated but they are all still distinctly different from each other why are they so different because you could have somebody who's viewed by Society their concept is everybody thinks I'm handsome everybody thinks I'm outgoing that I'm really open and I'm friendly and I struggle with that because I never get privacy and and and I really worry if somebody's gonna see behind the mask that I put on and because I really am scared and I'm nervous and so I overly am friendly and I would describe myself as friendly and that's how people see me self-concept but deep deep down inside that's not how I am I I I don't like that about myself I want to be my and we even use the term in today's world I want to be my true self why do you want to be your true self because you want to look at yourself positively you want to be able to accept and have a high self-esteem it's very very important to have that high self-esteem look at people that are depressed usually how it comes from in part a low self-esteem people that struggle interacting with other human beings because their self-esteem could really use a good boost people that are very confident usually have a fairly High self-esteem and I'm not talking about necessarily narcissism or narcissistic I'm just simply talking about a very high Healthy High you know I'm a very stable solid confident person and I like that about myself and so then they're able to act with that confidence and they're able to go through life and I'm not talking about ego although that could play a role too they have an overflated self and self-esteem their value of themselves is higher than anybody else which is kind of negative when you think about it because to go up higher than everybody else means you're stepping on other people and pushing them down I wouldn't say it's very positive as a that's judgment call the point is hopefully you understand so the self just one more time sorry I'm not trying to be overly repetitious but I want you guys to get this because it's the basis of all the other perspectives we're going to look at the self is awareness a sense of identity I'm my parents kid neither good nor bad there's no descriptor it's just I'm my parents kid whether you're born to them or adopted you're their kid that's a concept of self a self-concept is I am answer your last name and all those expectations that you have defined as a family that are now placed upon the self that's the self-concept the descriptors the adjectives and then the self-esteem is the value okay that we that we like it we don't like it it's more valuable less valuable compared to that's a value statement that's part of our self-esteem and it can and there's no like oh you have a high self-esteem or a low self no you can have a a wide array of different things I'm very confident in my ability to speak into a camera now that I've been doing it for a while because I've been teaching for 20 some odd years doesn't mean in other environments I don't kind of shut up a little bit and become more watchful and I'm not quite as talkative because in that environment my esteem changes my self-concept changes you see so by separating these out then we can really understand how they affect how we see ourselves as overarching person that we are as unique individual as well as being a social creature that's what we break it down so much there was a guy by the name this is kind of our first Theory okay we're gonna look then here at Piaget in a little bit by the end of this actually I'm going to let another person talk to you about that he's an expert in the area because that's predominantly a social psych psychology perspective that we borrow from in sociology so anyway I'll get to that here in just a moment God the name of Charles Horton Cooley he developed the concept of the Looking Glass self in his estimation or his hypothesis his theory and and looking at the world around said our entire self that we develop our self-concept our self-esteem comes from that which is reflected back at us through every one of our interactions so if we never interacted with another human being or anything that could give us feedback we wouldn't develop a personality we wouldn't develop a self-concept we wouldn't develop a self-esteem would you think yourself pretty or handsome or average or not if you never saw another human being if you were the only human being on the planet and you never came across any other human being to compare yourself against because pretty handsome is a social definition average is a social definition it's a compared to so the only way we even understand what handsom or pretty is or average or whatever it is is based upon what has been reflected back at us our entire life of our entire life people have told us that we're prettier handsome that we're going to get a self-concept that we're prettier handsome even though the definition of prettier handsome has changed over time it's also Changed by culture of culture all those definitions are a social definition but it influences how we see ourselves because the world around us reflects back to us and then we either internalize it or we reject it that's the Looking Glass self remember a Looking Glass is nothing more than an old school term for a mirror so in other words all of life all of society is a mirror to us and so when you get somebody that you're doing something and they kind of look at you blankly then you start to question yourself if they're nodding at you in agreement okay then I must be getting through I must be smart I must be clear in my talking I must be see how we're getting feedback because of how the people around us react if they're looking at us going uh then you might be getting a reflection I'm stupid I shouldn't be given this lecture I shouldn't be talking oh my goodness because that's the reflection so according to Cooley and I'm not saying again this is the way that it is I'm saying according to this perspective it would suggest that all of these interactions that we have amongst from the time we're born that's why it's so important according to the Looking Glass self for parents to be positive when a child does wrong don't attack the child and say they're stupid or they're dumb talk about the problem talk about the decision that they made but that they are smart and that they are a great person they just made a bad mistake or they made a bad choice and they could benefit themselves they made a different Choice attack the issue don't attack the child why because that child will internalize what we were reflecting to that child and that then creates the their their Looking Glass self see that's what's fascinating about the Looking Glass self every single moment that I'm looking at the world around me as I am doing something behaving talking sharing whatever it is I'm getting a reflection and that reflection is going to shape my self-concept shape my self-esteem but at the same time I'm looking at the world that individual who's reflecting back to me is looking at me to be reflecting to them because they're developing their own Looking Glass self see we tend to see the world only through our own eyes when we're aware that every time I'm looking at somebody and how they react and how they judge me or don't judge me or whatever they're looking at me for my reaction to then tell them if I'm judging or not judging or influencing they're doing the same thing we are and that's the interaction part of the Looking-Glass self and so all these interactions that we have this mirrored image if you will it's like seeing ourselves in the eyes of those around us by their reactions that's the Looking Glass self he stated as quoted in Thompson and hickey in 2002 it's the process by which individuals use others like a mirror hence the Looking Glass self a mirror and based their conception of themselves on what is reflected back to them during every social interaction and they're doing the exact same thing everybody does this according to the Looking Glass self this is part of Being Human so every time you have a doubt recognize that everybody you're interacting with probably has doubts too because they're looking at you for your reaction to them just like you're looking at them for their reaction to you this would explain then why let's say let's say you've met a hundred people over your life course and most people pretty positive that you're a great person you're nice you're open you're friendly you're warm all these you know desirable qualities whatever we Define and at any given time a desirable Quan I wouldn't say they're bad qualities but a desirable quality and then one person comes along and they think you're a jerk they think you're self-centered and you're egotistical and everything does that mean you're going to internalize that now your whole personality is going to change and everything probably not because you have a hundred other people who've reflected the positive towards you that's made up your concept of self that has made up your Looking Glass self so that one person who says that you're arrogant or egotistical you're probably going to say well maybe they're having a bad day maybe they're a jerk maybe they're just trying to get my gut maybe they're just trying to piss me off for whatever reason you're not going to internalize it you may doubt because we seem to remember a lot of the negatives more than we remember the positives we could have a hundred people tell us we're great and one person says we're wrong or bad or whatever we go why did they think I was bad why didn't they think I wasn't agreeing we forget about the other hundred that were positive I don't know why we focus so much on the negative oh yeah because we've been socialized especially in today's world that presentation is everything whether it's in Instagram whether it's Snapchat whether it's tick tock whatever whatever that presentation is you we've created a world that has made a Looking-Glass self to the nth degree you post a picture on your insta Instagram and based upon people's reactions you're now getting a concept of yourself based upon that pose or that look or that makeup or or that haircut or whatever it is or the I don't care look all because of people who don't even know you that's the like we have created a world of like the Uber Looking Glass self Cooley is probably sitting in if there is an afterlife going oh my God what are you doing to yourselves that's the looking-less self every one of those reactions that you get affect and if you if you sit here if we're in the classroom and you try to tell me that it doesn't affect you both positive and negative you're fooling yourself because if it didn't affect you why post it at all why post it at all if there was nobody looking you're getting dressed you're putting on makeup you're doing your hair you're wearing a nice shirt whatever it is because of the reaction the reflection that you hope to get back because you want to have a good self-concept you want to maintain a high self-esteem we've gotten to the point where we're addicted to the Looking Glass self we're addicted to the reflections I hear all the time online and this is just a little kind of side commentary people why is everybody so negative why why you know I posted one picture and everybody's ripped me apart for my parenting style or rip me apart for this or how I looked or how I did guess what would happen if you just simply never posted anything you wouldn't have a thousand a million a hundred thousand people that you've never even met judging you ever just don't post it be you see we're we're according to Cooley anyway again this is just from Cooley's perspective according to Cooley we want that reflection we become addicted to that reflection because then it gives us a reflection of our self instead of building a self-concept that doesn't need it that is what we call the secure adult now that doesn't mean it's not going to exist because even unless you're completely isolated from other human beings you're going to get reflection you're going to get reflection of your place of worship if you're religious you're going to get Reflections if you go to a Starbucks and order a latte every interaction that we have we're gonna get it it's just social media kind of amps it up to to the you know Nth Degree in this concept going into Old School picture a guy by the name of Norman Rockwell actually created this picture that illustrates the Looking Glass self and I don't I don't know if this was his intention when he wrote that when he made this picture but it is a perfect example of the Looking Glass self so if you look over here on the picture and look at the gentleman in the reflection Pretend This is society this is society reflecting back to him his view now he's going to look at this reflection and he's going to then process it in his brain what he sees but then he's got this whole image his whole life behind him of all his self-concept that then interprets what he's seeing in this reflection like I said you're not going to believe every single person that does something you're going to believe the majority so this reflection occurs I don't know where I lost my little red thing here this reflection occurs he's instantly translating this in terms of his own self-concept and in this picture he's now drawing how he thinks what the reflection shows him because it's an interpretation of the reflection of this is society this is you this is your self-concept if that all makes sense now you'll also notice because he wants to have a good self-esteem that he also paints himself a little younger pipes a little more jaunty sticking out he has less wrinkles he isn't even wearing glasses he seems to have a little bit more hair although he's got a pretty good head of air over here but he's getting a little bit more of ahead of air but see over here you get all these past iterations that's his interpretation all these influences of him as a painter fit into his confidence to paint the self-image of his self-concept of what he sees reflected in this in the mirror this is the Looking Glass self I don't know what the helmet is other than he seems as himself as being proud and look at how many others hymns self-concept selves he's thrown away over the years as he's learned about who he is now I don't know if this will work in here works much better in the classroom I want you to stop for just a moment you've already seen him looking at the mirror he's sitting here seeing what he looks in the mirror and he's drawing his interpretation this is his self-concept this is him this self this is the Looking Glass self this is his self-concept infused with his self-esteem but remember one thing Norman Rockwell the this artist that he's drawing of himself is sitting right here he is painting this whole thing as an image of what he sees or thinks he sees when he looks at the world around him his interpretation and his self-concept this whole thing step back break the fourth wall this whole thing is him sitting here like you looking at this he's drawing all of this so in other words this is his self-concept of how he sees people reflecting back on him from the world how he sees how he interprets things and the mental image that he arrives of his self-concept and that's how he sees himself as kind of a translator perhaps as an artist on paper which then feeds into his self-concept his self-esteem that's how many levels and layers of the self-concept or the Looking Glass self there's that's just one Theory hopefully that little example came through okay on on the video it's the first time I've ever tried doing it on the video now to 18 glass self doesn't mean that everybody is going to view it the exact same way for example Jean Piaget looked at this slightly different cognitive development is the ability to think the ability to rationalize and PSJA looked at four stages of development in how we socialize social what he terms social learning how we become a socialized thinking human being but for this slide I'm going to turn it over to the next video that's right linked below from a gentleman who is in Tennessee and uh he's an excellent lecturer he's very similar to me um style in the classroom I think I'm a little bit more wild than he is but he's pretty wild as it is we both have really long hair haha you did not know I had really long hair I think this is longer I just got mine trimmed up um it is a little bit longer than me our styles are fairly similar but he is more of an expert in this particular Theory than I am I mean I could tell you about this and I tend to wax on prolific and I don't want to spend an hour just on this one Theory where he can do it in about 22 minutes now I can't put it as part of this video because it's all posted on YouTube and then YouTube's copyright and all that please watch it think of him as a guest lecturer that I'm using for the class all the extra videos that aren't me lecturing think of them as guest lectures or guest examples all right they're just another way that I'm trying to bring the material to life for you so take the time to watch it because it is subject to being on the exam and I'll see you on the next lecture when we pick up with a guy about the name of George Herbert Mead have a good one until then