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Socialization Theories: Looking Glass-Self, Social Self, and Cognitive Development

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Added on  2019-09-26

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The process of the socialization refers to the fact that we learn to become competent members of society. It is fundamentally centered upon the concept as to how self is developed. It provides an idea how the sense of self emerges while living in the society and interacting with others. The following paragraphs discuss three important theories of Socialization – Theory of Looking Glass-Self (Charles Horton Cooley), Theory of Social Self (George Herbert Mead) and Theory of Cognitive Development (Jean Piaget).

Socialization Theories: Looking Glass-Self, Social Self, and Cognitive Development

   Added on 2019-09-26

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Socialization TheoriesThe process of the socialization refers to the fact that we learn to become competent members ofsociety. It is fundamentally centered upon the concept as to how self is developed. It provides anidea how the sense of self emerges while living in the society and interacting with others. Thefollowing paragraphs discuss three important theories of Socialization – Theory of LookingGlass-Self (Charles Horton Cooley), Theory of Social Self (George Herbert Mead) and Theoryof Cognitive Development (Jean Piaget). Each of these theories are important in their own ways,but it is up to us who we want to associate ourselves with.According to the American sociologist Charles Horton Cooley, if a person displays a sense ofpersonal insecurity whenever he finds himself in the middle of a social construct then this stateof mind is only driven by what he believes what people think about him. Cooley came up with aconcept of the looking glass self, which tries to explain that a person’s self grows on the basis ofhis interactions with the others. The central idea with which Cooley put across his viewsunderlines a person’s self-image. He believed that people tend to shape their self-concepts on thebasis of their understanding as to how people perceive them (Coburn & Canfield, 1993). Ourself-image reflects the responses and evaluations being made by others in our environment.Cooley theorized that the process has three steps: we always imagine how we appear, weimagine that what people would judge about us, and we imagine how a person feels about us. Inso far Looking glass-self theory is concerned, I am of the view that this theory paves a way for aperson to see or not to see himself in the consciousness of others who, he thinks, serve as mirrorsfor reflecting his own image to himself.George Herbert Mead famously propounded the “Theory of Social Self”, which underlines thewhole new meaning of self, me and I. He theorized that self consists of two elements self-
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awareness and self-image. Interestingly, this theory of self is completely social and has no roomfor the biological development of self and personality. He believed that our notion of self, whowe are and what our personality consists of etc. is constructed through interaction and being inthe world and also through the reflection by interacting more and more with the others and itdevelops as we age and grow (Mead & Morris, 1974). It was Mead’s genius to see selfcompletely as a social phenomenon not a biological one. Mead also theorized that there are threeimportant elements that help in developing self – language, play and games. The two aspects ofself are me and I. Me denotes attitudes, behaviors and others’ expectations. I denotes anindividual’s identity in terms of response to me. So, I view this theory as a fascinating onebecause it addresses everyone in the form of cohesive social elements. Jean Piaget is one of the noted psychologists and sociologists, who famously proposed the theoryof Cognitive Development as to how children grow and develop intellectually in their childhood.Piaget believed that children have a fundamentally different thinking as against the adults. Hewas so intrigued with the way children gave reasons for their wrong answers that he realized thattheir incorrect answers revealed very important aspects of their thinking. Piaget’s unparalleledachievement was that he was a pioneer in making a systematic study of cognitive development inwhich he incorporated detailed observational studies in order to find out cognition in children.He carried out a series of simple but ingenious observational tests for revealing their variouscognitive abilities (Piaget & Inhelder, 1969). The results that Piaget got indicate that childrenthink in strikingly different ways compared to adults. As far as my views about Jean Piaget’stheory are concerned, it is today an accepted notion that children think differently than adults,but it was a revolutionary idea at that time. So, I believe that this was an important observationand also inspired a lot of other theories to build their own theories on it.
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