The looking-glass-self theory is a social ideology or concept formulated by Charles Horton Cooley, in the year 1902. Charles Horton Cooley was an American sociologist born in 1864 the son of Thomas Cooley. According to the looking glass-self concept, an individual's self grows from the society's interpersonal relations and the perceptions of the people the individual interacts with (Yeo, Mckee, and Trent, 2018). The looking glass term refers to the individual shaping his or her identity regarding the perception of the people he interacts with. In other words, the theory states that human beings mold themselves from what other people around them perceive and use this to confirm their opinions on themselves. The individual defines themselves within the social context.
According to Charles Cooley, the looking glass-self constitutes three main components; an individual first imagines how they should appear to other people. Secondly, they perceive the judgment of the appearance they think they should assume. Lastly, they form themselves through the judgment of others. According to Charles Cooley's words, "the mind is mental because it is social" implying that the mind's ability is a function of the individual's social relations. The formation of an individual's mind begins from the time they are children. An infant grows to learn that when they cry they will provoke a response from their mother and they will be able to get what they want whether it is attention, food or a toy to play with.
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According to George Herbert Mead, an American philosopher, through interaction and relation with others we develop an identity about who we are, and we also develop empathy for the people we interact with (Liubiniene, 2018). An example of the looking glass self-concept in our day to day life is in computer technology. In the computer technology field, the programmer can develop a character or an avatar that is supposed to represent the video game player in the virtual world. The developer is supposed to customize the avatar in physical attributes that will correspond to what the video game player wants and how they would like to be perceived in the virtual world.
Piaget's theory of cognitive development entails the concept of the essence and development of human intelligence. Piaget was a Swiss psychologist and philosopher renowned for epistemological studies with children. His notions about cognitive development and epistemological perceptions are collectively referred to as genetic epistemology. Or "the study of the foundations of knowledge." The theory tries to understand the essence and development of human intelligence.
According to Piaget, the reality is a dynamic system of constant change, and it is characterized by the two conditions that form the dynamic systems. In a nutshell, Piaget stated that reality entails states and transformations. States according to Piaget are the conditions in which the person can be found in between the changes while transformations are all the collective changes that an individual can undergo (Zelazo,2018). According to Piaget, the growth of thinking is a result of four steps of development. The four stages are the sensorimotor-extends from birth to the acquiring of language. At this first stage of cognitive development, the child understands by coordinating their experiences with the actions they execute (Hanfstingl, Benke, and Zang, 2019). The child according to Piaget obtains knowledge from the things they do physically.
The second stage is the preoperational stage, and at this stage the child's mind has grown to the point where it can form stable concepts, reasoning, and belief. The child at this stage learns to represent things by images and words. This stage of cognitive development begins at around the second year. The third stage of cognitive development is the concrete operational stage, and the stage occurs when the child is between seven and eleven years. The use of logic characterizes the stage and the child can make judgments about concrete incidences and can manipulate symbols related to concrete phenomena.
The final stage is the formal operational stage, and it is the point in which the individual demonstrates his or her intelligence through hypothetical and deductive thoughts. Piaget identified two processes involved in learning, assimilation, and accommodation. Assimilation explains how the individual adapts to new knowledge by taking their existing perceptions and blending them with new information to fit into the new perception. Accommodation, on the other hand, involves taking ones environment and new knowledge and altering the current state of understanding to accommodate the new information.
The two theories, Piaget's theory of cognitive development and the looking glass theory both attempt to explain the cognitive development of a human being and they both assert how significant the environment of an individual's dwelling and upbringing can affect their cognitive development. Charles Cooley's theory states that the essence of the human being is shaped according to the people's perceptions of the human being which is mainly his immediate environment. Piaget's theory, on the other hand, shows that the cognitive development of an individual is also developed by the surrounding such that the individual’s mind grows by coordinating its experience with the environment. Piaget's theory, however, differs a little from the looking glass-self theory in the sense that it provides a more systematic and precise approach to explaining each of the stages of the development, unlike the looking glass-self theory which has a more random approach.
References
Hanfstingl, B., Benke, G., & Zhang, Y. (2019). Comparing variation theory with Piaget’s theory of cognitive development: more similarities than differences? Educational Action Research , 1-16.
Liubinienė, V. (2018). Reconstructing Self-Identity: Local, Global and Technological Drives. In Readings in Numanities (pp. 197-208). Springer, Cham.
Yeo, H. T., McKee, M., & Trent, W. (2018). EYES theory: A proposed racialization and developmental identity model for understanding concepts of race for international students of color studying in US higher education institutions. In Perspectives on Diverse Student Identities in Higher Education: International Perspectives on Equity and Inclusion (pp. 95-112). Emerald Publishing Limited.
Zelazo, P. D. (2018). Abstracting and aligning essential features of cognitive development. Human Development , 61 (1), 43-48.
