SOCIOLOGICA
L
PERSPECTIVE
OF THE SELF
SOCIOLOGY
Sociology comes from the Latin
word socius, meaning “companion”,
and logos which means “study”
SOCIOLOGY
A social science that studies
human societies, their interactions,
and the processes that preserve
and change them.
Socialization is a complex, lifelong process. George
Herbert Mead and Charles Horton Cooley are some of the
sociologists who have made lasting contributions to our
understanding of human development related to the
construction of self and identity as embedded in society
and culture.
What is a social self?To be aware of oneself is to have a
concept of oneself. Baumeister (1999) provides the
following self-concept definition: "The individual's belief
about himself or herself, including the person's attributes
and who and what the self is". The self-concept is an
important term for both social and humanistic psychology.
GEORGE HERBERT
MEAD
• Mead’s theory of the self is completely social.
yourself develops through reflecting on that
interaction, to thinking how others are perceiving
you, and that helps you generate an image of
yourself.
• Mead theorized that the self has two parts: Self
awareness and Self-image.
GEORGE HERBERT
MEAD
DEVELOPMENT OF
SELF
PREPARATORY STAGE:
Language develops self by allowing individuals
to respond to each other through symbols,
gestures, words and sounds.
DEVELOPMENT OF
PLAY STAGE:
SELF
Play develops self by allowing individuals to take on
different roles, pretend and express expectation of
others. Play develops one’s self-consciousness through
role-playing.
GAME STAGE:
Games develop self by allowing individuals to understand
and adhere to the rules of the activity. Self is developed by
understanding that there are rules in which one must abide
by in order to win the game or be successful.
His theory of the social self includes the concepts of “I” and
“ME”
LEV
VYGOTSKY
The most important application of Vygotsky's theory to
education is in his concept of a zone of proximal
development.
The zone of proximal development refers to the
difference between what a learner can do without help
and what he or she can achieve with guidance and
encouragement from a skilled partner. Thus, the term
“proximal” refers to those skills that the learner is
“close” to mastering.
LEV
VYGOTSKY
A second important aspect of Vygotsky's theory is the role of play in
his theory. Vygotsky, for his part, a child internalizes real life dialogs
that he has had with others, with his family, his primary caregiver,
or his playmates. They apply this to their mental and practical
problems along with the social and cultural infusions brought about
by the dialogs.
Can you notice how children eventually become what they watch?
How children can easily adapt ways to cartoon characters they are
exposed to?
CHARLES
COOLEY
He is perhaps best known for his concept of the looking glass
self, which is the concept that a person’s self grows out of
society’s interpersonal interactions and the perceptions of
others.
The concept of the “looking glass-self” is undoubtedly his most
famous, and is known and accepted by most psychologists and
sociologists today.
The term “looking glass self” was first used by Cooley in his
work. Human Nature and the Social Order in 1902.
STEPS IN
LOOKING
GLASS SELF
1.You imagine how you
appear to the other
person.
2.You imagine the
judgement of the other
person.
3.You feel some sense of
pride, happiness, guilt or
shame.
HENRY TAJFEL AND JOHN
Henri Tajfel's greatestTURNER
contribution to psychology was social
identity theory.
Social identity is a person’s sense of who they are based on
their group membership(s).
Tajfel (1979) proposed that the groups (e.g., social class, family,
football team etc.) which people belonged to were an important
source of pride and self-esteem. Groups give us a sense of social
identity: a sense of belonging to the social world.
HENRY TAJFEL AND JOHN
TURNER
We divided the world into “them” and “us” based through a
process of social categorization (i.e., we put people into social
groups).
Henri Tajfel proposed that stereotyping (i.e., putting people
into groups and categories) is based on a normal cognitive
process: the tendency to group things together. In doing so we
tend to exaggerate:
1. the differences between groups
2.the similarities of things in the same group
HENRY TAJFEL AND JOHN
TURNER
This is known as in-group (us) and out-group (them). The
central hypothesis of social identity theory is that group
member of an in-group will seek to find negative aspects of
an out-group, thus enhancing their self-image.
SOCIAL IDENTITY
THEORY
Social Identity Theory Stages
Tajfel and Turner (1979) proposed that there are three mental
processes involved in evaluating others as “us” or “them” (i.e.
“in-group” and “out-group”. These take place in a particular order.
• Categorization
• Social
Identification
• Social Comparison
ERVING
GOFFMAN
• We use “impression management” to present ourselves to
others as we hope to be perceived.
DRAMATURGY
• Each situation is a new scene and we perform different roles
depending on who is present.
• In his theory of dramaturgical analysis, he argued that
people live their lives much like actors performing on a
stage.
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