THE SELF FROM

VARIOUS
PERSPECTIVES
PREPARED BY:
JOANA MARIE BARIL
ROSALINDA MARASIGAN
LESSON 2
FROM THE
PERSPECTIVE OF
SOCIOLOGY
 Sociology…
 One of the disciplines in the social sciences
which aims to discover the ways by which the
social surrounding/ environment influences
people’s thoughts, feelings and behavior.
 Make people have an awareness on how the
social world impacts on their existence.
 GEORGE HERBERT MEAD
 Wrote and published many articles and book
reviews but did not publish any book.
 His students is the one who published his numerous
writings and edited them for publication.
 Described self as a ‘dimension of personality that is
made-up of the individual’s self-awareness and
self-image’.
GEORGE MEAD’S SOCIAL SELF
 Social Behaviorism is the approach used
by Mead to describe the power of
environment in shaping human behavior.
 “The self cannot be separated from the
society.” this he explained through a set
of stages which the person undergoes in
the course of his development.
GEORGE MEAD’S SOCIAL SELF
 1. The Preparatory Stage
 the self did not exist at birth
 Instead, the self develops overtime
 Its development on social interaction and
social experience
 Children’s behavior are primarily based on
imitation
 Children familiarize first the symbols and use it
as means of communication with others
throughout their lives
 GEORGE MEAD’S SOCIAL SELF
 2. The Play Stage
 Skillsat knowing and understanding the symbols of
communication is important for this constitutes the basis
for socialization
 Through communication, social relationships are formed.
 Children began to role play and pretend to be other
people
 Significant in the development of the self because it is
where the child widens his perspective and realizes that
he is not alone and there are other people in his
surroundings that is needed to be considered.
 GEORGE MEAD’S SOCIAL SELF
 3. The Game Stage
 The child is about 8-9 y/o and now does more than just role-
take but the child begins to consider several tasks and
various types of relationships simultaneously
 From the learnings in the second stage, the child begins to
see not only his perspective but also the perspective of
others and the child has the ability to respond to several
members of the environment
 ‘generalized other’
 is used to explain the behavior of the person when he
sees/considers other people in the course of his
actions
 The person realizes that people in society have
cultural norms, beliefs and values which are
incorporated into each self
 GEORGE MEAD’S SOCIAL SELF

Stage Existence of Self Characteristics

Preparatory Stage None Imitates other

Play Stage Developing Role-taking

Game Stage Present Generalized other

MEAD’S THEORY OF THE SELF

 THE ‘I’ AND ‘ME’

 The person’s capacity to see the self through
others implies that the self is composed of two
parts, the I self and the Me self:
THE ‘I’ AND ‘ME’

 ‘I’ Self
 When the person initiates or performs a social
action, the self functions as a subject
 The subjective element of the self is the ‘I’

 ‘Me’ Self
 When the person takes the role of the other,
the self functions as an object
 The objective element of the self is the ‘Me’
 Remember…
 The formation of the self is not the end of the
process of socialization.
 Socialization continues for as long as the person
is alive
 The self may change due to various reasons e.g.
(death of loved one, disease or disability may
reshape the self).
 A person do not have control over such events
but he has a control over how he will react and
deal with it.
 OTHER
SOCIOLOGICAL
APPROACHES TO
UNDERSTANDING
THE SELF
 CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
 Utilizesthe sociopsychological approach to
understanding how the society works
 People learn who they are through their social
interaction with other people
 The view of the self is significantly influenced by
the impression and perception of others
 Cooley called this as the looking-glass self or the
self that is the product of social interaction
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
 According to Cooley, there are three
processes of development
 1. People imagine how they present
themselves to others
 2. People imagine how others evaluate them
 3. People develop some sort of feeling about
themselves as a result of those impressions
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
 Imagine…

 There is a possibility that people develop

self-identities based on wrong perception
of how others sees them.
 Wrong perceptions however, can still
change based on positive social
experiences.
 I am not what I think I am
I am not what YOU think I am
I am what I think YOU think I am
ERVING GOFFMAN
 He observed that people early in their
social interactions learned to slant their
presentation of themselves in order to
create preferred appearances and satisfy
particular people. He called this process
of altering as impression management.
 ERVING GOFFMAN
 Goffman found out that in everyday interactions,
there are similarities of real social interaction to a
theatrical presentation
 This is the reason for the label dramaturgical
approach to his view.
 He used the phrase face-work to describe another
aspect of the self which are usually observed to
people who have resorted in maintaining proper
image of the self on frustrating or embarrassing
moments.
In Summary,,,
 The views of sociologists represented a
progression on how the self has
developed through the process of
socialization to how the person manages
self-presentation in order for him to be
accepted by others.