Charles Cooley Major Questions Cooley Term Paper

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Thus, in understanding the modern individual, researchers need to look into his/her primary group, which could reflect a lot about his beliefs, values and motivations -- specifically the individual's self-concept.

Cooley's main theoretical points

Integrating these concepts of looking-glass self and primary groups, the main theoretical point of Cooley is determined. As explicated earlier, his main theoretical point in conducting the looking-glass experiment was to prove that in the conception of the self-concept, both the society and the individual are actively taking part in influencing the individual's motivations, actions and behavior. This means that in as much as the society is influential to the individual, the individual also has his/her own mental construct as to how s/he wants himself/herself to be. Combining both private and public selves, the individual undergoes a process of affirmation and even modification, wherein the individual retains characteristics and behavior that are reflective of both public and private selves. However, modification occurs when this condition is not met, and the individual could alter his/her actions and behavior by either subsisting to his/her public self, or assuming behavior and action corresponding to his/her private self. On a larger scale or macro perspective, Cooley's research paved the way for scientifically determining how society influences the individual; in fact, determining how the public self influences one's view of himself/herself is scientifically difficult to determine.

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Hence, Cooley became the pioneer in conducting this kind of scientific endeavor, wherein quantitative means were utilized to prove his psycho-sociological theory.

Effects of Cooley's ideas on later theorizing

After Cooley's experiment, a similar experiment was conducted by Arthur Beaman et. al., wherein they sought to affirm Cooley's findings in his looking-glass experiment. However, what made this experiment different from Cooley's was that the researchers used two kinds of manipulation, called the self-awareness manipulation and individuation manipulation. These are somewhat similar to Cooley's public and private selves, and if anything, this experiment was conducted in order to validate and affirm Cooley's findings on this sociological phenomenon. While there are minor differences in socio-demographic characteristics and their relationship to the experiment's variables, the experiment conducted largely supported Cooley's main assumptions, which he developed after his own looking-glass experiment......

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