0.1 What is subtle about social interaction?  (Page 10/26)

So how much of social interaction is "natural"? People obviously can't act how they really want and reveal their true selves in ordinary social interaction. There has to be an understanding of equality in order to people to get along. If people acted naturally, they would try to be dominant over the other people present. There are many factors that occur that people need to adjust to and "act" accordingly to. You can't just go into a social situation and do everything you want and have everything your way - you need to act and change your manner to a certain extent at least.

The looking-glass self

• As we see our face, figure and dress in the glass and are interested in them because they are ours, and pleased or otherwise with them according as they do or do not answer to what we should like them to be; so in imagination we perceive in another's mind some thought of our appearance, manners, aims and deeds, character, friends and so on, and are variously affect by it ...the thing that moves us to pride of shame is not the mere mechanical reflections of ourselves, but imputed sentiment, the imagined effect of this reflection upon another's mind. (Cooley, 1902)

The concept Cooley articulated in this passage is referred to as the Looking-Glass Self. According to him, just as we make contact with our image in a mirror by knowing that it is a reflection of ourselves, so when we make contact with others we see our own images reflected in their actions by the ways they approach and react to us. Here the term "contact" does not refer to direct physical touching, of course, but to a symbolic meeting of minds through the medium of imagination. Sometimes imagination alone, of how others would react to us, is enough to affect our behavior.

If you talk to your mother on the telephone and she tells you how lonely she is and how much she longs for you to visit her, you understand this request through your own qualities reflected in her request. The qualities may be ideas of your obligations toward your parents, or even more generally your views of kindness and being a good person. Your own feelings about being alone, and the opposite, of enjoying the comforts of companionship, are mirrored in her request.

You may decide not to visit, but you and your mother have contacted each other in a symbolic act. Although we rely on our own particular ways of knowing, the social sense of knowing, which Cooley called society, depends on the imaginative reflection of ourselves in others. When you imagine turning down your mother's request, you hear her disappointment or the disgust in her reply. What is heard really is your own understanding of how you would act if the positions were reversed. You hear over the telephone line your ideas about yourself as a good son or daughter, or as a responsible adult. Thus one way to think about society is as a result of individual minds in reflective contact.

This theory of the Looking-Glass self is basically just saying that there is a certain amount of inner reflection and thought about everything that happens to you socially and otherwise. You see everything about yourself when you interact with someone, you reflect on what happens and ask, "what does this mean to me", "how does who I am factor into this", "what qualities do I have that influence my feelings as a response to this person", "how does who I am and my life experience matter in this situation", "what aspects of my life and who I am matter to this interaction and my feelings about it". If someone is talking to you and they make you feel a certain way, you may reflect on that and say that it is a result of certain qualities you have, you may bring up various feelings you have that relate to the conversation or the situation that are relevant. There is an enormous amount of things meeting someone can cause you to think about, you can think about your entire life, who you are and your personal attributes and characteristics (especially those that are relevant in this instance). There is a large amount of self-reflection in any interaction. There is a deeper reflection of the conversation or what is occurring than may seem. You think about the significance of the topic at hand to your own life, to the life of the person you are talking to, to the interaction. You also think about your feelings and their feelings and how these matter in the context.