Charles Cooley Major Questions Cooley

Charles Cooley

Major questions Cooley was trying to address

Charles Cooley was known for conceptualizing two important terms that offered an alternative perspective in understanding social psychology: looking glass self and primary groups. Each concept addresses a particular concern or question that reflected the kind of society prevalent during Cooley's time.

In the concept of the looking glass self, Cooley was trying to address the main question, "how is self-concept developed within the individual?" A more thought-provoking question, perhaps an umbrella question, which resulted from this query, is the main issue of determining that in contrast to the popular belief, there is an existence of both the social and individual selves encapsulated within the individual's behavior and actions. These social and individual aspects of the self are actually found in Cooley's proposed public and private selves, respectively. Through the looking-glass concept, he was able to prove that in the development and enactment of the self-concept, the individual took into account the role that society and the individual himself/herself have over his/her actions and behavior. This concept, in effect, validates that there exists a complementary, rather than distinct and dichotomous, selves within an individual's self-concept.

In developing the concept of the primary groups, meanwhile, Cooley tried to answer the main question, "what could best describe or demonstrate the role that human groups play in integrating the individual into society/social order?" This query is in relation to Cooley's belief that social groups have major roles in making each individual integrated, in some way, to the society. However, the manner in which the individual is integrated has not been document nor proven scientifically. Thus, in his study relating social groups and the individual, he found out that there exists a social group, which he termed as "primary group," which acts as the main sphere of influence to the individual, linking him/her to the society in general. While primary groups link the individual to the society, it is not characterized by unity and harmony alone. As characteristic of a modern society, primary groups created in the modern society also tend to be competitive, and are actually motivated to group together as a response to the need to integrate and link with society, as modern society became more individualistic and atomistic in nature. Thus, as a response to the highly-individuated modern society, Cooley conceived of the concept of primary groups to identify the main sphere of influence of the modern individual. 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. Hence, Cooley became the pioneer in conducting this kind of scientific endeavor, wherein quantitative means were utilized to prove his psycho-sociological theory.