THE SELF FROM

THE
SOCIOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVE
BY: BEA TRIXIE Q. MONDEJAR
 In the realm of sociology, the
self interacts with the social
world. Initially, the self is self-
absorbed and is just concerned
on its own. Progressively, the self
expands and is now concerned
with other constellation of
selves, known as others.
No one could live by himself or herself
alone. By extension, man will always look for
someone to commune with.

The human person is a social animal; he or

she will always seek others for commercial or
personal reasons.

These reasons will always be equated with

relationship. Relationship and their scientific
study will always be correlated with
sociology.
George Mead’s Social Self

Sociologist George Herbert Mead

argued that the self is not biological
but social. Self is something that is
developed through social interaction.
The self is developed as a one grows
and ages.
He illustrated the development of the self in the
case of a Genie, a girl who was confined in a
room until she age the age of 13. She was found
when she was already 13 years old: she did not
know how to walk and speak. According to
Mead, she had not developed of the self. Even
though her body developed normally according
to her age, she had not developed her “self”
because of her isolation of the world.

Self, therefore, is concentrated by directly

engaging in the world through interaction and
through reflection on those interactions.
Mead explained that self has two parts (1) self-
awareness and (2) self-image. He proposed the
idea that the self developed though social
interaction; that social interaction involves the
exchange of symbols ( language); and that
understanding of symbols involves being able to
take the role of another.
Role Playing is the process in which one takes on
the role of another by putting oneself in the
position of the person. The idea of self can only be
developed of the individual can get outside in
such a way that he or she can become an object to
oneself.
For Mead, self is not inborn. Babies cannot
interpret the meaning of other people’s behavior.
There are three stages of development.
First is imitation or the preparatory stage. In this
stage, a child imitates the behavior of his parent
like sweeping the floor.
Second is the play stage, he becomes aware that
there is a difference between himself and the role
that he is playing.
Last is the game stage. The child comes to see
himself from the perspective of other people. To
play the game, the child must be aware of his
relationship to other people and place himself in
their roles in order to appreciate his particular
role in game.
 “I” AND “ME” SELF
All humans experience internal conversation. This
conversation involves the I and me, which he called
phases of self.(Mead)
I Me
• Phase of the self that is • Self that results from the
unsocialized and spontaneous progressive stages of role
• It is the acting part of the self, taking and the perspective one
an immediate response to assumes too view and analyze
other people one’s behaviors.
• Represent the self that is free • It is the organization of the
and unique internalized attitude of others.
• The subjective part of the self • Conventional and objective
part of the self.
Generalized Others

- According to Mead, it is
an organized community
which gives to the
individual his or her
unity of self. The
attitude of the
generalized other is the
attitude of the entire
community.
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY’S LOOKING
GLASS SELF

In this view, the self is developed

as a result of one’s perceptions of
other people’s opinion.
The self which is essentially an
individual’s awareness of one’s
social or personal identity is a
social development.
The self is built through social
interaction which involves three
steps: first, people imagine how
they must appear to others;
second, they imagine the
judgement of that appearance;
and finally, they develop
themselves through the
judgement of others.
PRIVATE SELF, PUBLIC SELF, AND
COLLECTIVE SELF

Private self or the individual

self, is the cognition that
involves traits, states, and
behaviours. It is an assessment
of the self by the self.
Public self is the cognition concerning the
generalized others. It corresponds to the
assessment of the self by the generalized
other.

Collective self is the cognition concerning

a view of self that is found in
memberships in social group.
SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY

The social identity theory has

been defined as the person’s
sense of who she or he is
according to his or her
membership to a certain
group. Group membership,
according to the social identity
theory, is an important source
of pride and self-esteem.
These social groups developed by William
Graham Sumner are further divided into two-
the in-group and the out-group.

An in-group is an esteem of social group

commanding a members loyalty. It is the
group to which a person belongs.

An Out-group is a scorned social group to

which one feels competition or opposition.
This is a group to which a person does not
belong.
According to Tajfel and Turner (1986) there
are 3 mental processes involving in
evaluating others as “us” or “them”.
The first process is called social
categorizations. This is similar with how
people categorized things such as living and
non-living.
The second process is called social
identification. People adopted the identity of
the group to which they have categorized
themselves.
The last process is social
comparison. After categorizing
themselves as part of the group
and have identified with that
group, they tend to compare that
group with other groups. They
might begin to discriminate and
criticize the other group.