The Looking Glass SeIf - An Empirical Test and Elaboration

The Looking Glass SeIf:
An Empirical Test and Elaboration"
KING- To Y EUNG, Rutgers University, New Brunswick

]OHN LEVI MARTIN, Rutgers University, New Brunswick
Downloaded from http://sf.oxfordjournals.org/ at Seton Hall on April 5, 2015

Abstract
We test the hypothesis inspired by Mead and Cooley, that one's self-perceptions are
an internalization of the perceptions of the views of others, usinga large set of network
data fram 56 naturally occurring communities. The results are compatible with an
internalization model, whereby self-conceptions are instilled thraugh interaction with
high-statusalters. Yetit does not seem that personalityis simply an impression made
in a malleable mind by theforce of social interaction - examination of longitudinal
data demonstrates that over time, it ispossible for individuals to bringothers around
to their self-conceptions, presumably because they are able to build up a reputation
thraugh consistentacts.
One of the most exciting and theoretically rich ideas of sociology and social
psychology is that the self is a social product (see Fine 1990:122), a claim
immortalized in Cooley's ([ 1902] 1983) notion of the "looking glass self." More
specifically, there is a common argument associated with symbolic
interactionism, but having more widespread influence (e.g., Giddens 1991;
Habermas 1987), that the self is a result of the social process whereby we learn
to see ourselves as others see us. Despite the illustrious parentage of this claim,
empirical support for this view has been mixed and somewhat disappointing,
in part because there have been few studies testing this perspective with
reasonably large data sets and rigorous methods (we discuss several important
* This work was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, SES-99-06452. An
earlier version was presented at the American Sociological Association meetings in August 2001;
we would like to thank the participants, especially Katherine Faust, for comments. We would
also like to thank Noah Friedkin, Benjamin Zablocki, and especially three anonymous reviewers
whose comments greatly improved this article. Direct correspondence to King- To Yeung,
Department ofSociology, Rutgers University, 54 loyce Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway N] 08854-8045.
E-mail: kingto@rci.rutgers.edu .
© The University of North Carolina Press Social Forces, March 2003, 81(3):843-879
844/ Social Forces 81:3, March 2003
contributions below). Further, as Ichiyama (1993:88) has emphasized, there are

even fewer studies of the looking glass self in natural settings.
The importance of natural settings has come to the fore as researchers
(e.g., Swann 1984) have emphasized that we must recognize that a correspon-
dence between how others view ego and how ego views herself may also result
from a process whereby ego convinces the group to see her as she sees herself.
Experimental results may demonstrate that this process, like its reverse whereby
ego learns to see herself as she is seen by others, is plausible - that is, under
some conditions ego can influence how she is seen by others. But given two
opposing processes, it is of the utmost interest to know whether one tends to
erase the other in naturally occurring situations (cf. Felson 1993:3; Iussim
1991:62). Thus, a fair test of the hypothesis of the looking glass self, one that
acknowledges the possibility of other processes leading to convergence between

self-image and the group's perception, especially processes related to the ac-
tive side of social self-construction proposed by many symbolic interactionists
(e.g., Blumer 1969; Goffman 1959; Hochschild 1983), will probably require
attention to naturally occurring groups.
We provide such a test in this article: findings from a natural setting are
consistent with a looking glass self; indeed, the data are consistent with some
of Cooley's specific claims regarding how the self concept is internalized from
the perspectives of those we see as "ascendant" over us. That we may internalize
the views of others, however, does not rule out the possibility of individuals
persuading others to accept self-presentations.
Theoretical and Empirical Approaches to the Looking Glass Self
THEORIES OF SELF-CONSTRUCTION
There are many ways of understanding the claim that the self is a social prod-
uct; for example, an orthodox behaviorist could argue that selective reinforce-
me nt from others helps shape our developing selves. Cooley ([1902] 1983:184),
however, argued that the social process shaping the self revolved around
intersubjectivity, seeing ourselves as we imagine others see us. (( [I]n imagina-
tion we perceive in another's mind some thought of our appearance, manners,
aims, deeds, characters, friends, and so on, and are variously affected by it"
At the simplest level - and the level that most empirical studies have
perforce examined - this implies that to the extent that we correctly
understand how we are seen by others, our own self-conceptions will be
internalizations of others' conceptions of us, For the purposes of exposition,
and like previous studies, we can abstract this portion of Cooley's understanding
as the "looking glass effect," and provisionally treat it as the impressing of a
"self" into a malleable person. This imagery of impression is simplistic, but
Looking Glass Self / 845
consistent with the direction of influence proposed by Cooley, and some of his
own metaphors.
First of all, we are, he argued, influenced by those whom we see as "ascen-
dant'' over us: "In the presence of one whom we feel to be of importance there
is a tendency to enter into and adopt, by sympathy, his judgment of ourself"
(Cooley [1902] 1983:206). Thus, influence is something that tends to flow from
above to below. Second, Cooley went on to stress that "Girls have, as a rule, a
more impressible social sensibility; they care more obviously for the social
image, study it, reflect upon it more," and hence even adult women are "as a
rule more dependent upon immediate personal support and corroboration
than are men" who have a "greater power of standing alone" (Cooley [1902]
1983:202f). Thus some persons are more "impressible" than others, and there
is agendering to impressibility.

Despite this, Cooley hirnself argued that there was no opposition between
imitation or suggestion on the one hand and choice on the other; imitation,
far from being some process of contagion, was an active process on the part of
a self attempting to learn or master certain techniques. The impression meta-
phor, while facilitating the empirical discussion, does not do justice to Cooley's
emphasis on the proactive character of conformity and emulation. Of course,
it may matter little for the type of empirical analysis we propose whether this
process is "active" or "passive," so long as people's self-conceptions are in fact
influenced by how others see them. But Mead (1934), taking this basic insight
further, stressed that the internalization of the perspective of others forms only
one part of our personality, the self that is "recognized in the community in
so far as it recognizes the others," the "me," We also have an ((I," an ability to
reflect upon and react to these expectations; to defy them or to accept them,
but in either case to actively and perhaps spontaneously take a position vis-a-vis
our "me" and hence vis-a-vis the social group.
This active process of self-construction is clearest in the writings of those
presenting a dramaturgical view of the self (e.g., Goffman 1959; Hochschild
1983; see also Fine 1990), who suggest that individuals can construct their selves
by manipulating the definition of the interactional context, by managing
information strategicaIly, and most generally, by taking on well established
fronts. But active self-construction may also occur more prosaically, and more
subtly, in everyday relations. Emirbayer and Mische (1998:988, 970) build upon
Mead's notion of "sociality"- the coming together of the temporal and
relational aspects of the self as actors "reconstruct their view of the past" in
response to "the arising future" - to stress the agentic aspect of the social self.
Instead of assuming that agency must be parsed as some sort of resistance to
the social, they propose that we see agency as the "temporally constructed
engagement by actors of different structural environments," Accordingly,
Emirbayer and Goodwin (1994: 1442, 1448) suggest that far from assuming that
interaction with social structures is the antithesis of agency, we need to analyze
agency with respect to "the persisting patterns of ties among actors," In sum,
an expansion of the Meadian perspective suggests that the social self is not
simply an impressible self: given time, people can create trajectories for
themselves that may shape how they are seen by others, which we can consider
a process of externalization.
We will go on to speak of the looking glass hypothesis as the general idea
that self-perception is an internalization of how we are seen by others; this
hypothesis is largely drawn from Cooley, though we are unable to test Cooley's
entire scheme. We begin, like other tests of the looking glass hypothesis, with a
simplified and unidirectional internalization model that one-sidedly stresses
the impressibility of persons. We will also be testing some "agentic" hypotheses
that are loosely inspired by Mead, though we confess that with these data we
are unable to formulate more than a crude approximation to the processes he

had in mind. However, even though we cannot fully test even Cooley's
understanding of self-forrnation, let alone Mead's, it will turn out that the
evidence does speak to the empirical problems that concerned them.
PREVIOUS RESEARCH
Empirical tests of the looking glass approach to self construction have largely
focused on the congruence between how any person (ego) views herself and
how others (alter) view ego. Researchers have generally assumed that any con-
gruence found, which we shall term the looking glass eifect, is the result of a
process of internalization (Gecas 1982). Since such congruence could also arise
as a result of the externalization process, or even simply because ego is "objec-
tively" of such and such a character, is known by others to be such, and knows
herself to be such, this may be seen as a relatively weak test of the looking glass
self. Yet there have been only a few studies providing empirical support (e.g.,
Ausubel, Schiff & Gasser 1952; Miyamoto & Dornbusch 1956; for a review of
early studies, see Shrauger & Schoeneman 1979).
One group of studies follows Kinch (1963) in elaborating the looking glass
hypothesis as a two step process: first, the actual views of other persons are
distilled (by ego) into a subjective understanding of the views of others
regarding ego, and second, ego constructs her sense of self in response to this
conception.! But empirical studies of this process (Felson 1981, 1985; Gecas
1982; Quarantelli & Cooper 1966), termed reflected appraisal, have generally
found strong evidence only of the second portion of this chain. Evidence of a
correspondence between how we see ourselves and how others actually see us
has been far rarer (McNulty & Swann 1994:1012; Shrauger & Schoeneman
1979; though see Ichiyama 1993), Ieading some to conclude that adults are not
susceptible to the Iooking glass effect (e.g., Kenny & DePauIo 1993:157).
Of course, it has to be conceded that rather than ego's subjective
understanding of the Iooking glass image affecting her self-conceptions, seIf-
conceptions may affect this "reflected appraisal" (a process usually termed
projection) (Felson 1981:116). Simultaneous equation models (which Felson
[1993:18] calls the "poor man's substitute" for longitudinal analysis) have been
used to disentangle these effects, but these tend not to be robust in the face of
changes in specification and require assumptions about instrumental variables
that are difficult to defend (Felson 1985:71). Even more worrisome, they have
produced the curious result that the effect of reflected appraisal on self-
construction is greater than the reciprocal projection effect, yet these reflected
appraisals are only weakly tied to actual appraisals. Paradoxically, then, there
is a strong relation between reflected appraisal and self-conceptions which is
denied to be the result either of projection, or of actual appraisals. The crucial
connection between what others think of ego, and what ego thinks of herself,
has not, then, appeared in these studies, and so Felson (1985:76) concluded

that the evidence was not strong in support of the theory."
While there has not been widespread evidence in support of the looking
glass self, then, Cooley's specific hypotheses regarding differential susceptibility
are reasonable. There is evidence that influence does tend to flow from the
"ascendant" downwards (e.g., Lippitt, Polansky & Rosen 1952), and one study
found that differences in the degree to which people dissented from the
looking glass image might increase with status (Reeder, Donohue & Biblarz
1960:159). There is also evidence of female superiority in sensitivity to certain
interactional cues (see Hall 1978 for a review; also Rosenthai & DePaulo 1979).
Further, arecent study of married couples by Cast, Stets and Burke (1999),
which we discuss in more detail below, finds evidence of a looking glass effect
and these patterns of differential susceptibility.
A serious examination of Cooley's arguments regarding the correspondence
between self-image and the perceptions of others thus requires that we examine
differential susceptibility. First of all, some individuals may be more impressible;
second, all individuals may be more affected by certain others (e.g., those they
consider ascendant over them) (cf. Rosenberg 1973), and hence a thorough test
requires attention to dyadic, as wen as individual, differences. It also requires
that we entertain the possibility that correspondence between self image and
the image in the social looking glass arises because of a process of
externalization, not internalization.
For example, a few studies (e.g., McNulty & Swann 1994:1015) have
suggested that people can affect the perceptions others have of them; indeed,
that they actually work to bring others' perceptions into line with their self
perceptions (see Swann 1984:466 for a review; also Swann & Hill 1982), but
the effects were not always strong or even positive for an attributions examined.
Evidence shows that at least in some circumstances, ego is better able to change
the minds of alter about ego's qualities than vice-versa (Swann & Ely 1984).
In sum, while there have been a number of interesting studies supporting
the hypothesis of a looking glass self, they are outweighed by negative or
equivocal results. Although there are various methodological reasons that have
been discussed for the disappointing nature of the few investigations that have
been undertaken (see Felson 1985; Shibutani 1961:435; Quarantelli & Cooper
1966),3 it seems that some of the limitations are in the nature of the data (see
the interesting reasons for the disagreement between self and others discussed
in Felson 1981). The kinds of experimental manipulations that could be used
to change ego's understanding of how she appears to others may be too artificial
to reproduce the looking glass effect (Felson 1981:116; Kemper 1966), but the
kind of c1ear statements of evaluation that would allow a researcher to confirm
that ego internalizes the views of the group seem rare in other settings (Felson
1985:73).
Most importantly, researchers have lamented the lack of longitudinal data
from naturally occurring groups (e.g., McNulty & Swann 1994:1013; Shrauger

& Schoeneman 1979: 522,560; Swann 1984:457,468); the difficulty in gathering
such data comes from the fact that if adults' conceptions of self are to be
changed by some group, they need to be in a group while their self-conceptions
are in flux. Such settings seem to be relatively rare, and situations in which a
researcher can have access to group members at this crucial time even rarer.
Consequently, success at detecting a looking glass effect has often depended
on fortuitous choice of an appropriate group in which self-conceptions are at
risk of change: Ichiyama (1993:88) chose «human relations" training groups,
Miyamoto and Dornbusch (1956) fraternities and sororities, and Reeder et al.
(1960) military personnel at an isolated base, and indeed all found evidence
compatible with a looking glass effect.
To test whether there is a correspondence between self-conceptions and the
conceptions of the looking glass image, and whether it is due to externalization
or internalization, we need studies that have the following characteristics:
(1) The group's social dynamics should be central enough to be expected to
affect mcmbers' sense of self, which implies that the groups will (a) be relatively
closed and/or spend a great deal of time together (e.g., Cast, Stets & Burke 1999:
69; Felson 1981:117), (b) have members whose self-conceptions are in flux
(Ichiyama 1993:88; Cast, Stets & Burke 1999:69), and (c) have explicit
communication of evaluations (Cast, Stets & Burke 1999:69; Ichiyama 1993:88);
(2) We must be able to obtain data on self-conceptions of group members.
(3) We must be able to obtain comparable data on how group members see
one another. (4) We should ideally have data from (at least) two different points
in time (McNulty & Swann 1994). We have over fifty such groups.
Data and Methods
THE URBAN COMMUNE DATA SET
We analyze data from the first and second wave of Benjamin Zablocki's Urban
Commune Project. This data set contains a wealth of information about the
members of 60 different intentional communities. Ten communes (defined as
having 5 or more adult members, either not all of the same sex or with at least
one child, and with a collective identity known to others) were selected from
the largest SMSAs in six of the census bureau's eight major areas in 1974 (for
more information, see Zablocki 1980; we describe the data set only in so far as
it is relevant for our purposes); 56 had valid data for our analyses. The groups
were not picked randomly, but rather to fill certain distributions for key

variables such as number of members, ideological type, and age. Thus, the
sample is multistage and weighted (Zablocki 1980), but as the true population
distributions are unknown, we treat the sam pie as if it were a random one.
Communes ranged from 5 to around 40 members, with 10 around average."
These groups seem an encouraging place to begin looking for evidence of a
looking glass effect: members were generally young adults (median age 25) who
were frequently deliberately seeking to "grow" as persons (read: undergo
personality changes), and were in social environments that were sufficiently
important to the members, and sufficiently enveloping of the members' time
and personality, to heighten any generic responsiveness adults may have to how
they are seen by others. Of course, there was great diversity in the beliefs, social
structure, and relational intensity of these groups, diversity we might expect
to be related to the strength of the looking glass effect. Some groups were simply
collective living arrangements that had evolved collective identities, while
others attempted personality transformation on such a scale that critics might
consider them to be attempting brainwashing, and to lead some members to
regret their participation when finally detaching themselves from the group.
We are unable to determine which groups should be expected to have
"streng" social environments and which weak, but we can expect that in general,
these types of groups satisfy the criteria given above for the production of the
type of effect anticipated by the looking glass hypothesis. Fortunately, data were
collected to allow the testing of such a hypothesis: each person was asked to
name which of the other group members possessed each of a list of qualities;
members then reported as to whether or not they themselves possessed this
quality. A total of 554 persons were in these groups, 422 of which have valid
data for our analyses.f
In 1975, another round of data collection was carried out on members of
the same groups. In the intervening year, a number of groups disbanded totally,
and among those groups that had not disbanded, there was relatively high
membership turnover. Consequently, only 218 persons from the first wave
850 / Social Forces 81:3, March 2003
remained in the second wave; of these, new data on self-perceptions were

gathered from 144. With this second wave, we may not only replicate the
analyses conducted on the first wave of data, but we can test whether our
derived hypotheses successfully predict change. We go on to discuss these data
in more detail.
DATA USED
All the data we use come from a relationship questionnaire that each member
was asked to fill out. (For purposes of consistency, we will always consider the
person whose self-conception is in question "ego," and we shall refer to any
other group member as «alter.") In the first section, respondents were asked to
come up with names of fellow commune members whom they considered to

be: supportive, decisive, influential, loving, strong, sexy, dominant, charismatic,
intuitive, holy, passive, dependent, and narcissistic (egocentric). 6 As alternate
wordings were used for two items (influential and intuitive) for one sixth of
the groups, we present these alternate wordings separately. Finally, there are
two other characteristics that we remove from most analyses (or we present
analyses with and without these characteristics), though doing so decreases the
size of most effects, namely "interested in children," and "interested in fixing
up the house." While these may or may not be seen as fundamental personality
characteristics, they were so strongly gendered in this sample that they inflate
any estimate of the relation between self-conceptions and the looking glass
image. (In a word, if women are extremely likely to report that they are
interested in kids, and other members assurne that all women are interested
in kids, we would see a positive association that reflects no interpersonal
dynamics.) Eliminating these items leads to a more conservative test of the
hypotheses in question.
With these data, we can determine for each group member a profile of how
her compatriots saw her, and test whether her self-conception is independent
of this group perspective. We will go on to speak of this group perspective as
the "looking glass" in which ego sees herself, on the hypothesis that the actual
ways in which ego is seen by others shapes ego's personality (whether or not
ego is consciously able to identify what others think of her). 7
Immediately following this portion of the questionnaire, respondents were
asked to circle those characteristics that they thought as "rnost applied to them"
using the same list. It is these data that we use to measure self-perception.
Finally, there was a third section of the questionnaire in which the respondent
had a second sheet for each other member, and basically completed a
relationship census on his relation with this person. We will use items from
this portion of the questionnaire tapping (1) whether ego named alter as a
"significant" person in her life and (2) whether ego saw herself or alter as having
more power in the relation, or whether they were equal. We also use alter's
reports regarding ego for each of these.
In most cases, we conduct parallel analyses for all the characteristics for
which we have data, since the evidence is sufficiently strong that their joint
significance can be assessed simply by examining the separate results. In one
case, however, we need to conduct a more rigorous meta-analysis; such analysis
could be done for all other results and would not change the conclusions.
Analyses
A TEST OF THE LOOKING GLASS HYPOTHESIS

We begin with a simple test of whether our data are compatible with the
hypothesis that there is a looking glass effect. This hypothesis implies, at the
very least, that the association between what others think of one, and what one
thinks of oneself, is positive and nonzero. Let us parsimoniously represent the
data which we are using as observations X ijgk = 1 if person i says person j is
characteristic k, where i and j are in group g, and 0 if person i does not say this
about person j. Let Yigk = 1 if person i in group g attributes characteristic k to
herself, and let N g be the number of persons with valid data in the group g,
and K the number of characteristics.
Since our hypothesis is that self-perception is affected by the views of others,
it is reasonable to consider self-perception the dependent variable, and others'
perceptions the independent variables. We begin by making the assumption
that every alter's view of ego contributes equally to ego's self-image, and hence
we may use the sum of all alters seeing ego as possessing characteristic k as a
measure of the strength of the view of the looking glass image. This simplifying
assumption may not be true, and below we investigate it empirically, but there
is no reason why such a simplification should bias our results.
Accordingly, the looking glass hypothesis may be tested in a set of K logistic
regressions of the form
(1)
where Q. is some normalized sum of the number of alters who believe that
ego has ~~aracteristic k. The raw sum is probably not a very good measure of
the strength of the view of the looking glass image, if only because it is likely
to confound group size with group perception. Hence it seems reasonable to
propose
(2)
However, it also may be the case that the density of attributions of characteristic
k is far higher in some groups than in others. In some cases, this may be due to
a lower threshold at which person i decides to consider person j to have
characteristic k, perhaps because the group ideology requires that all persons
strive to possess this characteristic. In such a case, we would want to control
for the "inflation" of this characteristic. A person who gets all four attributions
of characteristic k in one group should then be seen as receiving a stronger
message to the effect that "you are k" than a person who gets six attributions
of characteristic k in an identically sized group in which there are 40 such
attributions. Hence we propose as a reasonable measure.

LXijkg
i
Q *jgk -- i*j
(3)
This measure also would compensate for more a general correlation of errors
within groups. For example, it may well be the case that there is a tendency
for members in some groups to give "false negatives" and under-report
characteristics, whether their own or those of others, while in other groups,
there is a tendency to give "false positives" and report attributions of
characteristics where there actually are none. Such group-level consistencies
would lead to strong associations at the dyadic level given the Q measure
proposed as equation 2, but not the Q* measure given as equation 3. We will
refer to Q as the "absolute" measure of the perspective of the looking glass image,
and refer to Q* as the "relative" measure, since it judges the strength of the
attribution of some characteristic to ego by the other members by comparing
how ego is seen relative to how the other group members are seen. Other
versions were tried (such as dividing the density by the number of dyads) and
found to make no difference to the results.
Our first set of tests then, involves testing the significance of the logistic
regression coefficients bk in 2K models, one using Q and the other Q* as the
measure of the view of the looking glass image. Given the fact that we have K
separate tests of the same underlying hypotheses, we may properly use a meta-
analytic procedure to determine the statistical significance of the results. While
there are a number of well known procedures for combining test results
(e.g., Glass, McGaw & Smith 1981; Rosenthai 1978), it is sufficient for our
purposes simply to examine the sign of the resulting coefficient for each case,
to determine whether the tendency towards coefficients being in the right
direction is compatible with sampling from a population in which the actual
effect is not positive. (This method was basically used to examine the looking
glass effect by Miyamoto & Dornbusch [1956].) Fortunately, the results are so
clear that the choice of method to assess statistical significance makes no
difference.
Our first tests are of the null hypothesis, Ho as follows:
Hypothesis 0: Self-perception is independent of the state of the
"looking glass image."
Even if we are able to reject this null hypothesis, however, there are three
different hypotheses that are all equally consistent with the data (cf. Felson
1993:3), although only one is compatible with the looking glass account.
Hypothesis 1 ("Internalization"): self-perception results from an internalization
of the perspective of the looking glass image.

Hypothesis 2 ("Externalization"): the views that others hold of ego results from
an externalization of ego's self-perception.
Hypothesis 3 ("Objective"): Both ego's self-perception and others' perception
of ego are based only on the objective characteristics possessed by ego and
available to direct inspection with ego's behavior (cf. Felson 1985:74; Iussim
1991).
Note that since we consider it unreasonable that either the internalization or

the externalization hypothesis entail that others can never form their
conceptions of ego by observation of ego's behavior, for us the "objective"
hypothesis claims that only such observation lies behind any agreement
between ego and others.
Our first results cannot distinguish between hypo thesis 1, hypothesis 2, and
hypothesis 3 (although below we present evidence that does). However, that
one of the non-null hypotheses holds is certainly not obvious. First of all, it is
reasonable to question the reliability and validity of these data; it may be, for
one, that people are not motivated to report themselves to have negative
characteristics. Second, even if the data are valid, it may weIl be that there is
no relation, or at least no relation for negative characteristics such as
"narcissism." Attribution theory, after all, has emphasized how differently we
see others from how we see ourselves. Rejection of the null hypothesis thus
indicates both that the data are likely to be valid, and that there is a relation
between how group members see themselves, and how they are seen by others.
Table 1 presents the coefficients and t- tests for each of the K characteristics
from the first (larger) wave of data. As we can see, there is extremely strong
evidence against the null hypothesis - what people think about themselves is
clearly related to what others think about them. Of the 13 characteristics
(excluding the suspect "kids" and "hause," presented in Table 1 for comparison
with later results), we reject the null hypothesis at the .05 level for all of them
854 / Social Forces 81 :3, March 2003
TABLE 1: Logistic Regressions of Self-Perception on the Looking Glass

Image
Relative Measure Q*
Absolute Measure Q (TotalAttribution by Altersl
(Total Attribution byaltersIN-l) Group TotalAttribution)
Unstandardized T-Test Unstandardized T-Test

Coefficients Significance" Coefficients Signficance"
Supportive 1.515 (.467) .001 2.469 (.908) .004

(N = 425)
Decisive 3.385 (.496) <.001 5.201 (.760) <.001
(N = 425)
Loving 2.205 (.525) <.001 2.795 (.766) <.001

(N=425)
Strong 2.302 (.490) <.001 2.563 (.687) <.001
(N =425)
Dominant 3.059 (.533) <.001 2.748 (.541) <.001
(N =425)
Charismatic 2.732 (.677) <.001 1.368 (.559) .007
(N =425)
Sexy 2.495 (.646) <.001 1.340 (.582) .011
(N =425)
Holy 2.922 (.961) .001 .501 (.681) .231
(N = 300)
Intuitive .997 (.593) .047 1.140 (.727) .059
(N = 300)
Intuitive:Alt. 4.275 (1.206) <.001 5.560 (1.571) <.001
wording
(N = 125)
Influential 2.411 (.551) <.001 3.150 (.768) <.001
(N = 300)
Influential:Alt. 2.757 (1.093) .006 3.479 (1.393) .007
Wording
(N= 125)
Passive 3.419 (.634) <.001 3.273 (.665) <.001
(N =425)
Dependent 1.660 (.809) .020 .889 (.601) .070
(N = 425)
Narcissistic 2.207 (.840) .005 1.120 (.550) .021
(N = 425)
Interested in kids 4.260 (.537) <.001 5.686 (.838) <.001
(N = 425)
Interested in fixing 3.647 (.527) <.001 5.297 (.799) <.001
up the house (N = 425)
a Standard errors are in parentheses. One-tailed tests
when we use the absolute measure Q, and we reject the null hypothesis for 11
when we use the relative measure Q*. (Meta-analytically, the results are perfect,
in that not one is less than zero.) The chance that this pattern could occur if
we sampled from a population in which there is no effect is miniscule. (The
coefficients are reported in logged form, and hence many of the effects are
extremely large - a coefficient of 4.5 means a 90-fold increase in the odds
that ego will see herself as possessing characteristic k when Q = 1 as opposed
to when Q = 0.)8 We note that these results are confirmed by replication using
the second wave of data: the perception of others affects ego's self perception
at time 2, even when we control for ego's perception at time 1 (analyses
available upon request).
So far, we have merely shown that the data require us to reject the null
hypothesis of independence between self-attributions and the attributions of

others. We now go on to explore variation in the strength of this relation to
demonstrate that the results in the cross-sectional data are less consistent with
the "exterrialization" model (hypothesis 2) or the "objcctive" model
(hypothesis 3) than with the "internalization" model (hypothesis 1). To do this,
we progress from testing the existence of nonindependence between self-
perception and the looking glass image to examining the social correlates of
the looking glass effect.
THE IMPRESIBILITY MODEL
As we recall, Cooley's interpretation of the looking glass effect made reference

to ego's receptiveness to alter's influence. Cooley further claimed that this
degree of impressibility should vary by sex, with women being more impressible.
He also argued that the looking glass effect was tied to a general process whereby
we are influenced by those whom we see as "ascendant" over us. This suggests
that those who are lower in overall status are more likely to be influenced by
the rest of the members of the group (since the average member is more likely
to be ascendant over ego), while those who are of higher status are less likely
to be impressionable (cf. Cast, Stets & Burke 1999:69). From Cooley, we thus
can derive two strong hypotheses associated with the idea of impressibility:
Hypothesis 4: the looking glass effect will be stronger among women than
among men
Hypothesis 5: the looking glass effect will decrease with status.
We note that confirmation of hypothesis 5 supports the internalization
hypothesis (hypothesis 1) but not the externalization (hypothesis 2), since we
would expect influence to flow in either case from the more ascendant to the
less ascendant (and thus hypothesis 2 would imply that the nonindependence
would increase with ego's status).
To test hypothesis 5 requires a measure of the degree to which any

individual agrees with the looking glass image regarding her characteristics
(which we shall consider the degree of the "looking glass effect"), as well as a
measure of overall status in the group. For the latter, we use the latent status
scores retrieved by the model applied to the data on interpersonal power
relations by Martin (1998). Each person (ego) was asked to say whether for
every other member (alter) who held the balance of power, or whether they
were equal. From these data, it is possible to retrieve a latent status score for
each person, by assuming that the observed responses come from a stochastic
process whereby ego compares his status to that of alter, and tends to report
having more power if his status is greater than that of alter, or less power if his
status is less than that of alter. Since such latent parameters for network
relations may increase without bound in certain circumstances, to facilitate

comparison across groups, these parameters were normalized so that they
summed to zero and their squares summed to one. This status indicates the
overall powerfulness of each person in the group.
Creating an individual level measure of the strength of the looking glass
effect is, however, somewhat difficult, since we need some sort of benchmark
when deciding whether any person agrees with her looking glass image, given
that there is unlikely to be unanimity among those whose opinions constitute
the looking glass image. Should ego see herself as characteristic k when one
alter sees ego thusly? When ego is above the mean? When all others see ego
thusly? There is only one rigorous measure that does not involve the imposi-
tion of any value judgement, and this is to use the residual for ego from equa-
tion 1. That is, given Yjkg being the self report of person j in group g on charac-
teristic k, and the slope bk and intercept ck for this characteristic in the equa-
tion linking self-report to looking glass image Qjkg (for person j in group g for
characteristic k), then e jkg is the residual from equation 1, i.e.
(4)
For person j in group g we can come up with an average "looking glass effect"
measure W.jg by taking the mean of the absolute values of all K such residuals,
that is,
1
Wjg = - K fI S}kg I (5)
There are two things to note about this measure. First of all, it can be counter-
intuitive in that persons for whom both Q and Y are zero (or one) will still have
a nonzero residual. Second, since the residual is a measure of "badness" of fit,
we take the negative of the average residual so that the larger the W, the greater
the strength of the looking glass effect. Finally, we also make aversion of
Looking Glass Se1f / 857
TABLE 2: Individual Looking Glass Effect Regressions
Modell Model 2 Model 3

Female .016* .010
(.009) (.009)
[p = .027] [p=.142]
Status -.039** -.034**

(.013) (.013)
[p = .001] [p= .006]
Constant -.378 -.370 -.375

R2 .Oll .028 .031

(N= 326)
Note: Both models use the W measure based on Q* which omits suspect characteristics "kids" and
"hause."
* p < .05 **P < .01 (one tailed tests)
equations 4 and 5 using Q* instead of Q; we shall refer to the resulting

individual level measure as W*.
We can test our hypotheses by examining the association of these individual
measures Wand W* with individual-level measures tapping the theoretically
specified variables. We present bivariate regression coefficients (for
comparability with following models) in Table 2, models 1 and 2. (Here we
report the findings for the more conservative measure W*, eliminating the
suspect relations "interested in fixing up the house" and "interested in kids."
Induding these relations or using the W measure produces the same results.)
Both of Cooley's hypotheses are supported (and we note that this is not true
of other reasonable hypotheses that readers have suggested, such as correla-
tion with age, residence in the group, or average time spent with other mem-
bers"), although the effect of gender is relatively weak. The looking glass effect
is indeed somewhat stronger among women (cf. Felson 1980:229), and it de-
dines with an individual's status. However, this suggests that Cooley's explana-
tion for why the looking glass effect is stronger among women may be incor-
rect (or at least, unnecessary); it may be that the effects of gender are con-
founded with those of status, since women tend to have lower status than men
in these groups (see Fuller & Martin n.d.). Other research (e.g., Snodgrass 1985)
has found that women's greater "emotional sensitivity" is a status effect, and
might be better called "subordinate's sensitivity"; the same might be true for
"impressibility," Indeed, Cast, Stets & Burke (1999) found this to be the case
using a different population - there was no gender difference in the looking
glass effect after status was controlled for. We can adjudicate between Cooley's
858 / Social Parces 81:3, March 2003
understanding of women's greater impressibility and this revision by regress-

ing individuals' degree of agreement with the looking glass image on both sta-
tus and gender (model 3, Table 2).
As we can see, entering status lowers the coefficient for female to the point
at which it is not statistically significant (p = .142, one-tailed); status, on the
other hand, is significantly associated with the looking glass effect. Hence it
seems that the reason the looking glass effect is stronger among women than
among men can be adequately explained simply by virtue of the lower status
women have in these groups on average.!" If women are more concerned about
social image than men, on average, this may simply because they are less
powerful, on average. The gender psychology imputed by Cooley need not be
invoked.
These analyses have provided evidence that suggests that we may favor the

internalization hypotheses over the externalization and objective hypotheses,
for only the first of these implies the observed relation between status and the
looking glass effect. Indeed, the evidence is compatible with the notion of
impressibility - low status members, at least, can be molded by the rest of the
group. However, it is not necessarily the case that the process happens because
some persons (low status) are in general more impressible - it may be that
there is a more general process of influence in which persons tend to be
influenced by those of higher status. This would not only lead to the results
seen above, but should leave traces at the dyadic level.
That is, if we make the reasonable assumption that whatever intluence takes
place is likely to be tied to a fundamentally directed social-psychological
phenomenon, we can use some reasonable assumptions (recently confirmed
in the study by Cast, Stets & Burke 1999) as to the correlates of this direction
(such that if ego sees alter as intluential but not vice versa, ego is more likely
to be influenced by alter than alter is by ego) to adjudicate between the
internalization, externalization, and objective hypotheses.
THE LOOKING GLASS EFFECT AS INFLUENCE
We have seen that lower status people are, as Cooley might have predicted,
more impressible than others. However, this negative corre1ation between
overall status and strength of the looking glass effect could also be due to a
process whereby, say, higher status persons deviated from the consensus of the
looking glass image because they systematically overreport their good qualities
or underreport their bad qualities (the "conceit" hypothesis) or because they
systematically underreport their good qualities or overreport their bad
qualities (the "rnodesty" hypothesis). Both of these hypotheses see the relation
between status and the looking glass effect as an individual level phenomenon.
In contrast, Cooley understood the relation between status and the looking glass
effect not to be about individuals per se, but about dyadic relations: ego will
be more likely to agree with those alters whom ego sees as ascendant. According
to this understanding, an alter of middling status will affect the self-
conceptions of an ego of low status, but not that of an ego of high status. More
specifically, we derive the following:
Hypothesis 6.1: Ego will be more likely to internalize the conceptions of
some alter that ego sees as significant in her life (see Rosenberg 1973:831);
Hypothesis 6.2: Ego will be more likely to internalize the conceptions of some
alter that ego sees as influential;
Hypothesis 6.3: Ego will be more likely to internalize the conceptions of some
alter that ego sees as more powerful than herself (this is also suggested, but
not tested, by Ichiyama 1993:95).
Luckily, we have data tapping all of these items, and we can (as described above)

test these hypotheses.
Such tests also allow for a powerful adjudication between the
internalization and externalization hypotheses. If the externalization hypothesis
is correct, but influence still tends to flow asymmetrically, we would revise the
above hypotheses by substituting alter for ego and vice versa:
Hypothesis 7.1: Alter is more likely to agree with ego as to ego's characteristics
if alter sees ego as significant in her life;
if alter sees ego as influential;
if alter sees ego as more powerful than herself.
In other words, A should be more likely to accept the views of some B who is
significant to A or whom A considers influential, whether those are views about
B or about A. Both the understanding of the externalization and that of the
internalization hypotheses, then, assurne that influence flows from the higher
status to the lower status member, and not vice versa; this assumption has been
confirmed in arecent study of the looking glass effect among married couples
(Cast, Stets & Burke 1999). We note that it is possible for both the
externalization and the internalization hypothesis to be supported by the data.
Finally, the "objective" hypothesis may be understood to imply the absence of
any relation between the strength of the looking glass effect and the ascendance
of alter over ego (or vice versa).
For each dyad, we can measure the strength of the looking glass effect in
terms of the agreement between ego and alter as to ego's qualities; this is best
expressed as an odds-ratio, measuring the odds that ego and alter will agree
on any characteristic k chosen at random. We can call this odds-ratio V... If
again we denote person i's report as to whether person j in group IJ~ is
characteristic k as x ijk ' and person j's self-report regarding this same
characteristic as Y.k
J g
' the~ this odds-ratio is:
(t t (1- 1-
XljkgYJkg )( Xijkg)( Y/kg))
niJg = (tXi/kg ( 1- Y )( t (1- -».)

jkg ) Yjkg
) (6)
This measure seems the best summary of the strength of the agreement
between i and j, given that the distribution of both variables may be highly
skewed towards zero. 11 We eliminate the suspect relations "interested in kids"
and "interested in fixing up the house," though this does not affect our
conc1usions.

It is worth pointing out that these analyses assurne that ego is sensitive to
which alters see ego in some way. While we have shown that ego is sensitive to
the average alter, or to the total group's general impressions, this does not imply
that ego can separate out what different group members think. Indeed, other
research has generally not found compelling evidence that people are even able
to do this (Felson 1980:226, 1981:123; Kenny & Albright 1987; Kenny &
DePaulo 1993;12 see the review and evidence of DePaulo et al. 1987). These
limitations may have had to do with the nature of the data in question
(frequently children or previously unacquainted young adults [see Funder
1987]). Evidence of differential influence at the dyadic level can not only
support (or falsify) a model of the looking glass effect, but also implies that
the ability of persons to feel influence from specific individuals separately may
be greater than often assumed.
Whether or not ego is differentially sensitive to the perceptions of hirnself
held by different alters can, to a limited extent, be studied at the dyadic level.
The limitation enters because any ego only has one se1f-understanding for each
attribute k, and hence cannot necessarily "agree" with all alters. Indeed, his
ability to agree with the "looking glass image" is limited by the degree to which
there really is a looking glass image - the degree of consensus in the group as
to ego's characteristics. This leads to a situation of greater complexity than we
can analyze here. However, it is still possible to compare dyads in terms of their
agreement regarding ego's characteristics; such comparisons may allow a test
of the internalization (hypothesis 1) against the externalization (hypo thesis 2)
and objective (hypothesis 3) hypotheses.
To simultaneously compare both the externalization and internalization
hypotheses to the objective hypothesis, we can examine, for each dyadic relation
tapping ascendance, the effect this relation has on ego and alter's agreement
about ego's characteristic when it is ego who sees alter as ascendant vs. when it
is alter who sees ego as ascendant ('<ego" always referring, we recall, to the
person whose characteristics are in question). After doing so in bivariate terms,
we take both ego's and alter's perspective into account simultaneously, to make
TABLE 3: Dyadic Level Correlations and Regressions
Influential Significant More Powerful Less Powerful

Coefficient Mla Mlb Mlc M2a M2b M2c M3a M3b M3c M4a M4b M4c
Ego says 1.371 * 1.439* 1.546t .864 1.042t .824 -1.106+ -1.210+
that alter [p = .038] [p = .046] [p = .063] [p = .127] [p = .078] [p = .129] [p = .072] [p = .066]
is
Alter says -.021 -.252 .968 -.004 -.893 -.345 .597 .203
thatego [p = .408 a] [p = .350a] [p = .234] [p = .474"] [p = .115a] [p = .259a] [p = .172 a] [p = .271 a]
is
Mutual 1.463
Attribution [p = .390 a]
Constant 6.572 6.867 6.625 6.486 5.596 6.486 6.103 7.121 6.520 6.798 6.648 7.025
Multiple R .049 .001 .051 .055 .034 .062 .047 .036 .040 .052 .025 .056
N 2,033 2,032 1,955 3,256 3,275 3,256 2,420 2,415 1,862 2,420 2,445 1,862
a Coefficient is in wrang direction from predicted by externalization hypothesis; while p-value is reported as if this were not so in keeping with t"'""
convention, a more theoretically consistent usage would be to transform the p-value to I - p. o
o
b "Ego is influential" eliminated from measure of dyadic agreement on ego's characteristics. ~
:::
()Cl
t p < .10 ,.. P < .05 (one-tailed tests) CJ
~
'"
'Jj
'"
(1)
::;::
-CiO
0\
.....

sure we do not mistake an asymmetrie relation for asymmetrie one, or viee-

versa. All results are found in Table 3.
Table 3 is organized as four sets of three regressions each, where the
dependent variable is always the above measure of agreement (equation 6). (To
avoid a spurious assoeiation with the attribution of the eharaeteristie
"influential" to ego, used as an independent variable in models 1b and l c, we
eliminate this eharaeteristie from the measure of D .., although this does not
affeet our results.) Eaeh set eorresponds to the four relationship variables of
interest, splitting the triehotomous power variable into two diehotomies, the
first whether ego (or alter) sees alter (ego) as having more power in their
relation than herself, and the seeond whether ego (or alter) sees alter (ego) as
having less power in their relation than herself. The first model a in eaeh set is
the bivariate regression in whieh the relationship is eharaeterized by ego: thus

the very first model 1a tests the effeet on agreement made by ego seeing alter
as influential. The seeond model b is the bivariate regression in whieh the
relationship is eharaeterized by alter: thus model 1b tests the effeet that alter
seeing ego as influential has on agreement. The third model eincludes both
these variables (and, in the ease of the relation "significant," an interaetion terrn,
sinee strong mutuality effeets might be expeeted).
Beeause dyadie data are likely to have eorrelations of errors aeross cases,
OLS signifieanee tests are inapplieable (though the OLS estimate is not biased).
Aeeordingly, the signifieanee level of the eorrelation or regression eoeffieient
is judged via apermutation QAP test (Kraekhardt 1987, 1988), adapted for
multiple groups (Martin 1999). This eompares the observed eoeffieient to a
eonstrueted distribution in whieh persons are randomly permuted to network
positions, and henee leads to a test of the null hypothesis that there are no
dyadie effeets not redueible to individual level effeets.
Inspeetion of Table 3 demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that if
influenee flows as expeeted, these eross-seetional data are not eompatible with
the externalization hypothesis, though they are eompatible with the
internalization hypothesis. Looking just at the first two rows, in every ease, the
eoefficient for ego indieating some "ascendance" of alter is far greater than the
parallel eoefficient for alter indieating ego's aseendanee (eompare model 1a
to model lb, model2a to model2b, mode13a to model Jb, model4a to model
4b). One of the eoeffieients for ego's report (influential, see modella) is
statistieally signifieant by the QAP test at p < .05, and the other three are
significant p < .10, highly unlikely if there is no real relation.
On the other hand, for three of these relations, the variable regarding alter's
report is in the wrong direetion for the externalization hypothesis (the
exeeption is alter seeing ego as signifieant). Finally, for the one item that
indieates laek of aseendanee (model 4a-e), we find the signs reversed. In sum,
agreement between ego and alter about ego's eharaeteristies is associated with ego
seeing alter as ascendant over ego, and not with alter seeing ego as ascendant over
alter.
Further, when we enter both ego's and alter's reports into the same
regression model (model lc, model 2c, model 3c, model 4c), our conclusions
are not changed. While the p-values of the estimates go up (meaning in the
"wrong" direction), the actual coefficients indicating the effect of alter's
ascendance over ego increase in magnitude and retain their signs. Those for
ego's ascendance over alter, on the other hand, are in the wrong direction. (The
one previous exception, the weak positive effect of alter seeing ego as significant,
may be restricted to cases where both ego and alter see the other as significant.)
Is there anything else that could explain away such consistent findings? First
of an, it might be thought that the real difference has to do with from whom
the reports come: ego's reports tend to be significantly associated with

agreement while alter's do not. However, there is no spurious association. The
measure of agreement involves both ego's and alter's reports about ego - no
pattern of missing data can account for these results. Second, it might be
suspected that there is some more prosaic factor such as the time spent together
affects the agreement between members of the dyad. But it is not clear how a
symmetrie relation could have such asymmetrie consequences. Further, it is
not true - time spent together does not affect the dyadic agreement regarding
ego's qualities.!" Third, it might be that the results are spurious, due to
differences in the degree of consensus in the looking glass image: where an alters
agree about ego, we cannot profitably examine which alters ego tends to agree
with. But controls for the variance in the looking glass image (analyses available
upon request) did not change these results. The results support Cooley's
understanding of the looking glass effect, in which our tendency to see through
others' eyes is a function of their ascendance over ourselves.
Temporal Change
EVIDENCE OF INTERNALIZATION
Our analyses thus far have been consistent with a causal model which posits
that individuals internalize the looking glass image: indeed, the results seem
to confirm an understanding of self construction in which people can have
their seIf concept "pressed in" by those above them in status. We saw no
evidence that people were able to externalize their self-conceptions, a finding
which might be thought to fly in the face of the agentie understandings of the
self with which we began. It is worth pointing out, however, that these
understandings of agency an turned on one analytic element that we have so
far excluded, namely time. If such agentie self-creation exists, we may need to
study change over time.
A second wave of data does exist, though due to turnover, the N is much
lower. Because the attrition of dyads is proportionally even greater (if one
retains some proportion q of the members at time 1, one retains only q2 dyads
at time 2, which must be less than q since q < 1), our ability to use the second
wave to model the temporal processes is limited. In addition to the attrition
of dyads, there is some attrition of items, as changes in the wording between
waves force us to drop the "intuitive" and "influential" items from further
analysis. In addition, the time lag of one year between time 1 (1974) and time 2
(1975) is extremely long both in comparison to theoretical understandings of
the process and in comparison to lags used by other researchers. But it is
possible to use these data to shed further light on the relation between self-
conceptions and the views of others. In particular, we can (like McNulty &
Swann 1994) model the effect of self-image and looking glass image at time 1

on self-image and looking glass image at time 2.
We may begin by carrying out a limited test of dynamics compatible with
the internalization hypothesis. If the internalization hypothesis is correct, there
should be a tendency towards change in self-perception to be in greater accord
with the looking glass image. Consider a person who did not see hirnself as
possessing characteristic k at time 1. The greater the strength of the looking
glass image's conviction that this person did possess characteristic k, the greater
the residual (equation 4) will be in the negative direction. Hence a negative
residual indicates that ego gave a "false negative." Whether this is because the
force of the looking glass image had not yet been internalized by this ego, or
whether ego simply gave an erroneous report we cannot tell, but in either case,
if the internalization hypothesis is correct, the large negative residual should
be associated with an increased probability of ego switching and applying
characteristic k to herself at time 2.
Similarly, an ego who did see hirnself as characteristic k at time 1, despite
few or no group members seeing hirnself thusly, will have a large positive
residual, indicating a "false positive." This ego should be likely to switch from
1 to 0 at time 2, and the probability of making this switch should increase with
the size of the residual. In both cases, then, the odds of considering oneself
characteristic k should be negatively related to one's residual at time 1. If we
denote the probability that person i sees herself as characteristic k at time 2
be Pr[Yik2= 1], and the probability that person i does not see herself thusly at
time 2 be Pr[Yik2=O] = 1 - Pr[Yik2=1], we can link person i's self-perception at
time 2 in a logistic regression to his or her residual for characteristic k at time
1( e ikl) using the following equations:
In l Pr[Yik2 =1]] = b +C (7)

l Pr[Yik2 = 0] kyikl
&
lkl Yikl
TABLE 4: Logistic Regressions: Self-Evaluation on Looking Glass Image
Relation between Residual and Likelihood

of Positive Response at Time 2, Controlling for
Response at Time 1
Unstandardized T-Test
Coefficients Significance"
Supportive -3.018t (1.903) .057

Decisive -1.721 * (1.002) .043
Loving -4.576** (1.744) .005
Strong .366 (1.437) .340
Dominant .142 (2.030) .472

Charismatic -3.756 (3.756) .115
Sexy -1.776 (3.144) .286
Passive -1.253 (1.591) .217
Dependent 1.422 (5.842) .404
Narcissistic -6.538t (4.426) .070
Interested in kids -4.705*** (1.222) <.001
Interested in fixing up the house -.664 (.932) .238
Combined effect from model with robust,
correlated errors -1.914*** (.521) <.001
2=-3.677
(N = 136 individuals)
Note: Standard errors are in parentheses.
t p < .10 * P < .05 ** P < .01 *** P <.001 (one-tailed tests)
The slope (b) and intercept (c) coefficients are subscripted by Yikl' that is, person
i's self report as to characteristic k at time 1, leading to two different equations,
one for those who presumed to have characteristic k at time 1, and another
for those who did not. If we assume that the b coefficients are equal in
magnitude (an assumption that turns out to be justified by the data), we may
make a single equation
In [
p r [ Yik2 =
[
1]]] = bkcikl + aYikl + C (8)
Pr Yik2 = 1
which has an additional coefficient a that takes into account the fact that the
two intercepts are not necessarily equal. In this case, a becomes the increased
likelihood that a person who saw hirnself as characteristic k at time 1 will see
hirnself as characteristic k at time 2. Hence we may derive the following:
Hypothesis 8: the residuals from the equation linking self-perception and the
looking glass image at time 1 will be negatively associated with a positive self
attribution at time 2.
Table 4 presents the results from 12 logistic regressions of this form, one for
each of the characteristics that was asked in both waves. We present only the
b coefficients - the a coefficients were not surprisingly always large and
positive, indicating that there was a tendency towards continuity in self-
perception. (We use the absolute as opposed to the relative measure of the
looking glass effect: this does not affect the results.) 14 In contrast to most of
our other analyses, here the results are not so obvious that their meta-analytic

significance can be assessed by simple inspection; accordingly, we conduct a
more formal analysis that considers each of these regressions nonindependent
replications of a single underlying phenomenon (see Bland 1987).
We estimate one single model for all 136 >\- 12 cases of the form
(9)
where all terms are as defined in equations 7 and 9 with two exceptions
pertaining to the error which we decompose into one portion related to the
kth characteristic (ck ) and is treated as fixed, and another related to the ith
person at time 2 t e i2) and is treated as random. Since the set of terms ck
provides a different intercept for each characteristic, it is equivalent to a fixed
effect model for correlated errors arising from the kth characteristic; we allow
for the error terms & i2 to be correlated across any individual i. We can
demonstrate that we can in fact treat these as nonindependent replications of
a single underlying process by testing the constraints bk = band ak = a for all k
(statistical tests of such constraints demonstrated that there was no significant
loss of fit; analyses available upon request)."
This model leads to an estimate of the effect of the key theoretical term,
the effect of the residual at time 1 on ego's self report at time 2, as being -1.914
(S.E. = .521), with P < .001. Since our results are unchanged when we use the
residual based on the "relative" measure of the perspective of the looking glass
image, and they are not changed by looking separately at those egos who saw
themselves as possessing the characteristic at time 1 and those who did not,
we conc1ude that the evidence is strongly consistent with the internalization
hypothesis: those who held self-perceptions that were at odds with the
perceptions others held of them in 1974 were more likely to have changed their
self-perception by 1975.
ANOTHER LOOK AT EXTERNALIZATION
Despite this consistent evidence in favor of the internalization theory, and the
lack of cross-sectional evidence supporting the externalization theory, it is not
necessary to wholly dismiss the possibility of ego's self-conceptions changing
the looking glass image. As Kant ([ 1787] 1950:227) pointed out, there are some
sorts of causality that we can imagine as involving temporal succession, and
others that for all practical purposes must be treated as instantaneous. It is quite
possible to conceive of internalization as being practically instantaneous - a
person immersed in a social environment will feel the pressure exerted by that
environment as it defines her as possessing certain characteristics and not
others. We saw evidence in favor of this proposition; we did not see evidence
that such a person could, by sheer force of personality, persuade others to share

her self-conceptions.
However, this is not to say that by dint of determined action of a certain
type, she might not eventually be able to persuade others to see her as she sees
herself. Supportive is as supportive does, and if people can have a "temporally
constructed engagement" ofthe social (Emirbayer & Mische 1998:970), we may
expect that one year's worth (as it happens) of supportive behavior will not go
unnoticed by the group members. This is a different sort of influence, one that
we would expect to be unrelated to the "ascendance" we found implicated in
internalization, and one that would indeed take time. Of course, we cannot
determine who has actually acted in a supportive manner in the year between
data measurements, but we can determine whether the data are consistent with
this specifically temporal understanding of externalization: is alter's evaluation
of ego at time 2 dependent on what ego thought of herself at time I? This
version of externalization, which relies on a temporal process of action
consistent with some characteristic as opposed to relying on the instantaneous
force of personality (cf. McNulty & Swann 1994:1013), implies the following
hypothesis:
Hypothesis 9: Alter's perception of ego at time 2 will be affected by ego's self-
perception at time 1.
Examining this question is somewhat difficult for methodological reasons: our
dependent variable (alter's evaluation of ego) is dichotomous, which would
imply the logistic regressions similar to those examined above. However, the
correlation of errors in network data means that the conditions under which
the maximum likelihood estimates are unbiased are not met (in contrast to
the case for OLS regressions, where the estimates are unbiased, but the standard
errors are not correctly estimated). Hence we cannot rely on a meta-analysis
that simply compares the sign of the observed coefficients to what might be
expected if there was no relation, given that a1l the estimates may be similarly biased.
However, the logic underlying the QAP permutation test is still reasonable,
and with due caution, we compare levels of statistical significance across a set
868 / Social Parces 81 :3, March 2003
TABLE 5: Logistic Regressions of Alter's Conception of Ego at Time 2 on

Ego's Self-Conception at Time 1
Ego's Alter's Looking Glass

Self-Attribution Attribution at Image at
at Time 1 (c) Time 1 (b) Time 2 (d)
Supportive .069* p=.049 1.726*** p < .001 6.314*** P < .001

Decisive .463 P = .109 2.101*** p< .001 5.158*** p< .001
Loving .579* P = .014 1.677*** p< .001 4.430*** P < .001
Strang .584* P = .030 1.779*** P < .001 4.261*** p< .001
Dominant .622* P = .047 1.403*** p<.OOl 3.692*** p< .001
Charismatic .104** P = .001 1.807*** p< .001 2.576*** p< .001

Sexy .534 P = .193 2.360*** p< .001 4.304*** p< .001
Passive .151 P = .337 1.396*** p= .001 3.145*** p< .001
Dependent .796t p= .088 .818t p= .084 3.450*** P < .001
Narcissistic .636** p= .002 2.555*** p< .001 2.875*** P < .001
Interested in kids 1.466*** p< .001 1.477*** p< .001 3.512*** P < .001
Interestedin fixing
up the house 1.077** p = .002 1.969** p = .007 4.350*** P < .001
(N = 546 dyads)
Note: p-values from one-tailed QAP test.
t p < .10 * P < .05 ** P < .01 H* P < .001 (one-tailed tests)
of tests as a way of testing the null hypothesis that the observed results have
nothing to do with the structure of the data. Doing this, we find consistently
strong associations between what ego thinks of himself at time 1 and what alter
thinks of ego at time 2 (these preliminary results are not shown). This effect
persists even when we control for what alter thought of ego at time 1. Of course,
it could be that alter is being convinced not by ego, but by the other group
members (which also might be a rough indicator of ego's "objective" status on
some characteristic). If we denote the probability that person i sees person j
in group g as characteristic k at time 2 be Pr[x j'kg2 = 1], and the probability
that person i does not see j thusly at time 2 as Pr[\jk 2 = 0] = 1 - Pr[Xj'k 2 = 1],
we can link person i's report about person j at tim~ 1 to person i's ie~ort at
time 1 (X"k
1) g
1)' person j's self-report at time 1 (Y.k
) g1) and the looking glass image
at time 2 pertaining to person j coming from aIl persons except i (Q*jjkg2) using
the following model:
Looking Glass Se1f / 869
where if again xijk denotes person i attributing characteristic k to person j in
group g, and e an~ f stand for generic group members,
N~
f
LX jjkg
Q *ijgk2 - f*i,j
-
LX
eJ
ef kg (11 )
That is, we propose a modified version of the looking glass image vis-ä-vis ego

for each alter that ignores this alter's own reports as to ego's characteristics. We
use the relative measure because it is more strongly associated with alter's
response (and hence is conservative for a test of the externalization hypothesis).
For these and other analyses of change, we can now without fear of distortion
use the previously suspect items "interested in fixing up the house" and
"interested in children," While the heavy gendering of these items meant that
possible cross-sectional association could arise simply by participants ascribing
certain characteristics to women or to men, since we are now looking only at
change, and none of the members will have changed from male to female or
vice versa in the intervening year, no results will be spurious.
As Table 5 makes clear, giving parallel results for fitting such QAP logistic
regressions.!" the effect of ego's self-perception on alter's later perception
remains. For eight out of twelve characteristics the observed coefficient is
statistically significant at a level (p = .05) that would be expected under chance
only one time out of twenty. The chances of such a pattern emerging were there
no relation is vanishingly small. The same results are found, though they are
even stronger, when we use the absolute measure of the looking glass image as
opposed to the relative measure. All in all, the basic finding appears to be quite
robust - even if we control for the looking glass image at time 2, ego's self-
perception at time 1 seems to influence alter's perception at time 2.
We have proposed that this should be interpreted as ego's self-attribution
at time 1 affecting ego's behavior between time 1 and time 2, in turn affecting
alter's perception of ego at time 2. Of course, it could be that ego's self-
attribution directly affects alter's perception (perhaps ego convinces alter
through self-presentation but not "doing"). But we have not seen any evidence
of such an ability for ego to convince others in the cross-sectional data, even
though we did see evidence of influence going the other way. It could also be
that ego's behavior has led to both ego's own self-understanding and alter's
perception of ego. But we have not seen support for this objective hypothesis
in the cross-sectional data, and if there is to be a purely temporal process
TABLE 6: Regressions of Change in Looking Glass Image on Ego's Residual
Unstandardized Coefficients
Supportive .051 (.045) p = .128

Decisive .108** (.037) p=.002
Loving .059t (.040) p= .071
Strong .050t (.034) P = .073
Dominant .114** (.046) P = .008
Charismatic .062t (.043) p=.077
Sexy .072* (.039) p= .033
Passive .089 (.163) p= .294
Dependent .041t (.027) P = .070
Narcissistic .048* (.026) P = .032

Interested in kids .152*** (.038) p< .001
Interested in fixing up the house .077* (.045) p= .044
(N= 136)
Note: All results from OLS regressions with change in looking glass image as the dependent vari-
able and ego's residual from equation 8 using absolute Q measure of the looking glass image as
independent variable. Standard errors are in parentheses.
tp<.l0 *p<.05 **p<.Ol ***p<.OOl(one-tailedtests)
concordant with the objective hypothesis, it relies on the somewhat unlikely

circumstance that ego's self-attribution at time 1 remains spuriously significant
as a predictor of alter's attribution at time 2 even when we take into account
the other measures of ego's objective behavior, namely alter's attribution at
time 1 and the average attribution of others in the group (Q*) at time 2. 17
If it is true that people can change how others see thern, then we should
see some of those who differ from the perceptions of the looking glass image
pushing the group's perspective towards their own self-perceptions.
Consequently, some of those persons with high residuals from equation 4 -
those that we have previously shown disproportionately at risk of changing
their self-perceptions - will bring the looking glass image into closer
agreement with their self-perceptions. We can determine this simply by
examining change in the looking glass image (i.e. Q2 - Q1) as a linear function
of ego's residual from equation 4; our modified externalization theory leads to
the following:
Hypothesis 10: the higher the absolute value of ego's residual at time 1, the more
change will occur between times 1 and time 2 in the looking glass image in
the direction of ego's perception.
The results (see Table 6) suggest that people do indeed have the ability to
influence how others see them, at least given sufficient time. All the coefficients
are positive, and six of 12 are significant at p < .05 or less. However, there are
TABLE 7: Replication of Table 6 Dividing Sampie by Self-Report History
Stayers Switchers
Ego Consistently Ego Consistently Ego Switches from Ego Switches from
Refuses Claims Not Claiming Claimingto
Attribution Attribution to Claiming Not Claiming
Supportive 1.494*** 1.092* -1.151 .235
(.372) (.317) (.671) (.624)
N=44 N=40 N= 16 N=35
Decisive .215 .363* -.262 .325
(.175) (.116) (.223) (.371)
N=58 N=30 N=26 N=21
Loving 1.503* .934* 1.921* 1.585*
(.493) (.306) (.676) (.722)
N=47 N= 51 N= 18 N= 19

Strang 1.184** 1.140* -.526 .511
(.297) (.428) (.804) (.586)
N=57 N=34 N=25 N= 19
Dominant .075 .587 .255 -.656
(.322) (1.153) (.408) (.916)
N= 106 N=l1 N=8 N=lO
Charismatic 2.578** 1.216 -2.808 .065
(.498) (2.191) (2.833) (.681)
N= 115 N=5 N=5 N=lO
Sexy 2.773** 1.977 -3.286 -.241
(.629) (2.763) (3.209) (.124)
N= 105 N=l1 N= 12 N=7
Passive 1.389** .161 -1.783 1.467*
(.289) (.193) ( 1.436) (.348)
N=90 N= 16 N= 12 N= 17
Dependent 2.026* .208 -.848 6.046
(.834) (4.013) (2.849) (4.218)
N=92 N= 15 N= 16 N= 12
Narcissistic 3.719** 5.788 2.140** -2.574
(.691) (3.238) (.009) (2.676)
N= 101 N=9 N=7 N= 18
Interested in kids .593* .590* 1.576* 1.605*
(.221) (.183) (.470) (.675)
N=69 N=44 N=6 N= 16
Interested in fixing 1.351** .735* .527 .452
upthehouse (.182) (.217) (.364) (.335)
N=52 N=41 N=23 N= 18
No. in pos. dir. 12 out of 12 12 out of 12 50utof12 9 out of12
Mean 1.575 1.233 -.356 .737
(N= 135)
Note: All results from OLS regressions with change in looking glass image as the dependent
variable (only counting those alters in 1975 who were present in 1974) and ego's residual fram equa-
tion 8 using the relative Q* measure of the looking glass image as independent variable.
t p < .l0 * P < .05 ** P < .01 *** P < .001 (two-tailed tests)
three reasons that these results might be examined more closely. First of all, it
might be that the relative measure of the looking glass image should be
preferred to the absolute measure, to rule out the possibility that changes in
norms associated with some tendency to attribute certain characteristics
(e.g., a new understanding that it was important to consider all other members
as "loving") could affect the result. Second, it might be that these results are
due not to ego changing the mind of any alter in the group, but to differing
perspectives held by new alters who enter the group at time 2. Third, if the
logic we have laid out is correct, the effect should be much stronger for those
egos who maintained their self-attributions at time 2 than among those who
changed. In essence, we postulate two alternative paths of tension reduction
for the ego whose self-conception is not in accord with that of the looking glass
image. Either change your self-conceptions, or work hard to change your

reputation.
Accordingly, in Table 7 we replicate the equations of Table 6, but only
examining the "looking glass image" formed by those members who were
present in both waves. We also use the relative measure of the looking glass
image (this does not affect our findings except in so far as it is more
conservative); finally, we compute the models independently for the four groups
representing the four possible states that ego may have taken in terms of self-
perception for any characteristic: claiming to possess that characteristic at both
times, claiming not to possess that characteristic at both times, claiming to
possess that characteristic at time 1 but not time 2, and claiming to possess
that characteristic at time 2 but not time 1. The first two paths involving
"staying" and the second two "switching," Gur understanding of the processes
leading to externalization implies the following:
Hypothesis 11: Only egos who "stay" will affect the view of the looking glass
image.
The results are impressively clear: only those egos who are willing to stay the
course have a chance of affecting the looking glass image. Whether they
consistently claim to be some characteristic, or consistently claim not to be
some characteristic, they are able to sway other persons closer to their point
of view. This effect is positive for every one of the 24 characteristics studied in
the two subgroups; even more, it is statistically significant in 16 of these cases,
a highly unlikely result if there was no real relation. But among those egos who
switched their self understanding, only around half the time (14 out of 24) is
the relation positive - pretty much what would be expected by chance if there
was in actuality no relation.!"
Furthcrmorc, even the seeming exceptions are theoretically interpretable.
There are two characteristics for which a "staying" ego can only change the
mind of the other members when ego refuses this attribution, as opposed to
when ego consistently claims this: these are the very similar "dependent" and
Looking Glass SeIf / 873
"passive." Evidently, it is impossible for an ego to actively persuade others that
she is passive, or to assert her dependence independent of the group's
perspective! 19 For these relations, we see large positive coefficients for the
switchers who give up their claim to be dependent or passive: the group is more
likely to agree that ego is "dependent" and "passive" if this ego acts dependent
and passive by meekly adopting the views of the looking glass image that she is
not dependent or passive. Thus the most dependent person is the one who says,
"I am independent ... if you say so." These are, of course, post hoc
interpretations and must be treated with skepticism, but the pattern is certainly
intriguing.
What a difference a year makes. Those who dissent from the perspective of
the group do in fact seem to be able to change the way they are seen by others.
But not all do. Many instead change their self-perceptions. Of course, there

are cases in which both processes occur: inspection of the data shows any
number of cases in which a person who makes a seemingly untenable claim to
be some characteristic, in the face of almost palpable group skepticism, stands
down from this claim a year later, when a portion of the other members have
changed their minds on the issue! While it is impossible to neatly divide all
changes into "externalizations" and "internalizations" (since there is no easy
way to compare the magnitude of ego's necessarily discrete switch to the
continuous change that may occur in the looking glass image), it is quite
reasonable to expect that a discrepancy between self-perception and the
looking glass image leads to tension that is resolved by one or the other changes.
Interestingly, when both changes occur, tension may not be decreased, as the
discrepancy continues, only the positions reversed.i"
Conclusions
Data from a unique set of 56 different groups were examined to test the
hypothesis that self-understanding is, at least to some extent, an internalization
of the views others have of one. The data are clearly consistent with the
hypothesis that self-understanding and the looking glass image are not
independent of one another. Furthermore, the data do not seem to be
compatible with the hypothesis that persons are simply able to externalize their
own self-conceptions. If we assurne that intluence is more likely to tlow from
those who are esteemed to those who esteem them, it is far more likely that
self-conception involves the internalization of the perspectives of others - at
least those whom we see as ascendant over us - precisely as Cooley claimed.
While the magnitude of the effects we found tended to be small, the results
consistently pointed in the same direction.
Our results support those of Cast, Stets, and Burke (1999); status seems to
affect the process of internalization, and while gender has an effect, this is not
independent of the status difference within the relation. Given that Cast et al.
studied married couples, and we have examined commune members in many
different groups, this convergence is impressive. There was only one divergence:
Whereas Cast et al. found that high status spouses could externalize their self-
conceptions, we found no evidence of such status-linked externalization.
But we did see evidence that one can change how others see one, only this
process was distinctly time bound. In contrast to the practically simultaneous
cross-sectional relations, in which people's sense of self seems to correspond
to how esteemed alters see them, we see over time a chance for the obstinate
to change the perceptions of others. We hypothesize that this requires a pattern
of action compatible with the attribution, as opposed to mere force of
personality, but have of course been unable to examine this. But our results
are consistent with the agentic understanding of self-construction as a dialectic

between impressibility and activity.
These groups were an ideal site to study the formation of a looking glass
self; young adulthood is (in contemporary Western society) frequentlyassumed
to be an unsettled time of volatility and self-reconstruction, and this sample is
disproportionately composed of young adults who were more extreme than
most in the deliberate and thorough-going nature of these re-creations of self.
For this reason, caution should be exercised in making any inferences to the
general adult population. There is no reason to expect that these processes
occur, but in attenuated form, throughout onc's adult life - they may be
restricted to certain times. Our findings do not demonstrate that a looking glass
effect always occurs, but that it can occur, and if it does, there is reason to think
that it involves not simply the internalization of the perspectives of others, but
a disproportionate attention to the perspectives of high status members. This
is a fascinating hypothesis worthy of further study.
Because of our interest in testing what we have called the looking glass
hypothesis, we have emphasized the evidence supporting the responsiveness
of respondents to how they are seen by others in their immediate environment.
Yet as sympathetic readers have pointed out, even in this very promising site
for uncovering support for this hypothesis, we are far from being able to
completely determine self-perception. While of course there is probably a great
deal of noise and error in our data, we do not believe that our falling
appreciably short of determinism is a result of such error. Even though we have
stressed here that the looking glass effect is not empty, yet we think that it is
probably less than half full. It may be that the lion's share of self-perception
regarding most of the characteristics discussed here is developed roughly
between five and ten years of age, and even intense social experiences afterwards
may be unable to erase an earlier sense of self; such change may be even more
difficult for the more fundamental personality attributes that may be formed
even earlier (such as the ontological sense of security stressed by Giddens
[1984:50] that may develop in infancy, or more overall degree of passivity vs.
activity which may even predate birth). Our results may speak as much to the
obdurate as the malleable nature of personality.
Notes
1. Kinch (1963:482) then had self-concept affect behavior, a portion of the argument
which we ignore.
2. Similarly, McNulty and Swann (1994: 1017) found relations (on the one hand) between
ego's self-image and wh at alter actually thinks of ego and (on the other) between ego's
self-image and what ego thinks alter thinks about ego (the reflected appraisal), but the
latter did not mediate the former - instead, where one relationship was significant, the
other was not, quite at odds with the reflected appraisal theory.

3. It is also possible that it is simply not safe to assume that the impression the group
makes on ego is consciously accessible to ego.
4. We note that these data have just been made public.
5. Three people were in two groups during the first wave and gave valid data für both
groups, hence our N may be as high as 425. (Eliminating these respondents' data does
not affect any results.) Data from some groups were missing due to members' principled
opposition to answering questions relating to their judgment of others, fearing that certain
attributions would be counter to the group's ideology (e.g., calling someone "sexy" in a
group dedicated to celibacy), or that the mere process of making distinctions would be
destructive of group unity. While this refusal suggests the possibility of an uncontrolled
self-selection bias, there is no reason to think that the fundamental social-psychological
processes are less likely to occur in such groups. Further, it seems unquestionable that
the strengths of this da ta set for the question at hand outweigh the problems stemming
from respondent refusal.
6. Two other characteristics were listed, namely whether ego "has a clear vision of the
commune's futurc," and "rnotivates me to do more," but as these were not asked of all
members and seem unlikely to tap basic personality characteristics, we do not analyze
them here.
7. In cont rast to tests of the reflected appraisal process, we make no claims regarding
how ego translates the looking glass image into a self-concept,
8. Further, in both of the cases in which the switch to the Q* measure led a significant
result to become insignificant, this is due to a subset of groups that are saturated with
the relation in question. These characteristics were holy and dependent - note also that
the values für charismatic, sexy, and narcissistic also decline sharply from the Q column
to the Q* column, though they still significant at p < .05. This suggests that there are
some groups which are relatively saturated with holiness and charisma, and some groups
- they turn out not to be the same - that are saturated with sexiness, narcissism, and
dependence. This might lead to an inflation of our estimates based on the absolute Q
measure. We checked this by removing the tail of the distribution containing the 10-
20% most saturated groups for each of these characteristics, and fitting models
corresponding to equation 1 for both the relative and absolute measures of the looking
glass image. In all cases, the coefficients were significantly different from zero, even using
the relative (Q*) measure. In other words, such saturated groups do contribute to the
apparent strength of the looking glass effect using the absolute measure for these
characteristics, but the results do not depend on the presence of such saturated groups.
9. This null finding remains even when we make W (or W*) a quadratic function of
time.
10. The measure of status we used normalizes the range of status parameters across
groups. Models that did not make this normalization tend to give groups with very high
spreads of status parameters too much weight, since these parameters can go towards
infinity in certain cases, and thus makes any one estimate of a correlation type coefficient
somewhat arbitrary. But examination of a set of models for such unnormalized data
confirmed that the effect for gender did not appear independent of that of status.

I I. That is, the odds-ratio is unaffected by changes in the marginal distribution of either
variable, while other measures, both ad hoc and traditional, are not and, we have found,
tend to be swamped by the large number in the (0,0) cell.
12. Kenny and DePaulo (1993:151) allow that people may have "just a tiny glimmer of
insight into how they are uniquely viewed by particular other people."
13. This is perhaps not as surprising as it might seem. It may be that all the members
are accessible enough to one another that if influence is going to occur, opportunities
will present themselves.
14. We replicated all the above analyses treating as our independent variable not the ego's
residual, but more simply the opinion of the looking glass image at time 1, again including
ego's self-attribution at time 1 as a control. This did not change our results.
15.We used the STATA procedure for logistic regression with robust estimates of standard
errors allowing for clustered observations; we replicated this using a cross-sectional time
series analysis (xtlogit) which led to identical conclusions.
16. We use the routines incorporated in Martin (1999).
17. A reviewer suggested increased consensus among the group over time might also
explain this result. Indeed, it is the case that consensus tends to increase. We computed
the variance in how each person was seen on each of the ten characteristics in table 8 at
both time 1 and time 2. For nine of them, the variance decreased, indicating more
consensus in the group as to ego's characteristics. (The chance of such a result happening
if there really was no tendency towards increased consensus is p = .01 by the binomial
formula.) But since such increased consensus is compatible with our model whereby
ego's self-conception at time 1 affects alter's conception at time 2, this does not provide
an alternative hypothesis explaining these data.
18. In the second switcher category, 9 out of 12 relations are positive, which might be
seen as suggestive evidence of an effect. We do not rule out such a possibility, but the
evidence is not strong in favor of one. The average effect is still only .737 (half that among
stayers), and since there is no theoretical reason to expect one switch category and not
the other to have a positive relation, it may be opportunistic to declare that the effect
occurs in one and not the other.
19. A form of this paradox whereby ego cannot disprove alters' perceptions was previously
raised as a possibility by Swann (1984:469); Swann and Ely (1984:1299).
20. Indeed, there was no evidence of overall tension decrease. We can demonstrate this
by examining the mean absolute value of the residuals from equation 1 for the 10
characteristics asked at both time 1 and time 2 and the 137 people who remained in the
groups. It turns out that for five characteristics, the mean is higher at time 1, and in five
it is higher at time 2.
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The Looking Glass SeIf - An Empirical Test and Elaboration

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The Looking Glass SeIf:

An Empirical Test and Elaboration"

KING- To Y EUNG, Rutgers University, New Brunswick

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contributions below). Further, as Ichiyama (1993:88) has emphasized, there are

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Theoretical and Empirical Approaches to the Looking Glass Self

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THE URBAN COMMUNE DATA SET

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remained in the second wave; of these, new data on self-perceptions were

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A TEST OF THE LOOKING GLASS HYPOTHESIS

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Note that since we consider it unreasonable that either the internalization or

TABLE 1: Logistic Regressions of Self-Perception on the Looking Glass

Unstandardized T-Test Unstandardized T-Test

Supportive 1.515 (.467) .001 2.469 (.908) .004

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THE IMPRESIBILITY MODEL

As we recall, Cooley's interpretation of the looking glass effect made reference

To test hypothesis 5 requires a measure of the degree to which any

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Modell Model 2 Model 3

Status -.039** -.034**

Constant -.378 -.370 -.375

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* p < .05 **P < .01 (one tailed tests)

equations 4 and 5 using Q* instead of Q; we shall refer to the resulting

understanding of women's greater impressibility and this revision by regress-

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THE LOOKING GLASS EFFECT AS INFLUENCE

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niJg = (tXi/kg ( 1- Y )( t (1- -».)

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Influential Significant More Powerful Less Powerful

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sure we do not mistake an asymmetrie relation for asymmetrie one, or viee-

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In l Pr[Yik2 =1]] = b +C (7)

Relation between Residual and Likelihood

Supportive -3.018t (1.903) .057

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TABLE 5: Logistic Regressions of Alter's Conception of Ego at Time 2 on

Ego's Alter's Looking Glass

Supportive .069* p=.049 1.726*** p < .001 6.314*** P < .001

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Note: p-values from one-tailed QAP test.

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Supportive .051 (.045) p = .128

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tp<.l0 *p<.05 **p<.Ol ***p<.OOl(one-tailedtests)

concordant with the objective hypothesis, it relies on the somewhat unlikely

Status -.039 -.034

Supportive .069* p=.049 1.726* p < .001 6.314* P < .001

tp<.l0 p<.05 p<.Ol p<.OOl(one-tailedtests)