Worksheet # 2 – Looking Glass Self

Name: Submission Date: March 15, 2021

Instructions: Answer the following questions based on how they are
discussed in the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcYiRczlBcE&t=911s

1. What does a classical perspective suggest regarding self?

As presented in the video material provided a classical sociological perspective suggest

that the self is a relatively stable set of perceptions of who we are in relation to
ourselves, others and to social systems. Self is form through our interaction or
socialization with the community or the people that surrounds us. We humans are not
passive participants in this process as we have a powerful influence over how this
process and consequences developed.

2. What are the two types of self? What does each type mean?

The two types of self are as follows:

Private self - the part that is known mainly to oneself, such as self-concept or one’s
inner feelings. These mainly are thoughts and feelings when we are alone and no one
can actually access but us. We often show our private self to those people whom we
trust or whom we are comfortable with but not everyone.

Public self - is the part how we present ourselves to others. This is how we portray in
the public, how we interact and we act publicly or more arguably how we want others
to see us. This self is often displayed for everyone to see and to those people who we
are yet to be comfortable or trust with.
 3. What is self-esteem and how is it developed?

According to Nathaniel Branden self-esteem is the disposition to experience oneself as

being competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and of being worthy of
happiness. It is also how we value and perceive ourselves basing on our own opinions
or how we evaluate our own worth. Some people have high self-esteem where they are
confident about themselves and their own dispositions in life while some people have
low self-esteem where they tend to think the opposite and would visualize themselves
as worst.

Self-esteem is developed through our different experiences in life. It can also be based
on the relationships we had in the community or school when we were younger.
Positive experiences and relationship can contribute to a healthy self-esteem while
negative ones can result to poor self-esteem. For my own personal experience, honestly
I have a very low self-esteem because the society that I belong to have high standards
and they tend to judge people a lot without even knowing what’s behind closed doors.
They wreck my belief on myself and I am still searching for the things I lost with that
kind of experience. Our personal experiences can change us or develop our self-esteem,
the results can be best or it could turn into worst.

4. What are the types of social comparison theory? Explain each?

Social comparison according to the psychologist Leon Festinger is how people have the
innate drive to evaluate themselves, often in comparison with others. For him we
engage in this comparison process as a way of establishing a benchmark by which we
can make accurate evaluations of ourselves. This can be illustrated on how we tried to
compare our lives with other people and how well or worst they are doing compared to
ours.

There are 2 kinds of social comparison; the downward social comparison where we
raise our self-esteem through comparing ourselves who are inferior to us. We tend to
think that we are better than them, we might not be great, but at least we are better
off than someone else. An example for this is when we are in school and every time our
teachers would return our test papers when usually ask our friends about their scores
and if our scores our higher, we would think that we are more intelligent than them. On
the other hand, upward social comparison is comparing ourselves to those people who
are superior to us. These comparison is often focus on the desire to improve, if
someone is better off than us we look for ways where we can achieve similar results.
However the results of social comparison can result to both positive (motivation) and
negative (greed, jealousy). Some comparisons might make us feel inadequate and
demotivated to pursue goals while some comparisons can help boost our confidence.