4 Charles Horton Cooley PowerPointP Solomon 5555

Sociological Theory:
Charles Horton Cooley

© 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith
Wednesday, Septem Bolender 1
ber 22, 2021
 1864-1929
 Born in Ann Arbor, MI
 Education
 University of Michigan
 Engineering
• 7 years
Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 2

ber 22, 2021
 His father was a member of the Michigan
Supreme Court
 He struggled living under the shadow of his
famous father
 He once wrote to his mother: “I should like as
an experiment to get off somewhere where
Father was never heard of and see whether
anybody would care about me for my own
sake.”

ber 22, 2021
 His dissertation was titled “The Theory of

Transportation,” a pioneering study in
human ecology
 He later moved away from the human
ecology area of sociology and became more
interested in the psychological element within
sociological phenomena

ber 22, 2021
 He taught at the University of Michigan
 He was concerned with many social problems and
issues of the day, but clearly preoccupation with
the self--his own self--remained paramount to him.
 He did become independent of his father--but his
experience caused a desire to study the self and its
relationship with society. This desire to observe
behavior was later applied toward his own
children.

ber 22, 2021
Assumptions
 Falls within the framework of the pluralist
paradigm
 Clearly, a vision of ambivalence, a portrait
of duality marks his thought

ber 22, 2021
 On the question of will, he argued that while
people make choices, these are not entirely
free
 Cooley unified both the sociable and “self-
assertive” sides of human character
 “Competition and the survival of the fittest are as
righteous as kindness and cooperation, and not
necessarily opposed to them: an adequate view will
embrace and harmonize these diverse aspects.” (1909:35
Social Organization: A Study of the Larger Mind)

ber 22, 2021
 Cooley perceived the mind as the center of the
human universe, as the definitive maker of our
being.
 It is both an organic whole and the context for all human
interaction.
 Cooley’s supremely mental social world distinguishes his
sociology from the attempts of Mead to assign primacy
to social behavior.
 The mind above all, is seen as modifiable, and it emerges
only in relations with members of primary groups.

ber 22, 2021
 In Social Organization Cooley asks: What

makes society possible?
 Cooley does not completely accepts
Rousseau’s idea of social contract (a
foundational philosophical view of the pluralist
paradigm).
 He views that society is a process, continuing
to form and reform via individuals, groups,
patterns, and institutions.
ber 22, 2021
Thus in making
the self, society
is born.
ber 22, 2021
Self and Society

are
Twin-Born
Cooley (1962:5)
Cooley, Charles Horton. 1962. Social Organization. New York: Schocken.

ber 22, 2021
Cooley remained consistent in his position on
causation. Individuals, he argued, do not
make societies nor do societies make
individuals. They are “distributive and
collective aspects of the same thing.”
 The individual has no existence apart from others.
 There is no society not constituted of individuals.

ber 22, 2021
Cooley argued that a person’s self grows

out of a person’s commerce with others.
The social origin of his life comes by the
pathway of intercourse with other persons
(Cooley 1964:5).
Cooley, Charles Horton. 1964. Human Nature and the

Social Order. New York: Schocken.

ber 22, 2021
The self,
self to Cooley, is not first individual and
then social; it arises dialectically through
communication. One’s consciousness of
himself is a reflection of the ideas about
himself that he attributes to other minds;
thus, there can be no isolated selves. There is
no sense of “I” . . . without its correlative
sense of you, or he, or they (Cooley
1964:182).

ber 22, 2021
In his attempt to illustrate the reflected

character of the self, Cooley compared it to
a looking glass:
Each to each a looking-glass

Reflects the other that doth pass.
(Cooley 1964:184)

ber 22, 2021
As we see our face, figure, and dress in the glass,
and are interested in them because they are ours,
and pleased or otherwise with them according as
they do or do not answer to what we should like
them to be, so in imagination we perceive in
another’s mind some thought of our appearance,
manners, aims, deeds, character, friends, and so
on, and are variously affected by it.
(Cooley 1964:184)

ber 22, 2021
Three Elements of the Looking Glass Self

 The imagination of our appearance to the
other person
 The imagination of his judgment of that
appearance
 Some sort of self-feeling
 Pride
 Mortification

ber 22, 2021
An Example by Cooley
 The real Alice, known only to her maker
 Her idea of herself
 “I [Alice] look well in this hat”
 Her idea of Angela’s idea of her
 “Angela thinks I look well in this hat”

ber 22, 2021
 Her idea of what Angela thinks she thinks

of herself
 “Angela thinks I am proud of my looks in this
hat”
 Angela’s idea of what Alice thinks of
herself
 “Alice thinks she is stunning in that hat”

ber 22, 2021
Society is an interweaving and interworking of

mental selves. I imagine your mind, and
especially what your mind thinks about my mind.
I dress my mind before yours and expect that you
will dress yours before mine. Whoever cannot or
will not perform these feats is not properly in the
game.
(Cooley 1927:200-201)
Cooley, Charles Horton. 1927. Life and the Student. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf.

ber 22, 2021
Primary Group
Emphasis on the wholeness of social life led
Cooley to focus his analysis on those
human groupings that he conceived to be
primary in linking man with his society
and in integrating individuals into the
social fabric.

ber 22, 2021
By primary groups I mean those characterized by intimate face-to-face
association and cooperation. They are primary in several senses but
chiefly in that they are fundamental in forming the social nature and
ideals of individuals. The result of intimate association, psychologically,
is a certain fusion of individualities in a common whole, so that one’s
very self, for many purposes at least, is the common life and purpose
of the group. Perhaps the simplest way of describing this wholeness is
by saying that it is a “we.”
(Cooley 1966:23)
Cooley, Charles Horton. 1966. Social Process. Carbondale, IL: Southern

Illinois University Press.

ber 22, 2021
Using the terminology of

Cooley,
…a mother does not mind doing
unrewarding labor…it benefits
the “we.”

ber 22, 2021
The most important groups in which the

intimate association characteristic of primary
groups have had a chance to develop to the
fullest are the family,
family the play group of
children,
children and the neighborhood.
neighborhood These,
Cooley believed, are practically universal
breeding grounds for the emergence of
human cooperation and fellowship.

ber 22, 2021
In these groups men are drawn away from

their individualistic propensity to maximize
their own advantage and are permanently
linked to their fellows by ties of sympathy
and affection.

ber 22, 2021
In these [primary groups] human nature
comes into existence. Man does not
have it at birth; he cannot acquire it
except through fellowship, and it
decays in isolation.
(Cooley 1962:30)
How does this concept (“we”) apply to the
importance of Christian fellowship?

ber 22, 2021
Remember the Law of Human Progress

...
Cooley’s social philosophy was grounded in the
idea that human progress involves the ever-
widening expansion of human sympathy so
that primary group ideals would spread from
the family to the local community, to the
nation, and finally to the world community.

ber 22, 2021
In other forms of association (which are now referred to as
secondary groups, though Cooley himself never used
that term) men may be related to one another because
each derives a private benefit from that interchange or
interaction. In such groups the other may be valued
only extrinsically as a source of benefits for the self; by
contrast the bond in the primary group is based upon an
intrinsic valuation of the other as a person, and
appreciation of others does not result from anticipation
of specific benefits that he or she may be able to confer.

ber 22, 2021
Public Opinion (as a Social Process)
 In Cooley’s view society consists of a network of
communication between component actors and
subgroups; therefore, the process of communication,
more particularly its embodiment in public opinions,
cements social bonds and insures consensus.
 Cooley saw public opinion as “an organic process,”
and not merely as a state of agreement about some
question of the day.

ber 22, 2021
 Consider “public opinion” within the church
body….think of it as a process:
 Divorce
 Movies
 Dancing
 Dating practices
 Unwed mothers and the offspring raised by unwed
mothers
 Homosexuality

ber 22, 2021
Sociological Method
The difference, Cooley argued, between our
knowledge of a horse or a dog and our
knowledge of man is rooted in our ability
to have a sympathetic understanding
of a man’s motives and springs of action.

ber 22, 2021
For example. . .
 The sociology of a chicken yard could only be based on
descriptions of the chicken’s behavior, since we can
never understand the meanings that chickens attach to
their activities.
 But the sociology of human beings can pursue a
different strategy, since it can probe beneath protocols
of behavior into the subjective meanings of acting
individuals.
This is the heart of the pluralist paradigm!

ber 22, 2021
Cooley was successful in

breaking the idea of
“disjunction between
the mind and society.”
society

ber 22, 2021

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Sociological Theory:

Charles Horton Cooley

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 2

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 3

 His dissertation was titled “The Theory of

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 4

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 5

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 6

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 7

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 8

 In Social Organization Cooley asks: What

Self and Society

Cooley, Charles Horton. 1962. Social Organization. New York: Schocken.

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 11

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 12

Cooley argued that a person’s self grows

Cooley, Charles Horton. 1964. Human Nature and the

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 13

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 14

In his attempt to illustrate the reflected

Each to each a looking-glass

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 15

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 16

Three Elements of the Looking Glass Self

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 17

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 18

 Her idea of what Angela thinks she thinks

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 19

Society is an interweaving and interworking of

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 20

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 21

Cooley, Charles Horton. 1966. Social Process. Carbondale, IL: Southern

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 22

Using the terminology of

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 23

The most important groups in which the

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 24

In these groups men are drawn away from

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 25

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 26

Remember the Law of Human Progress

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 27

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 28

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 29

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 30

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 31

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 32

Cooley was successful in

Wednesday, Septem © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 33

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