Social Feedback and Self‐Appraisals: Current Status of the Mead‐Cooley Hypothesis

Mead and Cooley propose that feedback from significant others provides the basis for individuals' self‐appraisals. I review research regarding (a) associations between others' judgments and individuals' self‐appraisals; (b) when others express or withhold feedback; and (c) when individuals accept or reject feedback. Research shows that others' judgments and self‐appraisals are moderately associated, though self‐ratings correspond more to perceived than to actual views by others and influences are multidirectional. Others' expressions of feedback vary across situations, depending in part on closeness of relationships and the sender's emotions. Peoples' tendencies to accept or reject feedback also vary by closeness, emotional reactions, and feedback valence. I conclude by evaluating the current status of the Mead‐Cooley perspective.     

Marital Power,Roles, and Solidarity and Husbands' and Wives' Appraisals of Self and Other*

The purpose of this study was to investigate conditions underlying the social self process within marital relationships. Two hypotheses were tested in a mail questionnaire survey of 165 couples: 1) Mead and Cooley's hypothesis that self-appraisal is positively associated with other's view of self, and 2) an extension of this hypothesis suggesting that the association between self-appraisal and spouse's appraisal is greater, and the appraisals are more favorable, when marital power is shared, household role responsibilities are shared, and marital solidarity is high. The first hypothesis was supported: self-appraisal was significantly correlated with other's view of self. The second hypothesis was strongly supported for solidarity: the greater the couple's solidarity, the more favorable and the more similar were self-appraisal and other's appraisal of self. Only partial support was found for a positive association of shared marital power and roles with appraisals of self and other.     

Beyond words: Older people with dementia using and interpreting nonverbal behaviour

This article addresses a gap in research on nonverbal communication and dementia. It presents findings from a study that explored ways in which older people with dementia used and interpreted nonverbal behaviour within the context of social interactions. Two researchers, using an ethnographic approach, jointly observed nonverbal communicative behaviours occurring in a day-care centre. The findings show that older people with dementia used nonverbal behaviour in meaningful ways for others to interpret, and as a way of self-communication; and that they actively interpreted others' nonverbal behaviour. In specific situations, these people acted in the context of shared meanings, possessed a ‘self’, and took on the ‘role’ of others. This approach has implications for understanding the social experience of dementia and for the ways that care is organised. The role of nonverbal behaviour offers potential for carers to preserve older people's self-identity and improve their quality of life and care.     

Interactions That Trigger Self‐Labeling: The Case of Older Undergraduates

Deviant or stigmatizing labels are associated with various negative outcomes. Although self‐labeling theory proposes that one can self‐label as deviant without first being labeled by others, most labeling research focuses on people whom others have already labeled. Using the case of undergraduates aged twenty‐five and older, I identify three subtle forms of interaction—contextual dissonance, reminder cues, and third‐party communication—that trigger self‐labeling and are associated with negative reactions, even absent others' direct negative feedback or prior labeling. I also show that each form of interaction may systematically relate to specific kinds of negative reactions. I discuss possible reasons for these patterns, as well as how these findings may affect self‐labeling theory and policymaking decisions in higher education.     

Who Do I Look Like? Gaining a Sense of Self‐Authenticity Through the Physical Reflections of Others

The question Who do I look like? rarely arises for individuals raised in a biological family context. In contrast, searching adoptees report an incomplete sense of physical self from not seeing their bodily traits reflected in biological relatives. Meeting birth relatives and matching physical characteristics creates a stronger sense of self‐authenticity. An analysis of these social processes provides a unique opportunity to contribute to the symbolic interactionist understanding of the relationships existing among the physical body, self, and the reflected appraisals of others. An integration of phenomenological theoretical concepts with symbolic interactionist concepts furthers that understanding.     

Body size,physical attractiveness,and body image among young adult women: Relationships to sexual experience and sexual esteem

Although links between women's sexuality and body size, attractiveness, and body image may seem apparent, little empirical work has been conducted on this topic. In the current study, young adult women (N = 192) completed questionnaires and were weighed and rated for facial attractiveness. In general, current body size, experimenter‐rated facial attractiveness, and self‐rated facial and bodily attractiveness were related in some ways to current relationship status and sexual experience. General body dissatisfaction, avoidance of social settings due to appearance concerns, and degree of investment in one's physical appearance were unrelated to relationship status and sexual experience. Higher sexual esteem was related to subjective views of attractiveness, but not to actual body size or experimenter ratings of facial attractiveness.     

Adolescents and Music Media: Toward an Involvement‐Mediational Model of Consumption and Self‐Concept

Using social cognitive theory and structural regression modeling, we examined pathways between early adolescents' music media consumption, involvement with music media, and 3 domains of self‐concept (physical appearance, romantic appeal, and global self‐worth; N=124). A mediational model was supported for 2 domains of self‐concept. Music media consumption was positively associated with adolescents' involvement with media focusing on music personae. Higher involvement was associated with perceiving the self as less physically attractive and having lower overall self‐worth. Music media consumption was directly related to adolescents' evaluations of their own romantic appeal. Results suggest that through involvement processes with music media characters, adolescents may use music media as a venue for social comparison against which they evaluate their own physical attractiveness and self‐worth. Music media consumption may also provide social modeling for normative expectations about romantic relationships regardless of the level of involvement. Gender differences were nonsignificant in the mediational model.     

Women's body image self‐consciousness during physical intimacy with a partner

In Western cultures, women's bodies are objectified more so than men's, and other writers have noted the multiple ways that such objectification may negatively impact women's lives. As women's sexual desirability is often equated with physical attractiveness and thinness, it is surprising that previous investigations have not included women's body image self‐consciousness during physical intimacy with a partner. In the current set of studies, a 15‐item measure of the construct was developed and shown to have excellent psychometric properties. Approximately one third of college student women indicated experiencing body image self‐consciousness during physical intimacy with a heterosexual partner at least some of the time. Even after statistically controlling for actual body size, measures of general body image, general sexual anxiety, and general well‐being, scores on the new measure were predictive of heterosexual experience, sexual esteem, sexual assertive‐ness, and avoidance of sexual activity. Results are discussed with regard to implications and directions for future research.     

The Emergence of the Emotional Self: A Developmental Theory

G.H. Mead (1934) offers a set of stages of development which describes how infants transform into mindful and self-reflexive social beings through social interaction. He does not, however, provide any parallel set of stages in the development of emotionality. This paper attempts to extend Mead's model by specifying seven stages in emotional development which are interdependent with Mead's stages of development of mind and self. These stages specify how individuals learn to share emotions with others, and learn to identify and interpret their own and others' emotional selves. Fundamental to this analysis is that self development and emotional development are inextricably linked. A framework is offered for the analysis of emotions that (1) recognizes emotions as processual; (2) notes the hierarchial relations among emotions; and (3) presumes that cognition and emotion are not mutually exclusive. The framework illustrates its utility by answering the question, “How does an infant transform from a being who experiences sensations into a being who experiences emotions?”     

Balancing the Scales: Negotiating Father's Parental Leave Use

Studying couples who shared parental leave presents the opportunity to explore decision‐making processes that may challenge conventional care arrangement typical of early parenthood. Interviews with 33 Canadian heterosexual couples indicate gendered sticking points in the division of official leave time. Whether fathers took leave because of their personal desires or material circumstances, this study finds that men and women did not enter negotiations on a level playing field. Strong cultural support for mothers'–but not fathers'–time with baby tipped the scales toward maternal care giving, even when couples wanted to share parental leave. Nevertheless, financial considerations such as a man's topped‐up pay or woman's career could lessen the weight of mothers’ moral entitlement to the leave time by presenting couples with an alternative logic on which to base their decision making.     

College Age Lesbianism as a Developmental Phenomenon

Abstract

Based on clinical work with lesbian college students, this paper discusses a relationship between their lesbianism and the development of autonomy and intimacy. Three subgroups among the students are described, oriented respectively to: ideology, personal development, and interpersonal feelings. It is suggested that for these students lesbian orientation be understood in terms of ongoing ego development more than arrested psychosexual development. The students oriented to ideology and personal development seem to be experiencing a shift from authority and sense of identity located externally, in others' expectations, to a more autonomous, self-governing self. The interpersonally-oriented students seem more focally involved with issues of intimacy than of autonomy. The cultural context is seen as crucial to the lesbianism of these students, particularly traditional cultural assumptions of male dominance and more recent changes in womens' attitudes toward themselves. It is assumed that homosexuality may have many styles, origins and meanings, and that this paper does not elucidate the experience of all lesbians or even all lesbian college students.     

Political Beliefs in an Era of Economic Decline: Farmers' Attitudes Toward State Economic Intervention,Trade, and Food Security1

Abstract The effects of the economy on political attitudes is a longstanding sociological issue that is receiving renewed attention in the face of recent U.S. economic downturns. While the impacts of the farm crisis on financial and household well-being of farm operators have been addressed by a number of studies, few have explored its political outcomes. Four perspectives that consider how economic forces translate into political beliefs are outlined, two reflecting objective economic position (class location and financial pressure) and two indicating subjective appraisals (feelings of economic uncertainty and subjective deprivation). Data from a sample of Ohio farm operators for 1987 are used to analyze how the perspectives are related to progressive beliefs about farming, the domestic nonfarm economy, and third-world food production. Indicators of objective economic position and subjective appraisals have relatively limited impact on farmers' political attitudes. Of these indicators, subjective appraisals were more closely related to attitudes. In addition, operators' stances on farm political issues also affect their views on domestic nonfarm and third-world policy agendas. Implications were found for studies of farmers' political attitudes as well as for broader sociological theory regarding the development of progressive attitudes during periods of economic decline.     

Gendering the Eye of the Norm: Exploring Gendered Concertive Control Processes in Two Self‐Managing Teams

This article is the result of an ethnographic research project exploring the workplace interactions of two self‐managed teams of recruitment consultants. I use data from participant observation and recorded interviews to show the gendered nature of what Barker terms concertive control: the social processes by which team members regulate each others' conduct in line with negotiated team values. My analysis examines how team members negotiate core team values, translate these into specific actions and regulate these actions through concertive control interactions. I then set out three ways in which gender acts as a resource for these concertive control processes. These are: team members' assumptions about men's and women's relative skills and capacities, the ‘tough’ masculinity of the haulage industry in which one of the teams operates and the regulation of performances of heterosexuality during customer interactions. Building on research by others, I show gender to be not only embedded in the values and managerial style associated with teamwork but also integrated into the collaborative process of team‐working itself. I emphasize that social categories like gender become resources in the regulation of conduct at work and can reify hierarchies even in so‐called participative practices like self‐managed teamwork.     

Beautiful stereotypes: the relationship between physical attractiveness and mixed race identity

The idea that mixed race individuals are physically attractive is a commonly accepted stereotype. Past research in which whites (Australians and British) and Asians (Japanese) were asked to rate the attractiveness of a racially heterogeneous group of faces has shown that mixed race phenotype was judged the most attractive. In this study, I examine whether there is empirical evidence for this Biracial Beauty Stereotype in the United States. Using the data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, I examine self and interview ratings of respondents' physical attractiveness and, in an extension of the previous literature, conduct multinomial logistic regressions to ascertain whether level of attractiveness is associated with different racial identification choices for mixed race individuals. My results indicate that there is in fact a belief in mixed race individuals' superior beauty in America; but, with regard to identity, beauty is not associated with identity for all mixed race groups.     

Advertising morality: maintaining moral worth in a stigmatized profession

Although a great deal of literature has looked at how individuals respond to stigma, far less has been written about how professional groups address challenges to their self-perception as abiding by clear moral standards. In this paper, we ask how professional group members maintain a positive self-perception in the face of moral stigma. Drawing on pragmatic and cultural sociology, we claim that professional communities hold narratives that link various aspects of the work their members perform with specific understanding of the common good. These narratives allow professionals to maintain a shared view of their work as benefitting society and to perceive themselves as moral individuals. As a case study, we focus on the advertising industry, which has long been stigmatized as complicit in exploitative capitalist mechanisms and cultural degradation. We draw on nine total months of fieldwork and seventy-four interviews across three US advertising agencies. We find that advertising practitioners use narratives to present their work as contributing to the common good, depicting themselves as moral individuals who care about others in the process. We analyze three prevalent narratives: the account-driven narrative, which links moral virtue to caring for clients; the creative-driven narrative, which ties caring to the production of meaningful advertisements; and the strategic-driven narrative, which sees caring in finding meaningful relationships for consumers and brands.     

The contribution of social support to children and adolescents' self-perception: The mediating role of bullying victimization

The purpose of this article is to report on a study that explores the linkages among self-perception, perceptions of social support, and bullying involvement among children and youth, with a focus on how bullying victimization mediates the association of social support and self-perception. We employ Harter's multidimensional model of self-esteem (1999; 2012), which highlights the inextricable link of social support to global self-esteem but does not explore the contribution of bullying involvement to this association. Our findings indicate that social support is associated with self-perception, and that traditional victimization mediates the association between social support and self-perception for three self-perception measures: social acceptance, physical appearance, and global self-worth. Contrary to our expectations, cyberbullying victimization was not found to mediate the relationship between social support and self-perception. These findings underscore the importance of exploring both traditional bullying victimization and cyberbullying victimization in relation to social support in order to understand their effect on development and wellbeing. More broadly, this study's finding that social support was a significant buffer to bullying victimization emphasizes the necessity of developing prevention and intervention strategies which are relationship-based and implemented early in young people's lives.     

Comparison style, physical self-perceptions, and fitness among older women

This study examined the relationships between older women's comparison styles, physical self-perceptions, and functional fitness. Participants were community-dwelling women (N = 102, age 65-99) living in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Individuals were categorized as relying primarily on social comparisons, temporal comparisons, or a combination of both styles. Also of interest was whether individuals evaluated themselves positively or negatively when making comparisons. Participants who evaluated themselves positively as compared with others were found to have higher levels of physical self-perception. Analyses revealed that women who relied primarily on temporal comparisons had higher self-perceptions of their functional ability than those who relied on a combination of comparison styles. An avoidance of both temporal and social comparisons was also related to higher levels of physical self-perception.     

High School Reunions and the Management of Identity

Organized around an intersection of the past with the present, high school reunions confront those who attend with discontinuities in their own lives as well as the lives of others. Based on observations of and interviews with attendees at five reunions, we argue, contrary to many claims about the contemporary segmentation of the self, that reunion goers are able to construct accounts of coherent lives by reference to “true selves” independent of appearances. Although reunion attendees may attempt to manage impressions by controlling information about themselves, these efforts are limited by attendees efforts to sustain convictions of their own integrity. These convictions, however, also depend on accounts, albeit accounts directed inward. Moreover, the maintenance of this conviction depends on the successful “neutralization” of others' judgments.     

The Digital Self: Through the Looking Glass of Telecopresent Others

The impact of others in telecopresence on the formation of self has not been well studied, and existing research on the self in cyberspace has focused mostly on issues related to the presentation of self. A major question researchers have been trying to answer is how people present their self to others when they become disembodied and anonymous in the online world. The question the present study attempts to answer, however, is almost the opposite: how do people come to conceive their self when others become disembodied and anonymous? This question is particularly important for understanding the effect of the Internet on self‐formation, especially in teenagers who are yet to form a stable view of themselves. Based on the analysis of teenagers' online experience, the present study shows that others on the Internet constitute a distinctive “looking glass” that produces a “digital self” that differs from the self formed offline. Teenagers' playful online self‐presentation is thus an integral part of the process of self‐formation. As such, “intimate strangers” or “anonymous friends” on the Internet play an important role in affecting the self‐development of online teenagers.     

Emotions and the Self: Depression and Identity Change

Emotions hold a central place in sociological understandings of the self, both as a facet of identity management and as an outcome of self‐processes. We extend identity theory and research on emotions by suggesting that emotion may be another source of identity change and examine this using a longitudinal sample of newly married couples, focusing on person identities and depression. We find that individuals' identities change to become consistent with others' views. We also find that the more depressive symptoms that individuals experience, the more negative their identities. The identity meanings that change, however, are different for men and women.