SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE OF SELF

Sociocultural Perspective

  • Seeks to understand human behavior and personality development by examining the rules of the social groups and subgroups in which the individual is a number.

Charles Cooley

  • Born on August 12, 1864 in Michigan.
  • 4th of six children.
  • Has a lot of contributions in the field of sociology.
  • His writings emphasize the relationship of society and individuals.
  • Became the founder of American Sociological Society in 1905.
  • Withdrawn/Passive Child
  • Degree in Mechanical Engineering
  • Profession: Draftsman and Statistician
  • Doctorate in Political Economy and Sociology in University of Michigan.
  • First Professor in Sociology Course
  • “Personal Competition”(1899) about US being industrialized
  • Human Nature and Social Order (1902)

Mary Elizabeth Horton

  • Renowned Law school professor

Justice Thomas McIntyre Cooley

  • A state supreme court justice

The looking-glass self

  • This idea places an emphasis on the critical role that social interaction plays in the process of self-understanding.
  • Social Psychological concept
  • “The mind is mental because the human mind is social”
  • Individuals develop their self-concept by observing how other people perceive them.
  • Described as the process wherein individuals base their sense of self on how they believe others view them.

Mirror

  • A person's sense of self-worth, values, and behavior are all determined, in part, by the opinions and assessments of other people.

Self-concept

  • Is developed not in solitude, but within social settings. This idea posted that individuals are not separated, but two complementary aspects of the same phenomenon.

Process occurs in 3 step

  • When in a social setting, a person will often fantasize about how others perceive them to be.
  • The person considers the opinions of other people regarding their appearance.
  • The individual comes to feel a variety of emotions in response to the perceived judgments of others and acts on those sentiments.

Urie Bronfenbrenner

  • Born on April 29, 1917, moscow, russia.
  • At six his family moved to the US.
  • Neuropathologist
  • Took up psychology and music in cornell university, ithaca, ny
  • Masters in education- Harvard University
  • Dr. in Developmental Psychology-University of Michigan
  • Taught in University of Michigan and Cornell University.
  • Father Psychologist in Military during WW2
  • Believe that Human Development is shaped by the interaction between the individual and their environment.

Ecological Systems Theory

  • This theory explains how the qualities of an individual (innate) and their environment interact to influence their growth and self-development.
  • Emphasizes the importance of studying children in Different kinds of settings.

5 Levels of Ecological Systems Theory

Microsystems

  • The direct environment we have in our lives.
  • Family, friends, classmates, teachers, neighbors and other people who have direct contact with.

Mesosystem

  • Involves the relationships between the microsystems in one’s life.
  • This means that your family experience may be related to your school experience.
  • The key point is that what happens in one microsystem affects what happens in another microsystem.

Exosystem

  • The setting in which there is a link between the context where the person does not have any active role, and the context where is actively participating.

Macrosystem

  • The actual culture of an individual.
  • The cultural contexts involve the socioeconomic status of the person and/or his family, his ethnicity or race and living in a still developing or a third world country.

Chronosystem

  • The transitions and shifts in one’s lifespan involve the socio-historical contexts that may influence a person.

Defining Properties of Human Development

Person

  • Age, gender, and competency are examples of personal traits that interact with the environment to affect growth.

Context

  • Contains the four systems that were originally proposed by Bronfenbrenner in his ecological systems theory.

Process

  • The fundamental mechanisms of development and representation of the interactions between contextual and individual factors.

Time

  • Proximal events that take place often over long periods of time are a major inducer of development.

William James

  • First educator offer a psychology course in US.
  • Establish Pragmatism
  • Founder of Functional Psychology
  • Developed Radical Empiricism
  • American Philosopher
  • Father of American Psychologist
  • The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.

Major Contribution to UTS

Functionalism

  • Centered on the question of how mental processes helped an organism adapt to the environment in which it lived.
  • Presented an explanation of the informal links between an individual's internal states and their conduct in public.
  • The more nuanced interpretation is that structuralists were more concerned with the functioning of the separate components of the mind, whereas functionalists were more interested in how the mind as a whole operated.
  • Believed that one method for someone to investigate mental activities could be to engage in introspection as a strategy to accomplish this.
  • It is necessary to rely on more objective measures, such as the utilization of a variety of recording equipment and the investigation of tangible products of mental operations as well as anatomy and physiology.