Looking glass self (from Cooley) : a person's self grows out of society's interpersonal

interactions and the perceptions of others. The term refers to people shaping their selfconcepts based on their understanding of how others perceive them. Cooley clarified
that society is an interweaving and inter-working of mental selves.
There are three main components of the looking-glass self (Yeung, et al. 2003).
1. We imagine how we must appear to others.
2. We imagine and react to what we feel their judgment of that appearance must be.

3. We develop our self through the judgments of others.

The generalized other is a concept introduced by George Herbert Mead into the social
sciences, and used especially in the field of symbolic interactionism. It is the general
notion that a person has of the common expectations that others have about actions and
thoughts within a particular society, and thus serves to clarify their relation to the other
as a representative member of a shared social system. [1]
Any time that an actor tries to imagine what is expected of them, they are taking on the
perspective of the generalized other
Mead began by contrasting the experience of role-play and pretence in early childhood,
in which one role simply gives way to a different one without any continuity, with that of
the organised game: in the latter, he stated, the child must have the attitude of all the
others involved in that game.[5] He saw the organised game as vital for the formation of
a mature sense of self, which can only be achieved by learning to respond to, and take
on board, the others' attitudes toward the (changing) common undertakings they are
involved in: i.e. the generalized other.[6]
Mead argued that "in the game we get an organized other, a generalized other, which is
found in the nature of the child itself....in the case of such a social group as a ball team,
the team is the generalized other in so far as it enters - as an organized process or
social activity - into the experience of any one of the individual members of it". [7]
By seeing things from an anonymous perspective, that of the other, the child may
eventually be able to visualize the intentions and expectations of others, and see

him/herself from the point of view of groups of others - the viewpoint of the generalized
other.
The attitude of the generalized other is the attitude of the larger community. According to
Mead, the generalized other is the vehicle by which we are linked to society.