Cooley, Charles Horton

Cooley, Charles Horton, 1864–1929, American sociologist, b. Ann Arbor, Mich., grad. Univ. of Michigan (B.A., 1887; Ph.D., 1894); son of Thomas M. Cooley. He taught in the sociology department at the Univ. of Michigan after 1892, although his degree was in economics. Cooley's major contribution to the field of sociology was his idea of the "looking-glass self" (a concept that emphasizes the social determination of the self) and primary groups—e.g., the family, the play group, or the neighborhood. He wrote Human Nature and the Social Order (1902, rev. ed. 1922), Social Organization (1909), Social Process (1918), and Sociological Theory and Social Research (1930).

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Cooley, Charles Horton

(born Aug. 17, 1864, Ann Arbor, Mich., U.S.—died May 8, 1929, Ann Arbor) U.S. sociologist. The son of an eminent Michigan jurist, Cooley taught sociology at the University of Michigan from 1894. He believed that the mind is social, that society is a mental construct, and that the moral unity of society derives from face-to-face relationships in primary groups such as the family and neighbourhood. In Human Nature and the Social Order (1902), he referred to this form of social reference as “the looking glass self.” Cooley's other works include Social Organization (1909) and Social Process (1918).

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Cooley, Charles Horton (1864–1929) sociologist; born in Ann Arbor, Mich. He joined the University of Michigan faculty after earning a Ph.D. in political economy, and in a 35-year career there, he pioneered the teaching of the new discipline of sociology and the practice of social psychology. Like other early sociologists he took a philosophical approach to his subject; although the discipline later became empirically based, he made lasting theoretical contributions that laid the foundation for later work. In Human Nature and the Social Order (1902), he introduced the concept of "the looking-glass self," the self as defined by social interaction. He developed this view further in Social Organization (1909) and Social Process (1918), a Darwinian social analysis.

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Cooley, Charles Horton 

Born Aug. 17, 1864, in Ann Arbor, Mich.; died there May 8, 1929. American sociologist. Professor of sociology at the University of Michigan from 1907; president of the American Sociological Association in 1918.

Cooley was influenced by A. Comte (France), H. Spencer (Great Britain), and A. Schäffle (Germany), as well as by C. Darwin (Great Britain). Regarding society as a developing organic whole, he nevertheless rejected biological determinism and superficial analogies between society and the biological organism. Although he held consciousness to be social and collective, he erroneously identified society with consciousness, which led to his “psychologizing” of social relations.

The principal problems studied by Cooley were small groups and the development of the personality. He introduced the distinction between primary groups (a term he coined) and secondary social institutions. According to Cooley, primary groups— the family, children’s play groups, neighborhoods, and local communities—are the basic social nuclei, characterized by inti-mate, face-to-face, informal association, direct communication, stability, and small scope. It is here that socialization occurs, the development of the personality, which in the course of interaction assimilates the principal social values and norms and modes of action.

Cooley characterized personality as the sum total of a person’s psychological reactions to the opinions held about him by the people around him (the theory of the “mirrored I”). Thus he correctly noted certain essential aspects of socialization and the development of self-consciousness. Nevertheless, Cooley incorrectly reduced these aspects to the direct interaction between individuals. In his view secondary social institutions, such as classes, nations, and parties, form a social structure where impersonal relations evolve and into which the fully formed individual is only partially drawn as the performer of a certain function.

Although he linked the existence of classes to economic factors, Cooley underestimated the profound contradictions between them. An advocate of bourgeois democracy and a liberal critic of capitalism, he rejected the revolutionary transformation of society. Cooley’s works have influenced the development of bourgeois social psychology.

WORKS

Human Nature and the Social Order. New York, 1902.
Social Organization. New York, 1909.
Social Process. New York, 1918.
Sociological Theory and Social Research. New York, 1930.

REFERENCES

Jandy, E. C. C. H. Cooley: His Life and His Social Theory. New York, 1942.
Cooley and Sociological Analysis. Ann Arbor [1968].

N. M. LANDA