ABSTRACT
Cooley's looking-glass self-concept has three basic components: (1) we see ourselves in our imagination as we think we appear to the other person; (2) we see in our imagination the other person's judgment of ourselves; and (3) as a result of what we see in our imagination about how we are viewed by the other person, we experience some sort of self-feeling, such as satisfaction, pride, or humiliation. The contribution of this theory to an understanding of stress is that an individual's perception of himself or herself as a social object depends on the reaction of other people. Obviously stress could result from the failure of the other person (the observer) to reflect a self-image consistent with that intended by the individual (the subject). Stress can therefore be seen as having a very definite social and personal component based on perceptions that people have in social situations.
