Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 Homo credens: the believer
- 2 Deceiving ourselves: you can't always know what you want
- 3 Deceiving each other: the techniques of sincerity
- 4 “It's beyond my control” and other moral masquerades
- 5 To thine own self be true?
- Further reading
- References
- Index
3 - Deceiving each other: the techniques of sincerity
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 Homo credens: the believer
- 2 Deceiving ourselves: you can't always know what you want
- 3 Deceiving each other: the techniques of sincerity
- 4 “It's beyond my control” and other moral masquerades
- 5 To thine own self be true?
- Further reading
- References
- Index
Summary
[To be natural] is such a very difficult pose to keep up.
(Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband)At the start of the twentieth century the sociologist Charles Horton Cooley introduced the idea of the “looking-glass self” to suggest that people's identity, rather than internal to their psychology, is formed through a reflection of how they look from the outside. This self is no “mere mechanical reflection”; rather, it is populated by judging audiences whose imputed sentiments determine whether the reflection is flattering or not. There are three steps needed to create a looking-glass self: first you imagine how you appear in the eyes of an audience; next you imagine what they must be thinking of you; and finally you apply those imagined judgements to yourself. The process is nicely illustrated by this young internet blogger's description of her embarrassing moment:
My debating tournament is over and I am eating at a beautiful restaurant, eating a wonderful fancy dinner of spaghetti. (No meatballs, I'm vegetarian.) Suddenly, I notice my boyfriend across the room and stand up quickly, knocking my plate of spaghetti all over my crisp white blouse and pressed black skirt.
1. I step outside of myself for a second. See a slenderish girl, wispy black hair, looking bewildered due to the not-quite-bloodlike stuff splattered all over her shirt.
2. Who does she think she is? Why is she dressed that fancily, anyway? Why does she act like she's all grown-up when obviously she can't even keep her spaghetti on her plate? Ugly. Oh, by the way, ugly hair too. How disgusting. I pity her.
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- Deception , pp. 63 - 92Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2008