32 Part I The Transition to College Copyright Goodheart-Willcox Co., Inc. Facet #2: The Looking-Glass Self It is important to discuss your self-concept, because the attitudes and expecta- tions and beliefs you have about yourself—your worth, your capabilities, your limitations, your value—is critical to how you move through and interact with the world. From a young age, people attach labels to others and receive labels about themselves from others, such as “smart,” “clumsy,” “funny,” “mean.” These cues are verbal and nonverbal, direct and implied, personal and cul- tural. We receive them from family members, friends, strangers we encounter, the media, and our culture. Each message you receive explicitly and implicitly guides your view of yourself. You take it in and think, “Oh, I guess I’m smart and therefore capable of doing well in school.” Or, “Okay, I guess I’m clumsy and not good at anything athletic.” Internalizing these labels often leads you to actually carry out this identity. For instance, the first student might set high academic goals for herself and put most of her effort into school. The second student might avoid participating in sports in the belief that he won’t be good at them. Taken together and over time, the messages we receive are heavily influential in how we view ourselves, or in forming what we call our self-concept. One’s self-concept is heavily influenced and largely based on messages received from outside of our- selves, whether from people one is intimately connected with, or from broader societal and cultural messages. Your self-concept is one of the most important facets of mindset. Self-concept refers to how you come to view yourself, and what you think about your abilities, worth, tastes, and talents. Your self-concept impacts your sense of self-worth, your belief in your potential, and these impact whether or not, and how, you pursue opportunities and interactions. How do we form a self-concept? Where do these intangible and important ideas come from and how do they pervade our brain? To help you better understand this, it’s useful to recognize a sociological concept called the looking-glass self, coined by Charles Horton Cooley. Cooley argues that our self-concept is created by seeing ourselves as we are constructed, created, or viewed by others. He puts it this way: “I am not what I think I am. I am what I think you think I am.” (Cooley, 1902) Basically, we form our self-concept, in large part, based on how we believe others see us. This means that rather than form a sense of our self from our own experiences and our own interpretation of those experiences, we look to others, observe their reactions, and let our under- standing of their response inform our sense of self. This, in turn, actually influ- ences the type of experiences we have and how we interpret them. It becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.