Glass Looking Self

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From Mirror Self-Recognition to the Looking-Glass Self: Exploring the Justification Hypothesis Leigh S. Shaffer West Chester University In his Tree of Knowledge (ToK) System, Henriques (2003) posits that the human ego or “self” has evolved because human beings are the only animals that have had to justify their behavior to others. This essay provides evidence for this Justification Hypothesis (JH) from everyday life sociology, starting with the work of George Herbert Mead and Charles Horton Cooley, and focuses on research related to the concept of the “looking-glass self.” Special emphasis is given to the pragmatics of speech acts, the presentation of self in interaction rituals, the accounts given by actors in justification of their actions, and the role of social norms and conformity in the large-scale justification systems commonly called “culture.” © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Psychol 61: 47–65, 2005. Keywords: Tree of Knowledge (ToK) System; Justification Hypothesis; sociology; social psychology; looking-glass self The concept of the “self” has long been of interest to religious thinkers, philosophers, and scientists alike. Utilizing his Tree of Knowledge (ToK) System as a metatheoretical framework, Henriques (2003) develops the provocative thesis that the human ego is the mental organ of justification. Merging key insights from seminal figures like B.F. Skinner and Sigmund Freud, Henriques constructs a narrative for the evolutionary processes that gave rise to a uniquely human self-consciousness system (Henriques, 2004) that functions to allow humans to develop justifiable reasons for what they do. Henriques points to the location of the evolutionary threshold human beings have crossed by reviewing empirical research on the nature and limits of animal selfawareness using the mirror self-recognition (MSR) paradigm. In this paradigm, animals are given

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