Murphy's Law.

Chapter 1

The Mirror Me Effect: Breaking through the boundaries of thinking and knowing the true self

The "Mirror Me" and "Real Me" and "Mirror Me Effect" were put forward in 1902 by the American sociologists Charles, Horton, and Cooley, and this theory holds that "a person's self-concept is formed in interaction with other people, and a person's understanding of himself is a reflection of other people's views on himself, and this self-feeling he has is determined by other people's thoughts and other people's attitudes toward himself." In Human Nature and Social Order, Cooley makes a figurative analogy: "Everyone is a mirror of another person, reflecting another passerby." Therefore, this theory is also called the "mirror me effect" As the name suggests, the connotation of the "mirror me effect" is that just as we can only see our own appearance in the mirror, "I" know the self from other people's views of me. Therefore, contrary to the view of "don't care about what others think" advocated by general social psychology theory, the "mirror me effect" points out that each person's "self-view" is formed through interaction with others. First, we imagine how others "know" themselves. Second, we imagine how others "evaluate" ourselves on top of this knowledge. Finally, we will develop certain feelings based on other people's "knowledge" and "evaluation" of ourselves, and this feeling will dominate our perception of ourselves. For example, "I" donate fifty dollars to a charity, and then, through the evaluations and reactions of others, imagine that they know "me" as someone who is participating in a charitable activity. Then, through verbal comments or other feedback channels from others, "I think that others evaluate "me" as "warm-hearted and kind people." Then , "I" was very pleased with this realization and evaluation, and as a result I became more aware of myself, believing that I was indeed a warm-hearted and kind person. After that, the "I" will continue to demand of myself by this standard – this is the process of the formation of a person's view of self. Instead, in the same example, "I" donated fifty dollars to charity, and then "I" discovered that "I" was judged by others as "a hypocrite who pretended to be enthusiastic about charity." This evaluation will make "I" look inside and believe that my involvement in charity is not because of hypocrisy. Thus, the "I" will develop emotions of anger and rejection, and at the same time, in this emotion, I will further realize that I am not a hypocritical person. Novels often have such a plot: a person who does nothing evil seems to have the devil in his heart and evil blood in his bones. One day, he came to a strange place and did something good by chance, so everyone praised him and thought he was a saint. Slowly, he also really believed that he was a good person, and then, he began to use the standard of "good man" to demand himself, and gradually discovered the goodness in his human nature. At the end of the novel, he often turns against the evil partners of the past in order to protect those who consider him a "saint", and uses his life to atone for his past sins, and becomes a saint completely. This is the process of a "mirror me" shaping the "real me", and although the story is cheesy, the psychological basis contained in it is very sufficient. In real life, we often encounter similar scenes: a woman holding a child on the train, the carriage is already full of people. One of the young men was sleeping in a chair, but one of them occupied two seats. The child cried and sat down and pointed his finger at the young man. But the young man pretended not to hear, and still lay down to sleep. At this time, the child's mother said in a comforting tone: "This uncle is too tired, let him sleep for a while, he will definitely vacate his seat when he wakes up." After a few minutes, the young man opened his eyes, looked like he had just woken up, and then sat up straight, giving up another seat to the woman holding the child. The little child cries and wants to sit, the young man ignores it, but the mother's comforting words make the young man give up his seat politely, and the mystery of this is that the young man's "self-evaluation" of himself has changed. As you can imagine, at the beginning, young people's perception of themselves was "I occupy two seats, what can you do with me" rogue mentality. But when he heard the woman's assessment of herself, his perception of himself quietly became: "I'm a reasonable person, but I'm too tired to take a break." His "view of self" changes, and then his corresponding behavior changes. It can be seen that the individual is so related to society that the individual often needs to pass the judgment of others in the society in order to complete the cognition of the self. This tells us that what kind of people we are is often determined by social feedback, and what kind of people others think we are, what kind of people we are, what kind of people we may become. [Smile] [Smile] [Smile] [Smile] [Smile] [Smile]