Charles Horton Cooley: American Sociological Perspective

Charles Horton Cooley (born Aug. 17, 1864, Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S. died May 8, 1929, Ann Arbor) was an American sociologist and the son of Thomas M. Cooley. He studied and went on to teach economics and sociology at the University of Michigan, and he was a founding member and the eighth president of the American Sociological Association. He is perhaps most well known for his concept of the looking glass self, which is the concept that a person's self grows out of society's interpersonal interactions and the perceptions of others. Cooley is noted for his displeasure at the divisions within Sociology over methodology. He preferred an empirical, observational approach. While he appreciated the use of statistics, he preferred case studies: often