Charles Cooley

Charles Horton Cooley was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on August 17, 1864, to Mary Elizabeth Horton and Thomas M. Cooley. Thomas Cooley was the Supreme Court Judge for the state of Michigan, and he was one of the first three faculty members to found the University of Michigan Law School in 1859. He served as dean of the law school from 1859–1884. Cooley's mother, Mary, took an active interest in public affairs and traveled with her husband to several cities around the United States in relation to the Interstate Commerce Commission. His father was a very successful political figure that stressed the importance of education to his six children. Nevertheless, Cooley had a difficult childhood, which exacerbated his feelings of detachment towards his father. The intimidation and alienation he felt towards his own father caused him to suffer from a variety of illnesses for fifteen years during his adolescence, some appearing to be psychosomatic. He developed a speech impediment, among other insecurities, due to his lack of interaction with other children. Cooley was a daydreamer and much of his "dreaming-life" had a substantial influence to his sociological works. As a child, he dealt with feelings of isolation and loneliness, which led him to develop an interest in reading and writing.

At the age of sixteen, Cooley began attending the University of Michigan. Cooley graduated from the University of Michigan in 1887, and continued with a year's training in mechanical engineering. Cooley returned to pursue a master's degree in political science and sociology in 1890. Following completion, he began teaching economics and sociology at UMich in the fall of 1892. Cooley went on to receive a Ph.D. in philosophy in 1894. At this time he was interested in the subject matter of sociology, but due to the University of Michigan not having a sociology department, he had to continue the examination of his Ph.D. through Columbia University. There, Cooley worked closely alongside American sociologist and economist, Franklin Henry Giddings and developed his doctoral thesis, The Theory of Transportation in economics.

Cooley married Elsie Jones in 1890, who was the daughter of a professor of medicine at the University of Michigan. Mrs. Cooley differed from her husband in that she was outgoing, energetic, and capable of ordering their common lives in such a manner that mundane cares were not to weigh heavily on her husband. The couple had three children, a boy and two girls, and lived quietly and fairly withdrawn in a house close to the campus. The children served Cooley as his own domestic laboratory subjects for his study of genesis and growth of the self. He would observe imitation behavior in his three children and analyzed their reactions based on age. Even when he was not engaged in the observation of his own self and wished to observe others, he did not need to leave the domestic circle. Cooley also found pleasure in amateur botany and bird-watching in spare time away from his research.

Cooley decided that he wanted to study sociology because it gave him the ability to analyze social discrepancies. He taught the University of Michigan's very first sociology class in 1899. He also played a prominent role in the development of symbolic interactionism, in which he worked heavily with another fellow staff member from the University of Michigan, psychologist John Dewey.

In his 1902 work, Human Nature and the Social Order, Cooley defined this concept as:

Since his father was honored nationwide, Cooley feared the idea of failure. He lacked direction in life and contemplated science, mathematics, social science, psychology or sociology as his field of study. He wished to write and think, and after reading philosopher Herbert Spencer's works, Cooley realized he had an interest in social problems. He shared his reflections of the works of Spencer in 1920, citing that while he brought many valuable viewpoints with the subject of Darwinian principles, he lacks sympathy and the appropriate usage of the sociological perspective.