Abstract: Symbolic Interactionism is an approach that examines behavior and the creation of society through the study of human interaction, roles and language as symbols. It suggests that societies and humans may only exist in relation to one another, they are constantly changing, and therefore people are a reflection of the society or reality they create, and must deal with it’s consequences.
The Interactionist perspective says that human interaction is symbolic of the larger society humans live in, hence the term ‘symbolic interactionism.’ Human beings create a reality that encompasses their morals, ethics, values, beliefs, attitudes and perceptions through social interaction with each other. Society is created and re-created by the establishment of rules and alteration of those rules over time by the people who choose to live in that society. People are, therefore, a reflection of the society they create. How people behave in their every day lives, how they interact and the language they use communicates human reality as seen by the interactionist perspective. This paper will examine what symbolic interactionism is, where it came from, what influences contributed to its development and evolution over time and it will break it down into its major components in order to better understand the interactionist perspective and approach.
Symbolic Interactionism (or Interactionism) is an American sociological and social psychological, theoretical perspective that suggests the idea that symbols and meaning are a reflection of society, created through human interaction, and examinable by humans’ use of language, communication, and interaction. Interactionism is used as a method of studying every day life, focusing it’s attention on drawing conclusions about the “creation of a person’s self and socialization into a larger community” (Nelson, 1998). Symbolic Interactionism is a “means for intelligent expression; the way we learn to interpret the world” (Mead, 1934). According to the socio-cultural tradition, the theory suggests that “Humans act toward people, things, and events on the basis of the meaning they assign to them. Once people define a situation as real, it has very real consequences. Without language there would be no thought, no sense of self, and no socializing presence of society within the individual” (Griffin, 2008).
The term “symbolic interactionism” was coined by Herbert Blumer in 1937, in his article entitled, “Man and Society.” Herbert Blumer was a student at the University of Chicago and went on to instruct classes there as well. He described the symbolic interactionist approach as a “down-to-earth approach to the scientific study of human group life and human conduct. Its empirical world is the natural world of such group life and conduct. It lodges its problems in this natural world, conducts its studies in it, and derives its interpretations from such naturalistic studies” (Blumer, 1986). Herbert Blumer and his work have lived on through the influence he and his work have had over generations of interactionist who continue to dedicate themselves to examining life through his perspective today.
Although Blumer is considered the founder of symbolic interactionism, the thought behind the interactionism perspective actually began with George Herbert Mead in the early 1900’s. Mead was a Harvard graduate turned philosopher and psychologist who became a founder of both pragmatism and social psychology. He was a professor at the University of Chicago before Herbert Blumer took over his classes following Mead’s passing in the early 1930’s due to heart failure. The roots of what is now known as the interactionist perspective grew from George Herbert Mead’s thoughts on social behaviorism.
Social behaviorism as described in his book, “Mind, Self and Society from the standpoint of a social behaviorist,” deals with the psychological study of the effects community has on a community member. Social behaviorism examines the relationship between people and the social group they belong to in order to make assumptions, connections or explain behavior. The standpoint of a social behaviorist aided the development of interactionism due to its emphasis on the effects that communication through language as symbols have on society, and it’s nature. Mead, speaking from the standpoint of a social behaviorist, emphasized the importance of “dealing with experience from the standpoint of society” (Mead, 1934). He felt that communication was essential to social order since experience belongs to the individual, the individual belongs to society, and communication is derived from experience, and interaction in society.
Other sources of influence for the perspective were pulled from “early twentieth-century Chicago sociologists W.I. Thomas, Robert Park, and Everette Hughes,” who presented “views of social processes, social organization, and social change,” and pragmatism (Hall, 2008). Pragmatism is the philosophy of “considering practical consequences or real effects to be vital components of meaning and truth,” which originated with Charles Pierce in the late nineteenth century (Wikipedia contributors, 2009). It was Pierce’s views on thought and language that had the most influence on symbolic interactionism. Pragmatism emphasizes the importance of the study of action, interpretation, memory, and retention and how it effects human knowledge of what is real, and useful. Also a founder of the school of pragmatism, was philosopher John Dewey, who declared that there was
greater understanding to be found in studying human beings in relation to their environment, marking his contribution to the development of the interactionist perspective (Nelson, 1998).
After the establishment of Symbolic Interactionism, it became influential in the 1960’s, challenging “the dominance of Talcott Parsons and Grand Theory” (Marshall, 1990). Parsons was known for his “attempt to construct a single theoretical framework within which general and specific characteristics of societies could be systematically classified” (Parsons, 1998). Grand Theory states that “the formal organization and arrangement of concepts takes priority over understanding the social world” (Marshall, 1998). It challenged these theories because Interactionism is founded on the idea that societies are dynamic, and interactive, not fixed or unchangeable and therefore cannot be classified in a systematic manner.
Over time symbolic interactionism has matured into a more sophisticated, and increasingly relevant theory. It, since, has become applicable to newer phenomena introduced in the 1990’s, such as, “post-modernism, feminism, semiology, and cultural theory” (Marshall, 1998). Today, organizations such as The Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction dedicate themselves to interactionist research. Their journals examine issues such as the Iraq War, political struggles, and Imagined Masculinity from an interactionist perspective. “Symbolic Interactionists have contributed to many facets of the social work knowledge base, including human behavior theory, social work practice models, theories of social problems, the planned change process, social work research, professional socialization procedures, and social policy analysis” (Reynolds, 2003). Although the approach has received much criticism and debate over the decades, it has maintained its usefulness in examining the social construction of reality and has had a tremendous impact on more sociological, communication and psychological studies than it has been given credit for.
To understand what the interactionist perspective is, and gain insight into what is symbolic interactionism, it is essential to break down it’s components, and take a closer look at the important roles they play in the approach as a whole. Symbolic Interactionism has three core principles that assist in understanding human beings. Interactionists examine interaction and role playing, the use of symbols and meaning, the “self” humans create, reflective thought and action, and the role these elements and their transactions play in developing a culture over time, for better or for worse.
Meaning is determined by the field of experience of the person receiving a message. It is a persons knowledge or assumptions gained from experiences interacting in society that determines how that person will interpret or perceive a message. It is that framework that makes it possible to decode messages sent. Meaning is dependent on the response a message is given when received. David Berlo, a communications theorist, says that “Meanings are in people…we transmit messages, not meanings.” Words are generally thought to have meaning, but with regards to the interactionist perspective they are simply symbols that represent a thought or idea based on the experience of the person transmitting the message. They are the vehicle with which an attempt to transmit meaning is driven. “Meaning arises and lies within the field of the relation between the gesture of a given human organism and the subsequent behavior of this organism as indicated to another human organism by that gesture” (Mead, 1934). This says that true meaning is only observable by the interpretation the person receiving that message assigns to it from their point of view or frame of reference. The interactionist approach looks beyond the symbol being used, avoiding the generalization or assumption of meanings.
Symbols enable humans to interact and communicate by understanding shared meanings they have for words, actions, and objects. “Symbolization highlights the process through which events and conditions, artifacts and edifices, people and aggregations, and other features of the ambient environment take on particular meanings, becoming object of orientation that elicit specifiable feelings and actions” (Reynolds, 2003).
Symbols are social objects that successfully communicate or stimulate common meanings assigned by society members created by their interaction over time. Examples of symbols are uniforms that may communicate authority, colors or shapes that signal stop or go commands, a hand gesture that communicates a greeting or departure, or a flag that signals the last lap of a race. These objects are all understood to have important meaning and therefore are symbolic to the society from which they are being used. Objects, according to Interactionists, include animals, people, physical objects, emotions and ideas and they are only meaningful to people in a society when they are given symbolic significance.
Interactionists further examine human behavior and interaction through the study of language. Language is approached with consideration to experience, emotional agenda, surrounding environment and conditions, and the effects they have on the motivation of the person communicating, in order to interpret their individual intentions. People often times “assume that there are sets of ideas in persons' minds and that these individuals make use of certain arbitrary symbols which answer to the intent which the individuals had. But if we are going to broaden the concept of language ... so that it takes in the underlying attitudes, we can see that the so-called intent, the idea we are talking about, is one that is involved in the gesture or attitudes which we are using” (Mead, 1934). This means that the language people use is symbolic of not only the message they are trying to communicate, but of their orientation, background, and environment.
“It is language that allows persons to incorporate into their own selves the thoughts, beliefs, and sentiments brought from their respective social habitats” (Reynolds, 2003). The language presented by people is a reflection of the society from which they belong. “The mechanism of role taking is language and, dialectally, language acquisition is a product of socialization…The person is able to be an object to himself or herself only through the use of language. Language, of course, is available in society, and only in society. Society’s existence means the presence of role taking…” (Reynolds, 2003).
Language allows people of a society to take on roles which is the mechanism by which humans develop as a part of society. “By taking the role of others we can see ourselves as we imagine others see us and arouse in ourselves the responses we call out in others” (Reynolds, 2003). With internal dialoguing humans are able to make indications from social interaction in order to negotiate meaning and rehearse appropriate action in response to a situation. “The actor, shaped by the environment and target audience, sees interaction as a performance. Impression management is highly dependent on the situation” (Becker, 1990). The roles people perform are almost like different versions of themselves depending on their surrounding. The performance is based on what they consider socially acceptable in their mind and how well they perform that role depends on how clear their role expectations are. It is not that people are pretending, they are simply highlighting and dimming out certain parts of themselves for what they feel as appropriate for any given situation. George Herbert Mead said that, “A multiple personality is in a certain sense normal.” This is because people alter their outer appearance, clothes, facial expressions, language, and in a sense, personality in an effort to provide a message that appropriately supports the role they are playing depending on their situation. “Learning to act out appropriate roles is a fundamental aspect of human development…One’s own ability to use significant symbols to respond to one’s self makes the thinking process possible” (Wikipedia contributors, 2009). Assuming the role of another helps human beings determine behavior and create a self image. “…role taking is the basic mechanism giving birth to the self” (Reynolds, 2003).
Thought is a tool that measures response and produces behavior. “All mental processes are activities. This active conception of mind implies that thinking is an act of doing just as behavior” (Davetian, 2009). An individual’s mind carries within it the meanings and symbols it has learned in the individual’s lifetime. Thought is the internal conversation and the self is whom a person converses with internally. “Mental activity is a conversation with self” (Davetian, 2009). The mind is where meaning, negotiation, restrain, rehearsal, problem-solving ability, and judgments are created. The self is actually produced by the mind. “The organization of the self is simply the organization, by the individual organism, of the set of attitudes toward its social environment- and toward itself from the standpoint of that environment…” (Mead, 1934).
Mind activity, or thought, and internal dialogue provide the basis for producing behavior, but for what purpose? “The goal of all thought, of all inquiry, is to come up with satisfactions and goods, and in general to create solutions…” when faced with life situations people work out internally what behavior would be appropriate for the situation or dilemma and how that particular solution will make them look to others (Reynolds, 2003). Thought is not considered by Interactionists to be a separate entity from behavior, thought is “…but an instrument for response and behavior…” (Reynolds, 2003). It produces behavior that is fueled by what knowledge, experience, emotion, and framework the individual possesses. “…emotion is socially patterned and vital to the maintenance, recreation, and confirmation of social organization” (Reynolds, 2003). Role taking helps individuals to think, to negotiate, and to make decisions about their behavior, even reflect on past behavior. “The process of ‘the turning back of the experience of the individual upon himself’ is the essence of reflective thought” (Reynolds, 2003). Mead called reflective thought the “mind.”
A society consists of people who interact, share a culture, communicate shared knowledge and cooperate with their society’s characteristics or standards. Social groups and individuals present only in relation to one another. “The world we live in is a self-created one” (Reynolds, 2003). It is created through human interaction. The “cardinal principle of symbolic interactionism is that any empirically oriented scheme of human society, however derived, must respect the fact that in the first and last instances human society consists of people engaging in action” (Blumer, 1986) It is ongoing and the “essence of society” (Heath, 2000). It is the continued interaction of human beings that develops and maintains culture, and is responsible for change in that culture. Individuals are influenced by society, but they do have the ability to change it.. It is interaction within those societies that creates the nature of society, it’s customs, traditions, values, roles, norms, rules, authority, and social status. They are all products of how human beings act toward each other, what they do, and how they deal with or confront situations.
Blumer describes large group action in advanced societies as consisting of “highly recurrent, stable patterns that establish common, established meanings for the participants and new situates present problems requiring adjustment and redefinition.” The purpose of symbolic interactionism is to examine how humans interact in their roles in groups and society. Behavior and communication, in terms of their relation to symbols and society, are the focus of the interactionist perspective, and there is value in what people can learn about themselves and their society. “By consequence, symbols make people interdependent by providing them with a common socially-defined reality” (Davetian, 2009). Awareness of this interdependence may allow people to find more control in changing their social reality.
Human society depends on naming, memorizing and categorizing, perception, deliberation and problem solving, transcendence of time and space, transcendence of one’s own person, and imagination of abstract reality or conceptualization (Davetian, 2009). “Interactionists claim that the extent of knowing is dependent on the extent of naming” (Griffin, 2008). Sharing words, symbols and meanings allows society to be a logical, consistent and harmonious whole. “Just as the ‘invisible hand of order’ can guide economic relations, ‘social forces’ can guide social relations, and thus yield for society very positive outcomes (volunteerism, democracy, laws, moral and ethical standards for behavior, family and educational systems, communities) and very negative outcomes (discrimination, organized crime, moral decay, warfare, poverty)” (Turner, 2001).
Categorizing may assist in defining objects and creating society, but what the interactionist approach, when applied to current issues, can teach society is how naming and categorizing can be limiting and in some circumstances damaging. Naming is just a small example of the power that society, as a whole, has over the people who interact in it. Once people create a society of real things, those things in turn have an effect over the members of that society. Reality carries with it serious consequences.
People of society tend to hold onto and believe the meanings that are assigned through social interaction over time because of the consequences they know will follow if they reject them. Human beings, according to Maslow, have an inherent need to belong, including “the need for mastery to be able to get one's own way, to establish some control over one's situation and environment, to express some degree of personal power, to be able to communicate and obtain objectives. And the need for love, affection and belonging. People need to escape feelings of loneliness and alienation and to give (and receive) love and affection, and to have a sense of belonging with high quality communication (with understanding and empathy)” (Shepard, 2009). It is basic human need that makes conformity a natural part of human development. As individuals take their role in a society there is much risk involved in trying to challenge that role. Symbolic interactionism brings an awareness, a consciousness to society, revealing weaknesses and flaws in its make up.
The language, words, and symbols in human society that people create and categorize contribute to the power of the media, gender role inequalities, sexism, racism, ageism, stereotyping, and the general inconsistent or unequal treatment of people of society. This arises from a dulled level of consciousness concerning issues facing members of society who are not of the majority or not in power. “Discriminatory or stereotypical language exists for any group whose physical appearance, behavior or belief vary from those in the mainstream” (Kessler, 2003). This type of language is not always obvious in its discrimination. It is symbolic of common images for people of societies and this is why it is so easy for the categorization of words to assist in the injustices that take place within society. “Most white, middle-class citizens see society from a monocultural perspective, a perspective that assumes, often unconsciously, that persons of all races are in the same cultural system together. This single-system form of seeing the world, is blind to its own cultural specificity. People who see persons of other races monoculturally cannot imagine the reality that those ‘others’ think of themselves not in relation to the majority race but in terms of their own culturally specific identities” (McIntosh, 1998).
Race inequality is an ongoing issue in society that the interactionist perspective may be able to offer insight into. Thinking a particular way because that is what society has taught, because that is what one learned as they developed behaviors that modeled that society is not an excuse for ignorance of all people within a social group. Symbolic Interactionism opens a door to question the society built before the birth of new generations and demands that humans take responsibility for the construction of their reality. How people communicate and interact within a society says something about human beings and people should answer to what society is saying. The purpose of Interactionists is to look at behavior to uncover the effects of interaction and symbols because the effects can be significant indicators of societal functioning and societal issues. Does language and symbols reinforce behavior that would demean or stereotype people and support prejudice behavior? Interactionists’ purpose may be to see how this behavior and these symbols “demean not only the group being stereotyped but also all of us who
strive to live in a civilized society” (Kessler, 2003). Fortunately, Interactionism “promotes the idea that nothing in society is determined, and that people can break free of a label as individuals” (Wikipedia contributors, 2009).
Although research appears to not credit the use of symbolic interactionism in the media and in marketing with as great of emphasis as is due, in the future it is foreseeable that it will receive the attention it deserves. Is it not worthy at least to consider; if humans interact with media in excess more than the social world around them, does that not increase how the media contributes to a person’s identity? If what we see and read contributes to a person’s perception of things, then is media not an object no different from other objects of society?
The fast food industry, for example, markets themselves with symbols that are commonly recognizable by people. Their marketing is focused on primary colors that “generate a hunger in society upon sight because they symbolically represent ketchup and mustard, thus, with hungry people, the traffic of customers increases” (Wikipedia contributors, 2009). The power of the media is a long debated one. With consideration to symbolic interactionism, the media definitely affects behavior and should not just be studied through simple polls and surveys, but examined and investigated for the potential danger of how it is contributing to peoples’ identities, their perception, and development of meaning. When people submit their personal identity to a dominant culture or ideology, like the media, who communicates in a manner so not to disrupt human’s inner societal balance, then individuals in society will continue to reinforce such media and its dominant force of influence over society.
Symbolic Interactionism is applicable and valuable in studying the behavior of society today in dealing with contemporary issues and inequality, power struggles, mass media, marketing, and the use of language as symbols in communication in, and out of the organization. It remains a useful approach for examining how language, thought, meaning, symbols, the roles humans play, behavior, and how they interact to create and re-create society.
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