From the Perspective of

Sociology
 George Mead was born February 1863 in
Massachusetts, USA.
 He graduated and taught grade school at the
Oberlin College.
 In 1887, he enrolled at Harvard University
where his main interests were philosophy and
psychology
 Social Behaviorism is the approach George
Mead used to describe the power of the
environment in shaping human behavior
 At the center of his theorizing is the concept
of the self. He described the self as
dimension of personality that is made up of
the individual self awareness and self-image.
According to Mead the self cannot be
separated from the society.
 Mead believed that a self did not exist at birth.
Instead, the self develops over time. Its
development is dependent on social interaction
and social experience.
 At this stage, children’s
behavior are primary based on
imitation. It was observed that
children imitate the behaviors
of those around them.
 As these children grow, they
become familiar with the
symbols (verbal and non verbal)
that people use in their
interactions.
 At the first stage ,
knowing and
understanding the symbols
are important
for this will constitute
their way of communicating
with others throughout their
lives.
 Now children begin to role play and pretend to
be other people. Role-taking in the play stage
according to Mead is the process of mentally
assuming the perspective of another person to see
how this person might behave or respond in a
given situation
 At this stage, skills at knowing
and understanding the symbol
of communication is important
for this constitutes the basis
for socialization. Through
communication, social
relationships are formed.
 The play stage is significant in the
development of the self. It is at this stage
where the child widens his perspective and
realizes that he is not alone and that there
are others around him whose presence he has
to consider.
 Mead gave a specific age for this stage. Here the
child is about eight or nine years of age and now
does more than just role-take.
 The child begins to consider several tasks and
various types of relationships simultaneously .
 Through the learnings that were gained in stage
two, the child now begins to see not only his own
age perspective of others around him.
 In this final stage of self development, the child
now has the ability to respond not just to one but
several members of his social environment.
 The term “generalized other” was what Mead
used to explain the behavior of the person when
he sees/considers other people in the course of
his actions.

 Through the generalized other, the person

realizes that people in society have cultural
norms, beliefs and values which are
incorporated into each self. This realization
forms the basis of how the person may evaluate
himself.
 Mead presented his theory of self : The self
is not present at birth but begins as a
central character in a child’s world.

 Childrensee themselves as the center of the

universe and is having difficulty
understanding others around them.
 Asthese children grow and mature, there is
a change in the self. They begin to see other
people and now concerned about people’s
reactions.

 People around him, particularly his family,

play a major role in the formation of the
self. They are the significant others who
strongly influence his development.
 George Mead explained that the person’s
capacity to see the self through other implies
that the self is composed of two parts, the I self
and the Me self :
 I self- When the person initiates or performs a
social action, the self functions as a subject.
 Me self- When the person takes the role of the
other, the self function as an object.
 Itshould be remembered that the formation
of the self is not the end of the process of
socialization.
 Socialization continues for as long as the
person is alive. The self may change based
on life circumstances that have strong
impact on it.
 Event such as death of loved ones , disease
or disability may reshape self. Though a
person may have no control over such
events, he has control over how he reacts
and deals with it which is still an important
aspect of the self.
 Charles Horton Cooley was an American
sociologist who made use of the
sociopsychological approach to
understanding how societies work. He
earned his doctorate at the University of
Michigan and taught at the same
university as a sociology professor until
the end of his life. In his written work,
Human Nature and the Social Order, he
discussed the formation of the self
through interaction.
 Cooleystated that people learn who they are
through their social interaction with others .
Although seeing oneself is based on
contemplating one’s personal qualities, the view
of the self is also significantly influenced by the
impression and perception of others.

 Cooley called this the looking-glass self or the

self that is a product of social interaction.
 Cooley believed that the process of developing a
self has three phases.

 People imagine how they present themselves

to others
 People imagine how others evaluate them.
 People develop some sort of feeling about
themselves as a result of those impressions.
 It is noticed that Cooley in his three phases made
use of the word imagine.This may mean that
there is a possibility that people develop self
identities based on the wrong perception of how
others see them.Wrong perceptions however, can
still change based on positive social experiences.

I AM not what I think I am

I AM not what YOU think I AM
I AM what I think You think I AM
 Was a Canadian-American sociologist known for
his role in the development of Modern American
Sociology. One of his popular work was the
presentation of the self in everyday life.

 In this work he wrote how he observed that

people early in their social interactions learned
to slant their presentation of themselves in
order to create preferred appearances and
satisfy particular people. He referred to this
process of altering how the people present
himself to others as impression management.
 In Goffman’s observation of people in
everyday interactions, he sees similarities of
real social interaction to a theatrical
presentation. This is the reason for the label
dramaturgical approach to his view. It was
view also Goffman, who used the phrase
face-work to describe another aspect of the
self.

 This was usually observed in situations

where face-saving measures are resorted to
in the maintenance of proper image of the
self in frustrating or embarrassing situation.