Symbolic Interactionism

Sheldon Stryker
 Introduction
 Symbolic Interactionism are both a general framework for the anal
ysis of society and a social psychological theory addressed to probl
ems of socialization
 Theory vs. Frames of Reference:
- “Theory”
(1) Is a set of logically related hypotheses specifying expected rela
tionships among variables
(2) Is based on concepts describing selected aspects of the world
and assumptions about the way it works, and open to falsification t
hrough evidence drawn from the world
(3) Incorporates the concepts provided by a frame of reference
- “Frame of reference
(1) For sociologist, symbolic interactionism is a frame of reference
or a perspective
(2) It must give short shrift to some potentially significant determi
nants of social behavior by the very act of directing attention to its
special concerns
The Scottish Moral Philosophers
 Empiricism
-philosophy is the science of the connecting principles of nature
-empiricism and induction can lead to useful knowledge
 Communication
-Sympathy is the source of human action
-For Adam Smith, sympathy is a universal human trait, largely
unlearned, which allows us to put ourselves in another’s place and
to see the world through other person’s eyes
-It is through communicating with others that we first learn about
ourselves
 William James
(1842-1910)

 Habit
-the basis of habit is memory
-instincts are both modifiable and transitive
 The Self
-is “the sum total of all that an individual can call his”
-four types of self—the material self; the spiritual self; the social self;
pure ego
-the social self
-is the recognition given one by others; derivative of relationships with
others
-emphasizes on the self’s multifaceted character multifaceted self as
the product of heterogeneously organized society
-one’s self-worth/self-esteem is a function of the ratio of success to
presentation
two basis of self-esteem: objective basis=the recognition one gets
from others; subjective basis=one’s own aspirations
 James Mark Baldwin
(1861-1934)

 Personality Development
(1) Projective Stage—being aware of others, drawing
differences between them and objects
(2) Subjective Stage—emergence of self-consciousness
through imitating the behavior of others and learning
that there are feeling states associated with such
behavior
(3) Ejective Stage—associates feeling states with its
conceptions of persons and becomes aware that
other persons have feeling states just as it does
 John Dewey
(1859 - 1952)

 Habit
-personality organization is a primarily function of habit
-social organization is a primarily function of custom
-habits reflect a prior social order and they are the basis of thought and
reflection
 Pragmatism
-human is unique because of their capacity of thinking
-mind is the process of thinking; thinking arises in the process of human’s
adjusting to their environment
-mind is instrumental and it is the process of defining objects in one’s world
 “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology” (1896)
-a stimulus is defined in the context of action rather than prior to and a
cause of that action
 Charles Horton Cooley
(1864-1929)

 Social Self
(the reflected/looking glass self)
-The self is a social product; it is defined and developed
in social action
-Three components:
(1) Imagination of our appearance to other person
(2) Imagination of other person’s judgment to our
appearance
(3) Self-feeling from these imaginations
 W. I. Thomas
(1863-1947)

 Basic Position
-any human behavior needs to cope with the subjective and
objective facts of experience
-adjustment processes are responses to objective circumstances
in which individuals and groups are embedded
 Definitions of the situation
-subjective components of experience
-"If men define situations as real, they are real in their
consequences”
 Methodology
-personal documents (case studies, diaries, letters…) studies
-they provide the participant's definition of the situation that
purely observation and statistical studies failed to do
 George Hebert Mead
(1863-1931)

 Three traditions
(1) Pragmatism—individuals create their own world
(2) Behaviorism—reinforcement
(3) Darwinism—human beings have conscious thoughts
 Evolutionary Principles
-the best way to study human behavior is from the
viewpoint that society is an ongoing process
 Social acts
-Conversation of gestures
-Significant symbols
 George Hebert Mead
 The Self
-it is a product of social interaction
-it is a social structure and it arises in social experience
-it exists in the activity of viewing oneself reflexively
-“role-taking”: taking the standpoint of others
- “I” and “Me”
-“I”—the responses of the person to the organized attitudes
of others; contains the creativity and spontaneity parts of the
self
-“Me”—anticipating others’ responses on the basis of common
participation in a communication process
-three stages in developing the self: play stage, game stage,
generalized others
 George Simmel
(1858-1918)

 Approach to Sociological Theory

(1) Society
-“the name for a number of individuals, connected by inter
action”
-a structure of positions (vocations)
(2) Forms of social life
-social process, social types, developmental patterns
(3) Sociation
-the interaction of minds, the conscious association of person
-sociation requires individual to be “generalized”: the indivi
dual must be more than or less than an individual personality t
o be a part of society
 Ralph Linton
(1893-1953)

 Anthropological Methodology
(1) society=“any group of people who have lived and
worked together long enough to get themselves
organized and to think of themselves as a social
unity with well-defined limits”
(2) ideal patterns=remembered and rationalized
experiences of adapting to the environment in
which the society exists
these guide the training of the members of
society
(3) status=the polar positions in the ideal patterns; it
is a collection of rights and duties
 The Social Person
 Role
-Status & Position
-Role Theory: “status” and “position” refer to the
parts of organized social groups
-S.I.: “position” refers to any socially recognized
category of actors
-“Role”=expectations which are attached to
positions
-Actors categorize themselves and respond to
themselves by naming, classifying, and defining who
and what they are to engage in such reflexive
behavior is to have a self.
 The Social Person
 Self
-the self is a product of social interaction
-is phenomenological
-is based on reflexive activity
-has physical or biological location
-Mead: “One’s self is the way one describes to himself his
relationship to other in a social process.”
-Stryker’s concept of self:
-identity
-identity salience—refers to one possible, theoretically important
way in which the self can be organized
-Salience hierarchy—the higher the identity in the
hierarchy, the more likely that the identity will
be invoked in a given or in many situations
-commitment—commitments are premised on identities
 The Social Person
 Role-Taking
-the process of anticipating the responses of others with whom
one is involved in social interaction
-actors use the result of their role-taking to sustain, modify, and
redirect their own behavior
-is one way persons learn how others locate them and of others’
expectations for their behavior
 Socialization
-the process by which the newcomer becomes incorporate into
organized patterns of interaction
-once a self has been formed through this interactive process it
serves to modify subsequent experience
 Social Structure
 System
-Anything that can be analyzed into a set of parts so that one part
is in some way dependent on each of the remaining parts.
-The self can be conceptualized as a set of discrete
identities organized into a hierarchy of salience is to say that the
self is a system composed of interrelated parts.
-Social Interaction
-Interactions can be short (two persons say hello to another)
or long (the relationships between doctor and patient, parent
and child)
-Longer interactions develop expectations with respect to the
properties that are be observed in the interactions
 Social Structure
 System
-Group
-Networks of interaction with a high degree of closure
-It is structured by both cooperative and conflictful inter
actions
-Groups are systems of interpersonal relationships which tend
to be normatively defined, or to contain normative elements
-Groups are structures of differentiated relationships; they ar
e structures of positions and roles
-Groups is formed of people sharing some structural char
acteristic (age, class, ethnicity…etc.)
-Scheduling
-One of the social mechanisms to isolate groups from one
another or to guarantee that contact will happen
 Social Structure
 Role Conflict
-It happens when there are incompatible expectations
that attach to some position in a social relationship
-It may be intrarole or interrlole
-Resolution of role conflict: withdrawal from the
relationship that are the source of conflict; scheduling
and allocation of different relationships and activities to
different time slots
 Social Structure
 Role Constrain
-It is caused by the problem of maintaining continuity
-It can be defined as a felt difficulty in filling role obliga
tions
-Mechanism to reduce role strain: elimination of some r
ole relationships; establish interactional role bargains t
hat minimize costs
-“Role-set”