Symbolic Interactionism

History

The interactionist tradition emerged in the United States and is considered a key contribution of North American sociologists. Its roots can be traced to late 19th- and early 20th-century philosophers and social scientists from the United States such as C.S. Peirce, John Dewey, Charles Horton Cooley, and George Herbert Mead. Symbolic interactionism came out of a desire of early social scientists who wanted an alternative to the physical science model. More specifically, the philosophical school of American pragmatism profoundly influenced the development of symbolic interaction, and American pragmatists are credited with rejecting the idea that reality is ready-made and simply waiting for someone to discover it. Rather, it is constantly “in the making.” The individual and society are interdependent and inseparable and both are formed through shared meanings.

At its core, symbolic interactionists view people’s sense of self as a social product that is purposive and creative. This view differed from other popular approaches to understanding behavior. One who takes a symbolic interactionist view suggests that people do not simply respond to their environment (i.e., stimulus-response). Thus, whereas human beings can engage in stimulus-response behavior, their cognitions provide them the capability of behaving differently. This shift from “ready-made” toward “in the making” also was very important because it caused people to shift belief of truth from the academic to everyday life—things that all people, not just scholars, encounter and use daily.

Other ideas that shaped symbolic interactionism come from William James, who argued that repeated patterns of behavior must be understood as reflecting socially learned habits. This contrasted the popular notion at the time that human behaviors are rooted in basic instinct. The key support in his argument was the human capacity for memory. James followed Cartesian (Rene Descartes) dualism, believing that bodily states follow from perception. He believed that the self was identical with the brain.

Pragmatists argued that the self is a social product—not divinely created or biologically determined. In addition, they set the foundation for the idea that individuals have multiple selves. These multiple selves are based on the roles (e.g., student, sibling, employee) they enact through their interactions with others. It is through those interactions that people understand that different behaviors are expected of them based on the particular role they are enacting at any given time. Over time, theorists then began to suggest that identity is context-dependent and also that identity changes over time.

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