Explain how George Herbert Mead’s work informs Blumer’s own work on symbolic interactionism. In your answer, define the terms “self,” “significant gestures,” “meaning,” and “interpretation” when explaining how these two scholars’ work intersect. Finally, contrast this perspective to the one held by behavioral psychologists.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

At the center of symbolic interactionism is Mead’s view of the self. For Mead, the self does not passively react to its environment but, rather, actively creates the conditions to which it responds. Mead presented his views as a counter to those associated with behavioral psychology. It is against this picture of a passive, nonreflexive self that Mead developed his own theoretical framework, which he labeled “social behaviorism.” For Mead, an essential aspect of the self is the mind. Mead viewed the mind as a behavioral process that entails a “conversation of significant gestures,” that is, an internal dialogue of words and actions whose meanings are shared by all those involved in a social act. Mead locates the source of meaning in social interaction. He defines meaning as a “threefold relationship” between (1) an individual’s gesture, (2) the adjustive response by another to that gesture, and (3) the completion of the social act initiated by the gesture of the first individual. Meaning develops through a social process.
Blumer also contrasts symbolic interactionism with the views of psychological behaviorism by emphasizing interpretation. Interpretation entails constructing the meaning of another’s actions as well as one’s own, for meaning is not “released” by, or inherent in, the actions themselves, as the behaviorists would have us believe.