George H. Mead And Cooley's Theory Of Symbolic Interactionism

I. Summarya
Symbolic interactionism is one of the major theoretical perspectives in sociology. This perspective has a long intellectual history, beginning with the German sociologist and economist, Max Weber and the American philosophers, George H. Mead and Charles Horton Cooley, all of which emphasized the subjective meaning of human behavior, the social process, and pragmatism. According to this theory, people inhabit a world that is in large part socially constructed. In particular, the meaning of objects, events, and behaviors comes from the interpretation people give them, and interpretations vary from one group to another. Cooley, in his theory of a "looking glass self," argued that the way we think about ourselves is particularly apt
It proposes a social theory of the self, or a looking glass self. In looking glass self, we imagine how we must appear to others. We imagine the judgment of that appearance and we develop our self through the judgments of others Mead described self as "taking the role of the other," the premise for which the self is actualized. Through interaction with others, we begin to develop an identity about who we are, as well as empathy for others. Because they see meaning as the fundamental component of the interaction of human and society, studying human and social interaction requires an understanding of that
Role-taking is a key mechanism of interaction, for it permits us to take the other's perspective, to see what our actions might mean to the other actors with whom we interact. At other times, interactionists emphasize the improvisational quality of roles, with human social behavior seen as poorly scripted and with humans as role-making improvisers. Role-making, too, is a key mechanism of interaction, for all situations and roles are inherently ambiguous, thus requiring us to create those situations and roles to some extent before we can