Symbolic Interactionism: Definition, Concepts, and Examples

What Is Symbolic Interactionism?

Sociologists define symbolic interactionism as a theory that attributes interactions and relationships with elements in the environment to their subjective understanding. The elements might include interactions with people, animals, situations, organizations, and large groups, to name a few. These subjective meanings and their understandings are bound to change depending on the nature of those interactions, be it with other people or with the element itself. Such interactions can either change the connotation of the element or bolster a preexisting understanding of it in an individual’s mind. The symbolic interactionist perspective lends an understanding as to why societies and cultures come into being and how they’re sustained over a prolonged period. 

While institutions and professional analysis might focus on understanding the objective meanings of elements in the environment that humans function in, symbolic interactionism instead focuses on the subjective understanding of them. It allows for the study of how individuals experience the world through their standpoint based on their experiences and cultural influences as stated by Michael J. Carter and Celene Fuller of California State University. Sociologists who propose the symbolic theory often quote examples of symbolic interactionism from today’s society to bolster their case and posit their understanding that society is created by social constructs & interactions. 

A simple example of symbolic interactionism would include a meeting between two men and a dog. Consider two men that are walking down a street that see an approaching dog. The dog here is the symbol, and the men are interacting with the dog. While one man might approach the dog with child-like enthusiasm and friendliness, the other might be reticent and fearful. The difference in these two reactions arises from the mens’ past experiences. While the former must have pleasant memories of dogs from the past, the latter was possibly bitten. These experiences determine their current interaction with the dog and their approach. Each of these men has a unique mental image & meaning of a dog, alongside its impact on their everyday life. Their individual and unique meanings attributed to the canine and its behavior are a classical symbolic interactionism example.

History of Symbolic Interactionism

The concept of symbolic interactionism was first explored in what’s now called its foundational text—Mind, Self, and Society written by American philosopher and sociologist George Herbert Mead. He was of the opinion that people often develop a “self-image” based on their interactions with others. This essentially attributes self-perception and the way one experiences the external world based on experiences and interactions with fellow human beings. Charles Horton Cooley, another American Sociologist, came up with the idea of a “looking-glass self.” The concept considers other people to be “looking glasses” or mirrors through which an individual can make sense of their own nature. People’s beliefs, habits, and customs are influenced by their interactions with others. While individuals are capable of disagreement, they’re also bound to accept and internalize a certain degree of external opinion. 

While the concept of symbolic theory was developed by Mead, it was another sociologist—Herbert Blumer—who came up with the term “symbolic interactionism.” Blumer also popularized the concept by laying down a framework for the theory of symbolic interactionism put forth by Mead. This would eventually come to be known as the Chicago School of sociology, which became popular across the world for its developments in the symbolic interactionist perspective. Their work would eventually lead to extensive field-based research in sociology and the establishment of a separate subject of study called ethnography. 

The Chicago School’s Approach & Blumer’s Tenets

Blumer’s Chicago school postulates that the study of individuals and society must begin with an analysis of how people interact with each other. It is this interaction that creates society at large and results in its various attributes. Society and the individual are deeply intertwined due to the constant influence both have on one another. This makes society a continuously developing entity that constantly reassesses its approaches to various elements in the external world. Symbolic interactionism as a phenomenon makes societies a dynamic structure as opposed to the commonly held belief of it being static and unchanging over prolonged periods. 

Each person has their own meaning that they attribute to people, social interactions, and other components in the world. These meanings are also regularly challenged, allowing the individual to reinterpret the meanings they’ve held and change them due to novel interactions. Each meaning is often confronted in a constant process, making the interactions different for each person. To put it succinctly, each person has a unique experience of the same object. This makes behavior largely unpredictable and idiosyncratic. Blumer also believed that the scientific approach to analyzing behavior was insufficient due to its tendency to generalize and predict patterns based on a trend. Instead, his approach was to consider the unique perspective of the individual when studying their behavior and to place primacy on their construction of the world to study their interactions with it. The element the individual interacts with is called a “symbol,” and the subsequent interaction leads to symbolic interaction when the individual deploys associated or learned meanings with respect to the symbol.

Blumer proposed 3 tenets of symbolic interaction, which could be explained through the elements of meaning, language, and thought.

Blumer put forth three important tenets to describe how symbolic interactionism operates. To explain these tenets, there are also three important and principal elements: 

1. Meaning: Associating meanings with symbols is the basis of symbolic interactionist theory. 

2. Language: Language allows effective communication of the symbol’s meaning, its examination, and its association with the symbol itself. The symbol subsequently becomes the basis for communication too, making its way into everyday interactions and determining the nature of communication.

3. Thought: Thinking impacts the meaning of symbols an individual holds to be true. Thoughts direct the interpretation of new meanings and also affect changes in existing meanings depending on the nature of the interaction with the symbol.

Blumer’s tenets of symbolic interactionism are: 

1. Human interaction and behavior are determined by the meaning given to things in the external environment. 

For example, two students might bear different attitudes toward the same teacher depending on their past experiences and the resulting meaning given to their teacher. While one of them might have had pleasant interactions with the teacher, the other might not have such experiences to look back to. The latter student is more likely to approach the teacher with hesitation. 

2. The meanings attributed to things in the external world are interpreted based on interactions with them. 

As seen in the previous example of symbolic interactionism, people can attribute different meanings to the same person or object they interact with. This meaning can also be adopted due to the opinions of friends, family, and even culture. To consider the same situation in the first tenet, negative opinions about the teacher from fellow classmates might influence the way the hesitant student approaches and interacts with their teacher. 

3. Meanings attributed to things are prone to change.

New experiences are bound to alter the meanings people attribute to people and the objects they interact with. The hesitant student might become more forthcoming and confident with the teacher following positive experiences. The former meaning associated with the teacher now transforms into one that is pleasant and approachable.

The Iowa School’s Methodology

The Iowa school of symbolic interactionism was pioneered by Manford Kuhn and Carl Couch—professors at the University of Iowa. Due to the complete detraction from empirical methods of studying social behaviors in Blume’s method, sociologists like Kuhn and Couch looked to establish a set of techniques to examine social behavior through scientific and empirical methods. In the Iowa school, social interactions were seen as both subjective and something that could be studied through an objective lens with a certain degree of projectability. The consistencies between the interactions of the individual were of prime importance and formed the basis of studying behavior. The general association between individuals and their external environment arose from social constructs, coordinated social circumstances, purpose, and actions arising due to the projection of these elements in human behavior. 

The self as conceptualized in the Iowa school was not as dynamic as Blumer’s postulations where the self constantly underwent change based on interactions. Kuhn’s study of self-interaction instead focused on the postulation that the self has a stable nucleus that provides the grounds for interaction-derived meanings concerning people, objects, and situations. An important difference between the Chicago and Iowa schools is the Twenty Statements Test designed by Manford Kuhn. The test required participants to answer the question “Who am I?” in a set of twenty sentences. It also allowed for overarching commonalities to be recorded from the responses while ensuring enough room for researchers to understand the unique and idiosyncratic tendencies of individuals coded into their responses. 

The Indiana School of Thought

Like the Iowa school, which disagreed with the lack of empirical backing in Blumer’s methods, the Indiana school’s position developed by Sheldon Stryker also looked to include scientific and empirical rigor to study the idea of symbolic interactionism. Stryker turned his focus to George Herbert Mead’s concept of roles and role-taking in society. Communities and societies present various situations to individuals where they’re led to take on a role. The duties and the expectations of these roles are subsequently internalized by the individual following several interactions in various social settings.

A prime example of symbolic interactionism, when approached from the Indiana school’s perspective, would be gender norms. Each gender is expected to behave in a certain way by larger society. This process of internalizing the responsibilities and expectations of the role is fulfilled by continuing socialization. The roles that people assign to themselves in various situations become the marker of their behavior in life. The same internalized role expectations guide these individuals’ behaviors, beliefs, and expressions in society. This is also impacted and regulated by the opinions of others on the individual’s behavior and the expectations linked to their role. Invariably, this process results in the establishment of a concrete identity for the individual. The identities, then, play out in society and further the transmission of roles and their associated expectations. Bringing together both the internalized identity of the individual and the social responsibilities fulfilled by them, the Indiana School bridges an important gap in the theory of symbolic interactionism left rather unaddressed by its two rivals.

Symbolic Interactionism Examples

Examples of symbolic interactionism are found in everyday life, allowing us to take a closer look at our own behaviors and why we believe in certain opinions over others. These examples allow us to better understand the theory itself and what implications it holds for understanding cultures and societies. Here are some essential examples that allow us to study the theory in depth: 

1. Identity

Symbolic interaction theory is very useful in understanding how individuals develop a notion of identity and how that identity is constructed. The Indiana school’s approach with respect to roles and role expectations is especially important when decoding why an individual develops a certain identity and the roles associated with it. Identity can also be studied by analyzing how individuals react when someone else in society breaks an established social norm and how their internalized meanings come into play in such situations. Along with symbolic interactionist theory, identity theory, too, allows us to understand how an individual’s identity is expressed in society and the implications it entails. This also relates to the priority of identities in people’s lives, as one of them might be more definitive than the other. For example, a doctor might choose his identity as a medical professional despite indulging in the role of a close family member in a gathering during an emergency.  

2. Crime

Understanding criminal tendencies is an important aspect of deploying symbolic interactionism for maintaining law & order. Along with the framework provided by it, labeling theory is also quintessential in denoting the root cause of deviance. The latter proposes that crime is completely a result of social constructs and situations, rather than a single aspect in an individual’s life such as a condition or belief. Deviancy is often developed due to continued interaction with others that are prone to break laws and overstep bounds. Social context and circumstances determine the tendency for crime above any other aspect of an individual’s life. 

3. Nationalism & National Symbols

Some of the most visible symbolic interactionism examples in today’s society are nationalism and its association with national symbols. While a citizen of country A might feel a deep sense of pride and attachment when coming across their country’s flag, a citizen from country B might be indifferent to country A’s flag. Similarly, if country C seemingly has hostile relations with country A, a citizen from country C might feel abhorrence and anger when looking at the same flag. In this case, a single flag seems to trigger a whole range of emotions in different sets of people exposed to varied experiences, values, and societal norms. 

4. Political Ideologies

Individuals’ identification with political ideologies depends on their identification with the roles they ascribe to themselves in society. As opposed to the usual class struggle theories put forth by older theorists, the symbolic interactionist perspective observes that there’s a deep connection between the way an individual sees themselves in society and their political beliefs. The understanding of one’s position and role in the larger world determines identity. Though everyone in society has political duties, their approach to politics is not ideological and barely describes one’s opinions on core issues. 

5. Gender

Many symbolic interactionists hold that gender is a construct arising from the repeated fulfillment of expectations categorized as one or the other. While biological sex is something that exists at birth, the actions of an individual put them in their respective categories of gender. Often, gender is determined by whether or not an individual elicits certain traits and completes specific tasks assigned to the roles associated with their gender. Failure to do so or indulging in something that’s often like the other gender often leads to the individual being characterized as the other. Gender reassignment surgeries are performed to help transitioners ease into their new identity through others’ perception of them as belonging to the gender of their choice.

Criticism

The symbolic interactionist approach has also received a fair deal of criticism due to its sidelining of larger factors that influence behavior in the modern world. Symbolic interactionism often does not account for the institutional effects on individuals and their outcomes. Symbolic interactionism also often trains its eyes on how individuals perceive their world and the meanings they determine for themselves from their experiences in society. Examples such as the effect of mass media and corporations on fashion or even food choices stand out because the symbolic interactionist approach seems deficient in understanding them. Similarly, the portrayal of certain cultures or groups in media might lead to stereotyping and racism—another important facet of society and individuals that symbolic theory does not answer. 

Though the theories put forth by symbolic interactionists might not be able to address all the issues faced by today’s world, they have been integral to understanding how societies and individuals function. By using symbolic interactionism’s examples, we can further decode how identities are taken on and how societies perpetuate and evolve over time. 

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