Symbolic Interactionism Theory

Symbolic interactionism theory assumes that people respond to elements of their environments according to the subjective meanings they attach to those elements.

For example,  meanings being created and modified through social interaction involving symbolic communication with other people.

Symbolic interactionism involves several key concepts that help explain how individuals interpret and give meaning to their social world:

Major Theorists

George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) 

George H. Mead is often regarded as the foundational theorist of symbolic interactionism.

He was a philosopher and sociologist whose ideas centered on how the mind and self emerge from social interaction.

Mead argued that the self is a social product – it develops through our interactions with others and our ability to take their perspectives​.

This claim was radical for its time.

He introduced the notion that the self has two components: the “I” (the spontaneous, individual aspect of self) and the “me” (the internalized social expectations).

Through socialization, especially in childhood, we learn to view ourselves as others might (developing the “me”).

Play comes first.

Mead described how children progress from simple imitation of others, to playing at taking on single roles – for example, pretending to be a parent, playing “house.”

This finally develops into understanding multiple roles in organized games, which leads to grasping the perspective of the “generalized other,” or society at large.

This process is how we develop a fully-formed self that can fit into society.

Mead never published this himself.

Although Mead taught these ideas in his lectures, he never wrote a book. His students compiled his work into Mind, Self, and Society (1934) after his death​.

The title of that book reflects Mead’s core insight.

Mind (our ability to use symbols to think) and Self (our identity as developed through others’ eyes) arise within Society (the arena of social interaction)​.

Mead’s influence on sociology was so profound that he is considered the “true founder” of symbolic interactionism as a perspective​.

His emphasis on language, gestures, and the internal conversation we have as we imagine others’ viewpoints remains central to the theory.

Herbert Blumer (1900–1987)

Herbert Blumer was a student of Mead who built upon Mead’s ideas and gave the theory its name. In 1937, Blumer coined the term symbolic interactionism and became its leading advocate​.

He formulated three core premises that succinctly summarize the perspective.

1. Humans act toward things based on the meanings those things have for them.
2. These meanings arise out of social interaction with others.
3. Meanings can change through an interpretive process as people deal with new experiences​.

In Blumer’s own words, people act toward things “based on the meaning those things have,” and those meanings are derived from interaction and modified through interpretation. That meaning shapes what people do.

For example, people who view a neighborhood park as safe and happy will act that way, taking their children to play there and reinforcing that meaning.

If an incident occurs that changes that meaning, such as a crime in the park, the community may reinterpret it as dangerous. They begin to avoid it.

Their behavior changes along with the meaning they now attach to the place.

Blumer stressed that society consists of people engaging in social actions – it’s not something abstract above individuals, but rather created through their interactions​.

This mattered to Blumer.

He also emphasized importance of studying these processes through qualitative methods (like observation) to truly understand people’s definitions of situations.

Blumer established the framework and promoted it in his writings, especially his book Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (1969).

He is often called its founder.

Charles Cooley (1864–1929)

Charles Horton Cooley’s (1902) concept of the looking-glass self predates Mead’s synthesis and forms a third pillar of the perspective, alongside Mead and Blumer.

In Cooley’s account, the self is reflected in the reactions of other people, who act as a kind of social mirror.

We imagine how we appear to another person, imagine their judgment of that appearance, and then experience a resulting self-feeling, such as pride or shame.

This is the affective side of the theory.

Where Mead mapped the structure of the self, Cooley explained how it feels to build one out of other people’s reactions. Like Mead, Cooley treats the self as thoroughly interpersonal, assembled from imagined appraisals of others rather than sprung from some private interior.

Erving Goffman (1922–1982)

Erving Goffman extended the symbolic interactionist approach by focusing on the subtle details of social interaction and how people manage the impressions they give to others.

Goffman’s most famous contribution is the dramaturgical analysis, detailed in his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959).

He proposed that everyday life is like a theater performance: individuals are actors, society provides the stage, and the people around us are the audience​.

The audience always matters.

According to Goffman, in any social situation we engage in behavior that aims to control or guide how others see us – a concept known as impression management​.

For instance, in a job interview (our “stage”), we dress formally, speak politely, and highlight our strengths (a “script”) to give the interviewer a favorable impression.

Goffman introduced front stage and back stage behavior. Front stage refers to when we are in public or in a social role and conscious of an audience – we perform according to expected norms for that setting​.

Back stage is when we are in private, out of the public eye, and can relax the performance. In back stage regions (like being at home or with close friends), people often drop their roles, showing aspects of themselves they hide on the front stage.

The kitchen tells a different story.

Goffman illustrated this with examples like a waiter performing cheerfully in the dining room (front stage) versus complaining in the kitchen out of customers’ earshot (back stage)​.

He also described face-work (maintaining a proper image or “saving face”) and how people cooperate in interactions to help each other sustain their performances.

Goffman’s work is important because it highlights that even seemingly trivial social behaviors (eye contact, small talk, manners) are organized and meaningful.

Even small gestures count.

By analyzing these interaction rituals, Goffman showed how order and meaning are maintained in society at the micro level.

Examples

Education

Symbolic interactionism plays out clearly in classroom interactions.

For example, if a teacher consistently labels a student as “bright” and praises them, the student may internalize that meaning and participate more confidently.

Essentially, the student becomes a better student partly because of the positive label.

Conversely, a student who is made to feel “slow” or problematic might withdraw or act out, fulfilling the negative expectations.

The label sticks either way.

These scenarios demonstrate the self-fulfilling prophecy, where an initial definition of a situation (or person) evokes behavior that makes the definition come true.

Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) ran the classic experimental test of this idea in a real classroom.

• Aim: to test whether teachers’ expectations, based on false information, could produce real gains in pupils’ measured intelligence.
• Method: every child in a Californian elementary school took an IQ test, and teachers were told it identified pupils about to “bloom.” Researchers then named roughly 20% of pupils, chosen at random, as likely bloomers, and all children were re-tested at the end of the year.
• Results: the randomly labelled “bloomers” gained more IQ points than their classmates, with the effect concentrated among the youngest children.
• Conclusion: because the bloomers were chosen at random, only the teachers’ altered behavior could explain their extra gains, showing that a false definition of a child can become true.
• Evaluation: the study is hugely influential but was criticized on measurement grounds, and a later meta-analysis found the effect to be real but small and conditional.

Teacher expectations, feedback, and everyday classroom symbols (like gold stars, grades, or even the teacher’s facial expressions) can significantly influence a student’s self-concept and academic identity​.

In short, schooling is not just about curriculum.

It’s also about interaction: how students see themselves is shaped by daily social exchanges, such as peers’ and teachers’ reactions, which can boost or hinder learning.

Media and Communication

Symbolic interactionism is very useful for understanding media, especially social media, and how it shapes social reality.

On platforms like Facebook or Instagram, people interact by sharing posts, “liking” 👍 or commenting – all of which are symbols that carry meaning (a “like” symbolizes approval, for instance).

Users carefully craft their online profiles and content (a form of impression management) to present themselves in a certain way to their audience of friends/followers.

These interactions in turn affect how they see themselves.

For example, getting many likes on a photo can reinforce someone’s sense that others find them attractive or interesting, bolstering their self-image.

Few responses raise doubt instead.

In this way, online interactions contribute to the construction of social identity​.

Social media also shows how symbols evolve: a meme or emoji can quickly gain a shared meaning within a community.

Health and Illness Identity

A diagnosis functions as a symbol that reorganizes identity. To be labelled “chronically ill,” “a psychiatric patient,” or “high risk” is to acquire a status that reshapes how others treat a person and how they come to see themselves.

Rosenhan (1973) supplied the pivotal demonstration that a psychiatric label, once applied, reorganizes how everything a person does is interpreted.

• Aim: to test whether the sane can be reliably distinguished from the insane in psychiatric hospitals, and whether a diagnostic label colours the interpretation of ordinary behavior afterward.
• Method: eight healthy “pseudopatients” presented at twelve hospitals reporting a single symptom, hearing a voice say “empty,” “hollow,” “thud.” Once admitted, each stopped simulating any symptom and behaved normally, while researchers recorded how staff treated them and how long they stayed.
• Results: all but one were admitted with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and discharged after 19 days on average, with the label “in remission” – none were ever detected as sane by staff. Ordinary behavior was reinterpreted through the label, such as note-taking recorded as pathological “writing behaviour.”
• Conclusion: a psychiatric diagnosis can be a label that sits “in the environment,” in the eye of the labeller, rather than a property of the patient, and once affixed it becomes a master status that filters all later conduct.
• Evaluation: the study powerfully illustrates the “stickiness” of labels and shaped anti-labelling reform in psychiatry, though it has been challenged on methodology and ethics, so its most dramatic details are best treated with some caution.

Interestingly, other patients on the ward often spotted the pseudopatients as sane even when staff did not, underlining that the label, not the behavior, was doing the work.