George Herbert Mead
(1863-1931)
“The individual experiences himself as such not directly, but only from
the particular standpoints of other individual members of the same
social group, or from the generalized standpoint of the social group
as a whole to which he belongs…and he becomes an object to himself
only by taking the attitudes of other individuals toward himself.”
(1934/1962: 138)
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
What’s the link between thinking & behavior?

When you are thinking, what are you doing?

What role does an individual’s thinking play
in the evolution of society?
◦ society: “generalized social attitudes” that
continually emerge through coordinated
interaction between individuals and groups”
GHM’s key questions
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
Most important ‘Chicago’ sociologist

Mind, Self & Society, his only book, a
compilation of his lectures, was published
by his former students after his death

Mead laid foundations for what came to be
known as Symbolic Interactionism, the
leading school of micro-sociology
◦ even more influential in field of social psychology
George Herbert Mead (1863-1931)
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
Mead’s thought arises out of synthesis of:
◦ Pragmatism
◦ Evolutionism
◦ Behaviorism
Intellectual influences
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
American philosophical tradition developed by Charles
Pierce, William James, and John Dewey

Unlike other, European philosophical traditions, pragmatism
not oriented toward uncovering general “Truths”

American Pragmatism emphasizes “practical instrumental
relationship of the human actor to the environment”

Mead sought to describe historical development of the
individual and the social world grounded in everyday life

Goal: to understand emergence of the individual social
world out of the interaction b/w individual and environment
◦ not an abstract ideal movement occurring through history
Pragmatism
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
Meaning and substance of social
development comes out of the
confrontation with problems we face in
the real world
◦ Meaning evolves out of immediate context
Pragmatism (cont’d)
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
Human mind, self, morals and society evolve in
a gradual process, from lowest forms of animal
to most complex forms of human society
◦ animals and humans engage in processes of
adjustment and adaptation to their environments
◦ language emerges gradually out of simpler forms
of communication that involve gestures

Morals and Mind emerge out of concrete
human action and experience
Evolutionism
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
Mead refines behaviorist psychology of the time by
overcoming behavioristic refusal to study mind
◦ Behaviorists considered mind a “black box,” impenetrable

Psychological behaviorism employs reflex arc idea

American Pragmatism, esp GHM, emphasizes
observation of what people do in concrete settings
and focuses on immediate character of mind and
cognitive processes in developing and responding
 e.g., if a hot stove is a stimulus, we pull away reflexively
before our brain becomes involved
◦ GHM makes a place for Mind in this reflex arc
 Mind becomes a central category of analysis
Social behaviorism
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
Whereas behaviorism conceives of mechanistic
stimulus-responses, GHM’s social behaviorism
interposes the interpretation of meaning by
focusing on gesture

gesture: part of an action that elicits a response
◦ difference b/w gesture and stimulus is the meaning
attributed to it by the person gesturing and the person
responding
Social behaviorism (cont’d)
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“Mind,” Mind, Self, and Society (1934)
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
Mind

Symbols and Language

Meaning
Key themes
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
Mind is a process or behavior that allows
for the conscious control of one’s actions
◦ Mind involves an internal conversation of
gestures that makes possible the imagined
testing of alternative lines of conduct
◦ The crux of intelligent behavior lies between
stimulus and response: controlling one’s
present action with reference to ideas about
possible future consequences
Mind
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
Gesture: a part of an action that elicits response

To have significance, gesture must call out in a
2nd organism a response functionally identical to
the response that the 1st organism anticipates
◦ for a gesture to be significant it must “mean” the same
thing to both organisms
 “meaning” entails the capacity to consciously anticipate
how other organisms will respond to symbols or gestures

When responses of others become internalized
and part of an accessible repertoire, we have
Language
Symbols and Language
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
Significant symbol: a gesture which has
the same meaning for the individual
making it and for the individual
responding to it
◦ assumes that anticipatory experiences are
fundamental to the development of language
◦ We can place ourselves in the positions of
others—to anticipate their responses—with
regard to our linguistic gestures
Significant symbol
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
communication with a common language is an
evolutionary step only humans have attained

conversation of gestures  conversation w/
significant symbols

“Thinking becomes preparatory to action, the
very process of thinking is of course simply an
inner conversation of gestures which in its
completion implies expression of that which
one thinks to an audience”
Symbols and Language
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
Meaning is a threefold relationship b/w:
1. an individual’s gesture
2. another’s response to the gesture
3. completion of the social act

“Mind emerges as we point out to others
and to ourselves the meaning of things”
Meaning
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
Vocal gestures turn “experience” back on
itself through the loop of speaking and
hearing at relatively the same instant

Being part of a complex network of
language users develops reflexivity of mind

Reflexivity of mind develops not only
through use of vocal gestures, but in the
taking of roles
Language, reflexivity, and mind
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“Self,” Mind, Self, and Society (1934)
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
The self exists as self-consciousness, i.e., the
capacity to be both subject and object, an ‘I’
& ‘Me’
◦ The self is a reflexive entity

The individual is aware of self as object “not
directly, but indirectly, from the particular
standpoints of others”

The self is essentially a social structure, and
it arises in social experience
The Self and the Organism
“Me” is the self that arises in relationship
to a specific generalized
 “Me” is a cognitive object, which is only
known retrospectively
 When we act in habitual ways we are not
typically self-conscious

◦ We act at a non-reflective level
The “I” and the “Me”
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

Play and games are like stages in child’s development
In Play, child takes role of Significant Others (Mom & Dad)

Games involve several children in an organized way
according to common rules
◦ children do not organize their combined relations to form any
coherent sense of self
◦ child is required to coordinate her conduct w others and needs to
know how their conduct is coordinated in order to be a reliable
participant
◦ in process of learning how to play games, child begins to relate to
Generalized Other

By relating to players in roles, as abstract participants (not
“Mom”), players become interchangeable
 Child comes to form Coherent Self
Play and Games
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
As we grow older, we realize the rules are created
socially, interactively, by the Generalized Other

The GO is the repository of social standards: rules,
norms, values–but also language, signs & symbols

The GO is also Society, but it’s not external to us
because we are a component part of it

Thus we both internalize social standards, and we can
also influence social standards

The self is not completely determined from outside, but
it also has element of freedom and initiative
The Generalized Other

The organized community or social group
which gives the individual unity of self may
be called the Generalized Other

The attitude of the generalized other is the
attitude of the whole community, e.g.,
◦ in a social group such as a ball team, the team is
the generalized other in so far as it enters—as an
organized process or social activity—into the
experience of any one of the individual members of
it (MSS, 154)
The Generalized Other (II)
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
These communities can take different forms, they
should be thought of as systems, e.g.,
◦ a family can be thought of systemically and can therefore
give rise to a corresponding Generalized Other and Self

Generalized Others can also be found in
◦ “concrete social classes or subgroups, such as political
parties, clubs, corporations, which are all actually
functional social units, in terms of which their individual
members are directly related to one another. The others
are abstract social classes or subgroups, such as the class
of debtors and the class of creditors, in terms of which
their individual members are related to one another only
more or less indirectly” (MSS, 157).
Generalized Others
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
In Principles of Psychology, William James discusses
various types of empirical selves, namely, the material,
the social, and the spiritual

In addressing the social self, James notes how it is
possible to have multiple selves
◦ “Properly speaking, a man has as many social selves as there
are individuals who recognize him and carry an image of him in
their mind. To wound any one of these his images is to wound
him. But as the individuals who carry the images fall naturally
into classes, we may practically say that he has as many
different social selves as there are distinct groups of persons
about whose opinion he cares. He generally shows a different
side of himself to each of these different groups” (James 1890,
294).
Multiple selves?
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