Symbolic interactionism is a micro-level sociological theory that explains how individuals construct social reality through shared meanings and interpretations.
Unlike macro-theories like Functionalism or Marxism, which focus on large-scale social structures (such as the family, or religion), symbolic interactionism delves into the intricacies of face-to-face interactions and the subjective meanings individuals attach to symbols.
Symbols, whether verbal or non-verbal, are not inherently meaningful; their significance is derived from social interaction.
Rather than viewing individuals as passive products of society, this perspective sees people as active participants who shape their social world through everyday interaction.
Key Takeaways
- Symbolic interactionism is a social theoretical framework associated with George Herbert Mead and Herbert Blumer.
- Society is the product of shared symbols, such as language. The social world is constructed by the meanings that individuals attach to events and social interactions, and these symbols are transmitted across the generations through language.
- A central concept of symbolic interactionists is the Self, which allows us to calculate the effects of our actions.
- Symbolic interactionism theory has been criticized because it ignores the emotional side of the Self as a basis for social interaction.
Key Features
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:
Symbols and Meaning:
A symbol is anything that carries a specific meaning recognized by people who share a culture.
Symbols can be words, body language, objects (like a flag or a wedding ring), etc. Humans act toward things based on the meanings those things have for them.
Importantly, these meanings are not inherent in objects or actions; they arise from social interaction.
For example, the word “dog” or a thumbs-up gesture only have meaning because we as a society agree on what they signify.
Symbols are crucial in communication – they allow people to share understanding.
When we interact, we exchange symbols (through language or gestures), and we interpret each other’s actions based on the shared meanings of those symbols.
This active meaning-making is fundamental to how we navigate social life.
Social Interaction
Social interaction is the process by which people act and react in relation to others. Symbolic interactionism sees society as the product of these everyday interactions.
Through interaction, individuals continuously create, negotiate, and modify meanings. Communication – the exchange of symbols in interaction – is how people make sense of their world.
Because individuals are constantly adjusting their behavior based on others’ actions (and vice versa), social interaction is dynamic and formative.
Even simple greetings or conversations involve interpreting symbols (e.g. tone of voice, words used) and responding based on those interpretations.
In short, reality is socially constructed through interaction – our perceptions of “what’s going on” in any situation depend on the shared definitions we develop with others.
The Self (Looking-Glass Self and Role-Taking)
Symbolic interactionism has a special focus on how individuals develop a sense of self through social experience.
Charles Horton Cooley’s concept of the looking-glass self describes how one’s self-image arises from interpersonal interactions and the perceptions of others.
In simple terms, other people function as a “mirror” for us – we imagine how we appear to others, interpret how they judge us, and then adjust our self-concept accordingly
For example, if a student perceives that their classmates see them as a leader, the student may come to see themselves that way and act more confidently in group projects.
George Herbert Mead further explained self-development through role-taking.
He noted that developing a self requires learning to take the role of the other – that is, to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes and see ourselves from their perspective
Children do this in play (by pretending to be parents, doctors, superheroes, etc.), which helps them learn societal expectations.
Over time, they internalize the perspectives of many others (what Mead called the “generalized other”), allowing them to guide their behavior according to social norms.
Thus, the self emerges from social interaction: we become who we are by imagining how others view us and by adopting roles in relation to others.
Dramaturgy
Dramaturgy is a concept introduced by Erving Goffman (a symbolic interactionist sociologist) that uses a theater metaphor to analyze social interaction.
Goffman suggested that in daily life, people are like actors on a stage, each performing roles for an audience.
In any given situation, we present ourselves in certain ways to create specific impressions in the minds of others – a process Goffman called impression management.
He distinguished between front stage behavior – how we act in public or formal settings, where we know we are being observed – and back stage behavior – how we act in private, when we think no audience is present,
For instance, in a restaurant a waiter’s front stage is the dining area where they politely perform the role of “server” for customers, while the back stage is the kitchen where they might relax, drop the polite facade, and vent to coworkers.
Dramaturgy highlights that in social interaction, as in theater, we use “props” and costumes (e.g. wearing professional attire for a job interview), follow scripts (social norms for how to behave in a given role), and work to manage how others perceive us.
By studying these performances, we gain insight into the unspoken “rules” of social life and how people maintain social order by keeping their front stage and back stage separate.
Social Construction of Reality
Symbolic interactionism underpins the idea of the social construction of reality – that what we consider “reality” is jointly constructed by members of a society.
In other words, things have meaning and reality only because we define them as such through interaction.
Social constructs (like money, success, or even concepts of race and gender) are not natural facts; they are created and sustained by collective agreement.
These constructs become stable when they are widely accepted and taken for granted.
For example, there is no absolute definition of deviance or “right” and “wrong” behavior – societies draw these lines themselves. What one culture considers deviant, another may see as normal, illustrating that norms and values are socially constructed.
A classic illustration is the value of paper money: intrinsically, a paper bill is just a piece of printed paper, but through common social agreement it represents worth and can be exchanged for goods.
In sum, reality is not fixed; people create, negotiate, and change social reality through ongoing interaction and shared understandings.
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.
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”).
Mead described how children progress from simple imitation of others, to playing at taking on single roles (e.g. pretending to be a parent – playing “house”), and finally to 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.
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:
- Humans act toward things based on the meanings those things have for them.
- These meanings arise out of social interaction with others.
- Meanings can change through an interpretive process as people deal with new experiences.
In Blumer’s own words, people act in certain ways toward things “based on the meaning those things already have,” and those meanings are derived from interaction and modified through interpretation
For example, if people view a neighborhood park as a safe, happy place (meaning), they will act in ways that reflect and reinforce that (e.g. taking their children to play there).
If an incident occurs that changes that meaning (such as a crime in the park), the community may reinterpret the park as dangerous and begin to avoid it, thus altering their behavior.
Blumer stressed that society consists of people engaging in social actions – it’s not something abstract above individuals, but rather created through their interactions.
He also emphasized importance of studying these processes through qualitative methods (like observation) to truly understand people’s definitions of situations.
Because Blumer established the framework and promoted it in his writings (especially his book Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method, 1969), he is often known as the founder of the symbolic interactionist school in sociology.
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.
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 the idea of front stage vs. 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.
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.
By analyzing these interaction rituals, Goffman showed how order and meaning are maintained in society at the micro level.
Examples
Education
Classroom interactions between teachers and students illustrate symbolic interactionism in action.
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 becoming 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.
These scenarios demonstrate the self-fulfilling prophecy, where an initial definition of a situation (or person) evokes behavior that makes the definition come true.
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 but also about interaction: how students see themselves is shaped by daily social exchanges (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, thus bolstering their self-image; few responses might lead them to question how they are viewed.
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.
Crime
Symbolic Interactionism, particularly labeling theory, argues that deviance isn’t inherent in an act itself. Rather, it’s the social reaction to that act that defines it as deviant.
The definition of deviance is relative and depends on the culture, time period, and situation.
Howard Becker’s labeling theory (1963) proposes that deviance is not inherent in any act, belief, or condition; instead, it is determined by the social context.
The act of vandalism itself isn’t inherently deviant. It’s the social reaction and the application of the “delinquent” label that creates the deviance.
Edwin Sutherland’s differential association theory (Sutherland 1939; Sutherland et al. 1992) asserts that we learn to be deviant through our interactions with others who break the rules.
Politics and Identity
In a classic symbolic interactionist study, Brooks (1969) reveals how different self-views correlate with right or left-wing political beliefs. Brooks describes these political beliefs as political roles.
Traditionally, sociologists viewed social beliefs and ideology as a result of economic class and social conditions, but Brooks noted that empirical research up to the 1960s considered political beliefs to be a manifestation of personality.
To symbolic interactionists such as Brooks, political beliefs can be seen as a manifestation of the norms and roles incorporated into how the individual sees themselves and the world around them, which develops out of their interactions with others, wherein they construct meanings.
A political ideology, according to Brooks, is a set of political norms incorporated into the individual’s view of themselves.
Although people may have political roles, these are not necessarily political ideologies — for example, for some in the United States who are apathetic about politics, political beliefs play at most a peripheral role in comparison to the others that they take on, while for others — say activists or diplomats — it plays the central role in their lives.
Brooks hypothesized that those with right-wing political views viewed their sense of self as originating within institutions.
To these people, identity centers around roles within conventional institutions such as family, church, and profession, and other roles are peripheral to the ones they hold in these institutions.
Left-wingers, conversely, identify themselves as acting against or toward traditional institutions. All in all, according to Brook, those with left-wing ideologies identify themselves through a broader range of central statuses and roles than those belonging to the right-wing (Brooks, 1969).
Brooks interviewed 254 individuals who, for the most part, voted regularly, contributed money to political causes, attended political meetings, read the news, and defined themselves as having a strong interest in politics.
He then used a scale to observe and measure how the participants saw themselves in their political roles (asking questions about, for example, contentious political policy).
He then used Kuhn’s Twenty Statements Test to measure how individuals identified conventionally within institutions and idiosyncratically.
All in all, Brooks found that confirming his hypothesis, most left-wing ideologies included fewer descriptions of traditional institutions in their self-definition than average, and most right-wing ideologies included more descriptions of institutions in their self-definition than average.
Not only did this provide evidence for how people formed identities around politics, but Brook’s study provided a precedent for quantifying and testing hypotheses around symbolic interaction (1969).
For this reason, The Self and Political Role is often considered to be a classic study in the Iowa school of Symbolic Interactionism (Carter and Fuller, 2015).
Gender
According to West and Zimmerman’s (1987) Doing Gender, the concepts of masculinity and femininity are developed from repeated, patterned interaction and socialization.
Gender, rather than an internal state of being, is a result of interaction, according to symbolic interactionists (Carter and Fuller, 2015).
In order to advance the argument that gender is a “routine, methodical, and reoccurring accomplishment,” West and Zimmerman (1987) take a critical examination of sociological definitions of gender.
In particular, they “contend that the notion of gender as a role obscures the work that is involved in producing gender in everyday activities.” Children are born with a certain sex and are put into a sex category.
Gender is then determined by whether or not someone performs the acts associated with a particular gender. Gender is something that is done rather than an inherent quality of a person.
West and Zimmerman analyze Garfinkel’s (1967) study of Agnes, a transgender woman.
Agnes was born with male genitalia and had reconstructive surgery. When she transitioned, West and Zimmerman argued she had to pass an “if-can” test.
If she could be seen by people as a woman, then she would be categorized as a woman. In order to be perceived as a woman, Agnes faced the ongoing task of producing configurations of behavior that would be seen by others as belonging to a woman.
Agnes constructed her meaning of gender (and consequently her self-identity and self-awareness of gender) by projecting typically feminine behavior and thus being treated as if she were a woman (West and Zimmerman, 1987).
Geography
Although few geographers would call themselves symbolic interactionists, geographers are concerned with how people form meanings around a certain place.
They are interested in mundane social interactions and how these daily interactions can lead people to form meanings around social space and identity.
This can extend to both the relationships between people and those between people and non-human entities, such as nature, maps, and buildings.
Early geographers suggested that how people imagined the world was important to their understanding of social and cultural worlds (Casino and Thien, 2020).
In the 1990s, geography shifted to the micro-level, focusing — in a similar vein to Symbolic Interactionism — on interviews and observation.
Geographers who are “post-positivist” — relying primarily on qualitative methods of gathering data — consider the relationships that people have with the places they encounter (for example, whether or not they are local to that place).
These relationships, Casino and Thien (2020) argue, can happen both between people and other people in a place and between people and objects in their environment.
The Self and Identity Formation
A large number of social psychologists have applied the symbolic interactionist framework to study the formation of self and identity.
The three largest theories to come out of these applications of Symbolic Interactionism are role theory, Affect Control Theory, and identity theory. Role theory deals with the process of creating and modifying how one defines oneself and one’s roles (Turner, 1962).
Meanwhile, Affect Control Theory attempts to predict what individuals do when others violate social expectations. According to Affect Control Theory, individuals construct events to confirm the meanings they have created for themselves and others.
And lastly, identity theory aims to understand how one’s identities motivate behavior and emotions in social situations.
For example, Stryker et al. studied how behavior is related to how important certain identities someone has are in relation to other identities (Carter and Fuller, 2015).
For example, someone who identifies heavily with a religious identity is more likely to go to religious services than someone who does not (Stryker and Serpe, 1982).
Architecture
Mead (1934) has long posited that people can form identities from the interactions between non-human objects and themselves as much as from their interactions with other humans.
One such example of sociologists studying how the interactions between non-humans and humans form identity applies to architecture.
Smith and Bugni (2011) examined architectural sociology, which is the study of how socio-cultural phenomena influence and are influenced by the designed physical environment.
This designed physical environment can be as far-ranging as buildings, such as houses, churches, and prisons; bounded spaces, such as streets, plazas, and offices; objects, such as monuments, shrines, and furniture; and many elements of architectural design (such as shapes, size, location, lighting, color, texture, and materials).
Smith and Bugni proposed that symbolic interaction theory is a useful lens to understand architecture for three reasons.
First of all, designed physical environments can influence people’s perception of self, and people can express and influence themselves through designed physical environments.
Secondly, designed physical environments contain and communicate a society’s shared symbols and meanings (Lawrence and Low, 1990).
Thirdly, the designed physical environment is not merely a backdrop for human behavior but an agent to shape thoughts and actions through self-reflection (Smith and Bugni, 2011).
Rather than forcing behavior, architecture suggests possibilities, channels communication, and provides impressions of acceptable activities, networks, norms, and values to individuals (Ankerl, 1981).
People’s interactions with architectural forms can influence, rather than determine, thoughts and actions.
Criticisms & Limitations
1. Neglect of Macro-Level Structures
Criticism:
- A frequent criticism is that symbolic interactionism focuses too narrowly on small-scale (micro) interactions and ignores larger (marco) social forces.
- Because it zooms in on face-to-face meaning-making, the theory may fail to explain how big institutions, social class, power, and historical context influence behavior.
- For example, merely examining individual interactions around an act like smoking might overlook the impact of the tobacco industry’s advertising or government regulations (macro-level factors) that shape those interaction.
- By focusing on individual interpretations and interactions, it can downplay the constraints imposed by these structural inequalities.
- For example, while it can explain how individuals interpret their social roles, it may fail to address how those roles are shaped by broader social forces.
Implication:
This can lead to an incomplete understanding of social phenomena, as it may fail to account for the systemic factors that influence individual behavior.
The main limitation is that symbolic interactionism looks at society “from the ground up” and may overlook the “top-down” influence of culture, social structure, and power on those ground-level interactions.
2. Overemphasis on Subjectivity
Criticism:
- Its emphasis on subjective interpretations can sometimes lead to a neglect of objective realities.
- While it’s important to understand how individuals perceive their world, it’s also crucial to acknowledge that some social realities exist independently of individual interpretations.
- There is a danger of overlooking material constraints, and real world limits.
Implication:
This can make it difficult to develop generalizable theories and to address social problems that require structural solutions.
3. Difficulty in Quantifying Concepts
Criticism:
- Early interactionist research often relied on observational or anecdotal data, which critics felt was less reliable.
- Many of the concepts in symbolic interactionism, such as “meaning” and “interpretation,” are difficult to quantify and measure.
Implication:
This can limit the theory’s ability to provide precise and verifiable explanations of social phenomena.
This can make it challenging to conduct empirical research and to test hypotheses.
4. Lack of Predictive Power:
Criticism:
- Because it focuses on the fluidity and variability of social interactions, Symbolic Interactionism can struggle to make precise predictions about future behavior.
- The emphasis on individual agency and interpretation makes it difficult to identify stable patterns and causal relationships.
Implication:
This can limit its usefulness for policy-making and other applications that require accurate predictions.
5. Emotional Dimension Neglected:
Criticism:
- Some critics argue that symbolic interactionism underplays the role of emotions in social interaction.
- While it emphasizes cognitive processes, it sometimes gives less attention to the impact of feelings on human behavior.
Implication:
This provides an incomplete view of human interaction, as emotions are a large part of social interactions.
Reading List
Ankerl, G. (1981). Experimental Sociology of Architecture: A Guide to Theory. Research and Literature, New Babylon: Studies in the Social Sciences, 36.
Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Blumer, H. (1986). Symbolic interactionism: Perspective and method: Univ of California Press.
Brooks, R. S. (1969). The self and political role: A symbolic interactionist approach to political ideology. The Sociological Quarterly, 10(1), 22-31.
Carter, M. J., & Fuller, C. (2015). Symbolic interactionism. Sociopedia. isa, 1(1), 1-17.
Collins, R. (1994). The microinteractionist tradition. Four sociological traditions, 242-290.
Cooley, C. H. (1902). Looking-glass self. The production of reality: Essays and readings on social interaction, 6, 126-128.
Denzin, NK (1992) Symbolic Interactionism and Cultural Studies: The Politics of Interpretation. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Del Casino, V. J., & Thien, D. (2009). Symbolic interactionism. In International encyclopedia of human geography (pp. 132-137): Elsevier Inc.
Denzin, N. K. (2008). Symbolic interactionism and cultural studies: The politics of interpretation: John Wiley & Sons.
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs.
Goffman, E. (1959). “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life”. p. 17-25. From The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: The Overlook Press, 1959)
Kuhn, M. H. (1964). Major trends in symbolic interaction theory in the past twenty-five years. The Sociological Quarterly, 5(1), 61-84.
Lawrence, D. L., & Low, S. M. (1990). The built environment and spatial form. Annual review of anthropology, 19(1), 453-505.
Mead GH. (1934). Mind, Self, and Society. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press
Meltzer, B. N., & Petras, J. W. (1970). The Chicago and Iowa schools of symbolic interactionism. Human nature and collective behavior, 3-17.
Smith, R. W., & Bugni, V. (2006). Symbolic Interaction Theory and Architecture. Symbolic Interaction, 29(2), 123-155.
Stryker, S. (1980). Symbolic interactionism: A social structural version: Benjamin-Cummings Publishing Company.
Stryker, S., & Serpe, R. T. (1982). Commitment, identity salience, and role behavior: Theory and research example. In Personality, roles, and social behavior (pp. 199-218): Springer.
Turner, R. H. (1962). Role taking: Process versus conformity. Life as theater: A dramaturgical sourcebook, 85-98.
West, C., & Zimmerman, D. H. (1987). Doing gender. Gender & society, 1(2), 125-151.
Further Information
