Symbolic Interactionism

Symbolic Interactionism Theory is originated from the American pragmatism, George Herbert Mead, who set forward an argument that people’s selves are social products but then, these selves are purposive and creative (Bhattacahrjee, 2011). Herbert Blumer, Erving Goffman and Charles Horton Cooley are some of the notable contributors to this philosophy. There are several concepts included in this theory such as the self-concept (the ‘I’ and ‘Me’), role taking and looking-glass self. However, this essay will be focusing solely on the looking-glass self concept.

The Symbolic Interactionists, Charles Horton Cooley (1902) introduced the ‘looking-glass self’ concept. It refers to the mental self-image that result from taking the role of the other (Griffin, 2012). Cooley suggested that human beings define and develop themselves by the ways in which other people’s opinions about or reactions to them. There are three components in Cooley’s looking-glass self concept: (1) envisioning how one’s self appears to others, (2) imagining what others must think of one’s appearance, and (3) developing self-feeling, such as pride or shame, from one’s understanding of these perceived judgments by others (Bhattacahrjee, 2011).

While interacting with others, individuals monitor others’ reactions to the self and use that feedback to formulate and update their self-concept, both in terms of who they are and ‘‘how good’’ they are (Mead 1934). Individuals’ perceptions of others’ opinions about the self have a stronger impact on self-esteem than others’ actual opinions about the self (Rosenberg 1979). This is so true especially among teenagers where they are at the stage of finding their identity. These teenagers are mostly affected by opinions that come from their parents, other important adults and especially, their friends (Harter et al. 1988;
Rosenberg 1989).

In some societies, including the United States, discrimination of age mate’s self concept development is facilitated by the emergence in adolescence of peer crowds (Brown, 2008). Brown stated that crowd is reputation-based entities where it play important role in teens system in terms of one’s abilities, interests, social background (socioeconomic status, ethnicity, religion), or activity patterns. Several studies consistently shows that in teens crowd there is a social status hierarchy (Brown and Lohr 1987; Deyhle 1986; Eckert
1989; La Greca et al. 2001; Larkin 1979).

Take for instance, a movie in 2004 called the Mean Girl. It is a story about girls in high school, how their social group operate affect the other girls. Others may find the movie funny, but for some teenagers, it is relatedly close to their everyday life, or perhaps, they may live the experience shown in the movie. In this movie, Cady Heron,the main character played by Lindsay Lohan, is a new girl in the North Shore High school that come from Africa. It was her first time to go to public school since she was home schooled. In her first day to school, she does not really fit in the school. She saw that there are several social status such as the jocks, asians nerd, cool asians, unfriendly black hotties, girls who eat their feelings, girls who does not eat anything, desperate wannabes, the plastics and many more.

Later on, we will see that Cady is friend with Regina, the mean but yet the hottest and popular girl in the school. She joined Regina’s social groups called, ‘The Plastics’. Time spend with these girls teaches Cady that girls is not only fat or skinny, there could be lots of things that could goes wrong with your body. For example, in the movie, there is a scene where Regina and friends looking at the mirror and critique their images like ‘God, my hips is huge!’, ‘I’ve got man shoulders’ or ‘My pores is huge!’. This indicates that teenagers see through the mirror like ‘I am what I think you think I am’.

Since Regina took a guy that Cady likes to be her boyfriend, Cady decided to go along with Janis plan to destroy Regina. This is done by cutting Regina’s resources like her best friends, the boyfriend and her beauty. Along the way, Cady started to lose her old personality. She started to act like a mean girls herself. This further shows that self is ongoing processes. “We are not born with senses of self. Rather, self arises from the interaction with others’ (Griffin, 2012).

In conclusion, Symbolic Interactionism is the ongoing languages and gestures in anticipation of how the other will react; conversation (Griffin, 2012). Cooley’s concept of ‘looking-glass self’ describe how an individual monitors themselves from the point of views of the others. Teenagers are the best example for Cooley’s concept and impact them greatly. As mention above, the girls see differently from what they see in the mirror. Eventually, they may take the feedback of what they think the others may think they are, and develop one self.


References

Aldiabat, K.M. & Navenec, C.L. (2011). Philosophical Roots of Classical Grounded Theory: Its Foundations in Symbolic Interactionism. The qualitative Report Volume 16 Number 4.

Bhattacahrjee, D., Singh, N.K., Rai, A.K., Kumar, P., Verma, A.N & Munda S.K. (2011). Sociological Understanding of Psychiatric Illness: An Appraisal. Delhi Psychiatry Journal Vol. 14, No. 1.

Brown, B.B., Bank, H.V. & Steinberg, L. (2008). Smoke in the Looking Glass: Effects of Discordance Between Self- and Peer Rated Crowd Affiliation on Adolescent Anxiety, Depression and Self-feelings. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, v37 n10 p1163-1177.

Griffin, E. (2012). A First Look At Communication Theory 8th Edition. New York: McGraw Hill.