SOCI 230 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Symbolic Interactionism, Abstract And Concrete, Dialectic

• School: Texas A&M University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOCI 230
• Professor: Prechel Harland

Document Summary

Social psychologist= one who studies individual as a unit in a social group. Mead"s (cid:449)ork emerged when researches questioned theories of motivation emphasized i(cid:374) (cid:862)i(cid:374)di(cid:448)idual-ge(cid:374)erati(cid:374)g perspe(cid:272)ti(cid:448)e(cid:863) (cid:449)here its assu(cid:373)ed that (cid:271)eha(cid:448)ior (cid:449)as a(cid:374) out(cid:272)o(cid:373)e of internally motivated sources. Mead was opposed to dominant neo-kantian views of psychology that maintained that perception and understanding take place only through mediation of aprior (fixed) categories. Self is innate property of the individual: self = personality. Mead argued that the self develops through (cid:862)e(cid:373)erge(cid:374)t pro(cid:272)ess(cid:863) i(cid:374) the (cid:272)ourse of so(cid:272)ial conduct (interaction) The formation of the individual was a dialectical process. Mead presented the total self as emerging from an internal interaction between a knowing un-so(cid:272)ialized self (cid:894)(cid:449)hi(cid:272)h he ter(cid:373)ed the (cid:862)i(cid:863)(cid:895) a(cid:374)d a k(cid:374)o(cid:449)(cid:374) so(cid:272)ialized self (cid:894)the (cid:862)me(cid:863)(cid:895) These 2 selves existed only in relation to each other. 3 selves: un-socialized self (i, socialized self (me, total self: emerged from the dialectic between (cid:862)i(cid:863) and (cid:862)me(cid:863) and is exhibited as a personality.