Symbolic Interactionism Theory

the sociological theory of symbolic interactionism is incorporated in society basically through human interaction and communication it's the concept that symbols are a way for individuals to attach meaning to ideas and situations in their own life and ultimately these interpreted symbols and attached meanings influence the person's behavior how they communicate with others around them and how they interact with others these symbols can be seen in relationships in your life and also just all throughout society on a broader scale so in relationships for example a brother a brother and sister relationship symbolizes something with a deeper meaning whether it's how you you associate them with love like rough love maybe or tough love because of the roughhousing and you use this symbol to ultimately establish your meaning of love for another example in society many religions you can see the different symbols and religions across the scale for example in Christianity the cross is a major symbol of the Christian faith it's the basis of the Christian faith and it represents salvation another common symbol amongst society is that of marriage and marriage is is represent representative of love between two individuals so all these symbols are very much so embedded into society and are a vital and key part of interpersonal communication George Herbert Mead was the ultimate pioneer who developed this this constantly changing concept there were many individuals involved besides him like Charles Cooley some of their other colleagues however George Herbert me did a lot with the overall concept in general he was a social psychologist and philosopher he really advocated behaviorism which was a key part of psychology and sociology in his timeframe also it was stated in an article by Foose on Alvar the article is titled impact of symbolic interactionism on research studies about communication science and in the article it stated that George Herbert Mead believe that humans humans actions should be studied and that communication was the most important factor in the social social development of humans but later in the 20th century one of Herbert metes students Herbert Blumer actually coined the term symbolic interactionism Herbert Mead identified the idea and the concept and Herbert Blumer kind of took this idea and branched off and connected it to sociology and social psychology and he gave it the term symbolic interactionism so the symbols that are held in society as I spoke about previously they're constantly changing and they're constantly being altered across the population amongst individuals therefore it's really difficult to acquire definite stable quantitative data that is data dealing with numbers and statistics so instead most of the research in this theory is done with qualitative research which is focusing on the details and the standards more of the the written concepts as opposed to the numbers considering this concept and the many symbols that I've mentioned thus far it's very easy to see that these are used all throughout society and in everyday life many symbols are used whether it's in your workplace or in the school setting or even in person personal relationships which I'm going to speak about in the next slide but in your workplace for example when you approach your boss you typically approach them with a sense of respect and professionalism this is because you associate your boss with a higher authority you see them as a higher authority whether it's with a higher education or a higher pay rate so this symbol of balls represents a deeper meaning and that meaning and that interpreted symbol affects how you approach them how you behave and interact with them same goes with children in a school setting or on a sports team teamwork is one of those symbols that represents something deeper it represents group collaboration but group collaboration that ultimately leads to success most of the time many of these symbols come about and are developed basically through mass media mass media has a huge part in developing some of these symbols that influence individuals one movie I'm going to talk about many of you may know is Legally Blonde if you have watched it you know exactly what I'm talking about the main character Elwood's is seen as she's rich she's blonde she's got everything handed to her and she is seen as absent-minded at times but the symbol this she's a symbolic character who influences others in society it's she her character ultimately stigmatizes blondes who may be wealthy in society so individuals watch this movie they relate back to their own life and any individual in their life who may be blonde and may be wealthy they associate with this movie so sometimes the the mass media can actually be negative it can have a negative outcome and some of these symbols can be stigmatized in society lastly one of the researches that I've focused on is that of personal relationships dealing with parents and children the article parents perspectives on indulgence by Marsha rim and her colleagues focuses on the research done that was it was conducted on the parents of school-aged children and the goal of the research was to identify a correlation between the parents indulgence as as they were a child their own perspective of indulgence now and then ultimately how how do they behave based on this based on how they perceive indulgence and how they experience indulgence in their own life it was found that many of these parents actually indulged in their own children because they saw indulgence and they saw it as representative of happiness and sometimes social acceptance and even potentially successful it can lead to success for their own children so because of this interpretation because of this symbol the symbolic meaning parents behave in a way where they may indulge in their own children by being financially supportive being emotionally supportive and involved with their own children so as you can see this theory is very apparent in society there are many symbols all throughout Society amongst many individuals and they're caught being constantly developed and altered throughout a day-to-day basis and so I just encourage each and every one of you maybe to look into your own life maybe identify the symbols that you have and the meanings that you have attached to those symbols and then identify how you behave and interact based on those meet those symbols and those attached meanings thank you

Channel: Katelyn Vick

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Id: 4738-ktzNus

Length: 9min 12sec (552 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 06 2017