Chapter Summary

Pragmatism and Behaviorism

The theories of George Herbert Mead (1863-1931) were shaped by pragmatism and behaviorism. Like pragmatists, Mead adhered to the belief in the superiority of scientific data over philosophic dogma and the importance of empirical investigation of the social world. Mead has been associated with the philosophic realist branch of pragmatism because he emphasized society and how it constitutes and controls individual mental processes. Like behaviorists, Mead believed in studying the experiences of individuals from the point of view of their conduct. However, he disagreed with the behaviorist use of introspection to study mental processes. Instead, Mead proposed that the most effective way to study the mind was to study what he called the social act.

The Social Act and Gestures

The most primitive unit in Mead's theory is the social act. Mead identified four stages of the social act: impulse, perception, manipulation, and consummation. The first stage, impulse, involves an immediate stimulation and an actor's reaction to this stimulus. Perception, the second stage, refers to how an actor searches for and reacts to a stimulus, while the third stage, manipulation, involves an actor's ability to manipulate a given stimulus. Finally, the fourth stage, consummation, refers to the action one takes in satisfying the original impulse. The important point to note concerning Mead's understanding of the social act is that human beings possess the mental faculties and social agency to make choices regarding how to respond to a given stimulus.

The gesture is the basic mechanism of the social act. Gestures refer to how the action of one individual mindlessly and automatically elicits a reaction by another individual. However, human beings are capable of engaging in meaningful or significant gestures. Gestures become significant symbols when they arouse in the individual who is making them the same kind of response they are supposed to elicit from those to whom the gesture is addressed. Language, as a set of vocal gestures, is one of the most important types of significant symbols, as it makes human communication possible.

The Mind, the Self, and Society

Mead's most widely read work, Mind, Self and Society, gives priority to society over the mind and highlights the idea that the social leads to the development of mental states. To Mead, the mind is a process, not a thing, and it is found in social phenomena rather than within individuals.

The self occupies a central place in Mead's theory. Mead defines the self as the ability to take oneself as an object and identifies the basic mechanism of the development of the self as reflexivity — the ability to put ourselves into the place of others and act as they act. Mead makes it clear that a self can arise only through social experiences, and he traces its development to two stages in childhood: the play stage and the game stage. During the play stage, children learn how to take the attitude of particular others to themselves, but it is only during the game stage that children learn how to take the role of many others and the attitude of the generalized other. Mead also discussed the difference between the "I" and the "me" in his theory of the self. The "I" is the immediate response of an individual to others; it is the unpredictable and creative aspect of the self. The "me" is the organized set of attitudes of others that an individual assumes; it is how society dominates the individual and is a source of social control.

Dialectical Thinking

Mead's sociological theory encompasses dialectical thinking in terms of his reluctance to view the world in a causal manner and his apprehension about differentiating social processes like the mind and the self. Mead takes a relational view of the social world, which is evident in his theory of the relationship between the "I" and the "me." Furthermore, while Mead is interested in studying how present, past, and future societies are related, he does not have a deterministic view about the future. Finally, Mead, like other dialecticians, is concerned with conflict and contradiction. According to Mead, social change and innovation are possible, and result from the continuing conflict between the "I" and the "me."