Submitted by: Submitted by cristiana8351
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Category: Philosophy and Psychology
Date Submitted: 10/31/2011 09:29 PM
Human behaviour is influenced by the meanings we create for ourselves in situations
George Herbert Mead
Founding father of the Chicago school
Taught philosophy
At the turn of the century the dominant explaination for human behaviour was behaviourism-biological determination
Human b is trained and reinforced control of instincts
GHM rejected biology as a way of explaining human behaviour
Human b is learned
Minnd, self & society
Herbert Blumer
Didn’t like macro-structural explainations
Symbolic Interactionalism
Symbol-anything in society that has a shared meaning. 2+people
Symbols are possible cause of symbol systems
Symbol system is lang, sign, Braille,
We learn symbols through interaction with others
3 main ideas
Humans act towards things based on the meanings those things have for them-guide behaviour
These meanings are dereived from the interaction we have with other people
We have the ability to modify or change these meanings depending on the situation
Our selves have a very special ability-our selves are reflexive-we can mentally put ourselves outside of ourselves and see ourselves as an object-from someone elses position
The notion of the reflexive self came from the idea of another soci. – Charles Horton Cooley
The looking glass self
We have the ability to imagine how we appear to others
We also have the ability to imagine how others are judging that appearance
In response to those pericived judgements we choose how to behave
How do we get reflexive ability
GHM talked about the development of the reflexive self-key concept-set of expected behaviour- UNDERSTANDING ROLES-ROLE TAKING
1. Preplay or preparatory stage 0-2 years-babies do not have reflexive self
2. Play stage-2-5-begins to dev. Child now starts to understand roles-eg. Mom- one role
3. Game stage 5+, full
The generalized other
The mature self arises when the generalized other is internalized