MEAD'S THEORY OF SELF Web Notes @ abhipedia Developed by ABHIMANU IAS (2023)

Mead's evolutionary approach to animal and human behavior is behind Mead's development of the theory of behavior. He studied thembiologically inherited components of animal behaviorto explain the roots of human behavior. Throughout his work, Mead integrated evolution, physiology, and theories of animal behavior with the other elements of his unified theory to create a unified, non-dualistic model. Mead frequently presented examples of animal behavior at different phylogenetic levels: protozoa, ants, bees, termites, chicks, and so on. Most examples of animal behavior have been used to illustrate the evolutionary steps leading up to human behavior. The theory of evolution clearly views humans as animals that interact with a physical environment. Mead's evolutionary perspective did not portray animals, including humans, in passive roles, as if they were merely products of evolutionary forces or genetic determinism. A special chooses the subsets of its environments to which it reacts: and its actions alter that environment and thus its own habitat. So evolution has produced active organisms that select, change, and modify their world.

The neural pathways of the human brain give us the potential for language, internal conversation, and reflective intelligence; but it is only through social experience that the individual develops this potential and acquires symbolic mental faculties. Through social processes - through symbolic social interaction with others - a person learns language and learns to have the internal conversation that we identify as spirit. Therefore, we need to study social behavior and interaction—the totality of an individual's actions—to explain mental experiences.

The theory of evolution assembled mind-body humans in nature to be studied scientifically. In Mead's non-dualistic theory there is no separation between biological and mental or social processes. Although Mead distinguished between the "biological individual" and the "socially self-aware individual," he pointed out that "they are not on separate planes, but interact with each other and, under most conditions, constitute an experience that does not appear to be a cut." by cleavage lines "While theories of evolution of the universe and of life on earth led Mead to recognize the insignificantly small role of human life in the overall cosmos, he concluded that the scientific perspective makes man "at home" in nature than previous dualistic worldviews which separated the mind from the body and paid more attention to the mind than to the body and its physical environment

ÖComparative approach to animal behaviorIt was the basis of Mead's methodological behaviorism to trace behavioral evolution in early humans. Among his points were these. The first languages ​​evolved from grunts and moans caused by sudden changes in breathing. Mead often compared children to primitive peoples, noting, for example, that the awareness of the other "comes before the child's self. Mead used modified versions of the theory of natural selection to develop his own theories about mental and social events, which appeared to be selective processes.

For Mead, human behavior emergesImpulses that reflect modified versions of instincts: “Confident behavior arises from controlled and organized impulses, and impulses arise from social instincts. Mead identified two components of the instinctive act: internal emotional responses and externally visible gestures. Internal physiological responses serve as the biological component of subjectively experienced emotions. Second, the external components of instinctive acts consist of stereotyped gestures, which are the main means of communication—like smiling, laughing, blushing, and crying. Mead used instincts and impulses in his explanations of many complex social phenomena, such as the origins of families, clans, nations, and various types of social organization.

Act

There are two models of action in Mead's general philosophy:

• the model of action as such, that is, of organic activity in general (which is worked out in the philosophy of action), and
• the model of the social act, that is, social activity, which is a special case of organic activity and is of particular (though not exclusive) relevance to the interpretation of human experience.

Act

Mead described the plot as an organic entity made up of four major components, none of which are independent of the others. Each part is connected to the others to create a unified and organic whole. Dewey (1896) and Mead (1903:1938) emphasized the "completeness: and the "unity" of all parts of the plot.

The four main parts of action are (1) impulse, (2) perception, (3) manipulation, and (4) completion. When a dog is hungry, that is hungerimpulseslooking for something to eat. Looking is a wayselective perception, while the dog selectively scans the area for food. When it finds food, the dogmanipulate- maybe pulling with mouth and paws - and then the dogconsumedDies.

“Our behavior consists of a series of steps that follow each other, and the later steps may have already begun and affect the previous ones. What we're going to do is reproduce what we're doing now.”

The urge to hunger bringsMind picturesof different types of food, along withmotor imageshandling and consumption of food. Sensory images promote selective perception when we look for relevant stimuli. Motor imagery consists of a "responsiveness" that influences the type of manipulation that is later performed.

social Aja

The social act is a collective act in which two or more people participate; and the social object is a collective object with a common meaning for each actor. There are many types of social action, some very simple, some very complex. These range from the (relatively) simple interaction of two people (e.g., dancing, having sex, or a game of handball) to far more complex acts involving more than two people (e.g., a play, a religious ritual, a hunting trip ), to more complex actions in the form of social organizations and institutions (e.g. law enforcement, education, economic exchange). The life of a society consists of the sum total of such social acts.

communication and intelligence

Mead criticized scientists who claimed that physiological mechanisms alone could explain the mental processes involving language and the symbolic, when clearly cognitive processes cannot develop until an individual learns language and inner language through symbolic social interaction. These two positions are not contradictory. For Mead, the central nervous system was a necessary but not a sufficient condition for symbolic thought. symbolic experience.

Mead begins by articulating what he's learned about the gestureWundt🇧🇷 Gestures must be understood as behavioral reactions of animals to stimuli from other organisms. For example, one dog barks and a second dog barks back or runs away. The "meaning" of the "barking gesture" is found in the reaction of the second organism to the first. But dogs don't understand the "meaning" of your gestures. They simply react, that is, they use symbols without what Mead calls "meaning." For a gesture to have meaning, it must evoke a response in a second organism that is functionally identical to the response expected by the first organism. In other words, for a gesture to be meaningful, it must "mean" the same thing to both organisms, and "meaning" involves the ability to consciously anticipate how other organisms will respond to symbols or gestures. This ability comes from vocal gestures.

Therefore, the communication process involves two phases: (1) the "conversation of gestures" and (2) language or the "conversation of meaningful gestures".

Mead criticized Darwin for restricting his treatment ofgesturesto express inner feelings through mental states. He argued that gestures are the primary means of communication in animals. As such, they have important social functions and should therefore not only be described as expressions of inner emotional states. In Mead's theory, social functions played a much more important role than the expression of emotions.

While all types of gestures can carry meaning and convey information to another person, only certain forms of gesture can convey the same meaning to both the sender and receiver. With speech gestures, the sender and receiver hear the same stimuli. However they react to a specific significant symbol, absolutely identical answers are unlikely. For example, a word like "dog" can evoke different reactions in different people.

if we usesignificant symbolswith others we hear our own world and the sounds evoke ideas in us that we resemble the ideas that words evoke in others. According to Mead, "gestures become significant symbols when they implicitly evoke in the individual, making them the same responses that they explicitly elicit or purport to arouse in other individuals." Language, in Mead's view, is communication through meaningful symbols.

"But we don't need to talk to each other to come up with these ideas. We can talk to ourselves and we do so in the inner forum of what we call thinking. Öself talkis performed with the same meaningful symbols used in social communication.

According to Mead, language is the primary social basis of the self. The basic principle of human social organization is communication, which includes participation in others. It was language that made human society possible. Language is communication with symbols; is the ultimate use of symbols.

Mead traced the development of this "internal conversation" as it emerges in childhood. As the child learns to talk to others, he gains the ability to talk to himself. "The child will talk to itself for hours and even construct imaginary companions that function in the child's growing self-awareness, as do the processes of inner language—of thought and imagination—function in the adult consciousness." In adulthood, "the traits and intonations of the dramatis personae and the emphasis falls on the meaning of the inner language, the images become only the almost necessary references. Yet at any age, "of course, the actual thought process is just an inner conversation..." It's that inner thought, that inner flow of speech and what it means... that... makes up the mind..."

Mead recognized thatConscience[1]occurs to different degrees in different species. Essentially, there are multiple levels of awareness and consciousness, ranging from simple feelings in primitive animals, to an increasingly sophisticated perceptual awareness in advanced species, to an abstract, symbolic awareness in humans. "More difficult and abstract processes of so-called thinking cannot exist"

Although verbal description creates an awareness of meaning, there is a higher form of awareness that arises from the use of meaningful symbols: Mead called it "reflective awareness" or"reflective intelligence🇧🇷 People experience this form of awareness when faced with problems and use internal conversation with meaningful symbols to work towards a solution. Mead did not claim that all human actions are conscious; “Only parts of the answer appear as such in the conscious mind” “The unconscious is often part of our behavior. In this area, stimuli appear, action follows, but there is no commandment. (For consciousness) there must be conflict. This leads to inhibition, the vomiting into consciousness of past experiences.” Reflective consciousness evaluates possible future events based on past experiences. Since all gestures are predictive stimuli, they carry information about the future—about the outcomes of the actions they suggest. This chapter summarizes Mead's theory of the structure and properties of communicative stimuli used by nonhuman animals and humans. It wasn't until humans evolved the biological mechanisms of language and developed meaningful symbols that our species acquired the kind of vocal gesture that can mean the same thing to the speaker as it does to the listener. Meaningful symbols allow people to communicate more effectively than other ways and have internal conversations with themselves in the privacy of their own heads. Self-talk, in turn, leads to a higher awareness of the past, present and future.

Although part of the beginningsocializationincludes training and explicit instructions from parents to child; The socialization process is not just something that society does to the child. The child is not a passive vessel waiting to be filled with social content. Instead, children actively explore and interact with their social and physical world, gaining information from the interaction of their own behavior and the environment. Through this interaction, children develop increasingly sophisticated mental and behavioral skills.

emergence of the self

ONEThe person's self consists of the person's thoughts about the unified whole of their own body, thoughts, emotions, personality and actions🇧🇷 It is thus part of the person's private world of thought. However, as Mead repeatedly pointed out, the self is inherently social; therefore it should be considered as part of the whole social process. "The self, then, includes a unity" of body, behavior, and environment, and should not be construed as dualistic, as something separate from social processes. The self can only arise in relation to society and therefore interaction with other selves; owes its existence to the micro and macro social environment. Throughout life, a person's self develops through social interaction and is influenced by micro- and macrosocial processes. There is an ongoing and dynamic interaction between self and society, in which both self and society influence and modify each other. No mind-body dualism is implied in Mead's view of the self: Descartes and other dualists viewed the self as a type of psychic substance that had no functional relation to the physical and social environment; but Mead saw the self as a natural part of the human social world, a phase of social processes.

Mead provided evolutionary and developmental perspectives on the emergence of the self. "Lower animals have no self." "Self appeared late in vertebrate evolution." Selves could only emerge after humans had evolved to use meaningful symbols: Meaningful symbols allow a person to assume the role of listener and thus gain an objective, external view of one's self as a social object.

Second, the self emerges slowly in childhood through symbolic social interaction. “The self is something that has development; it is not present at birth but arises in the process of experience and social activity, that is, it develops in the individual as a result of his or her relationships with that process as a whole and with other individuals within that process.

"In childhood we can see the beginning of the emergence of the self". It takes years for the self to emerge as the baby gradually gains an objective view of his own body and behavior. "The self arises in behavior when the individual becomes a social object in experience to himself."

In order for children to have a clear picture of themselves, they need to take on the role of others so that they can see themselves as social objects, like others.

Mead's account of the social emergence of the self is developed through an explanation of three forms of intersubjective activity:

• early use of meaningful symbols,
• play, and
• the game.

These forms of "symbolic interaction" (i.e. social interactions taking place through shared symbols such as words, definitions, roles, gestures, rituals, etc.) reflect a reflexive objectification of the possible self.

firstFor the self to come into being there must be a means by which "the individual must, therefore, adopt an objective and impersonal attitude towards himself, so that he becomes an object to himself". As children begin to use language, they gain access to the simplest role-plays in which they objectively hear their own meaningful symbols and gain an objective view of their own thoughts and statements. By using meaningful symbols and assuming roles, "we have a behavior in which individuals become objects to themselves". "The self can exist for the individual only when he takes on the roles of others." We act as ourselves in our behavior insofar as we adopt the attitude that others have towards us.

"Self-awareness involves the individual becoming an object to himself by assuming the attitudes of other individuals towards himself in an organized setting of social relations, and if the individual had not become an object to himself, it would be himself self unaware or having a self. no way".

on the second place, once children start role-playing, they continue to develop their personality and self. When children play the roles of others, they use parts of those roles "to build a self." In house play, children assume the roles of mother and father, thereby acquiring aspects of their parents' interest and self. "Only when the child does this does he attain a complete self." The roles that children assume (e.g. parents, teachers, police officers) "steer the development of their own personality". Parents' perceptions come first; and this perception influences the child's self-image.

By acting out roles, we take on the perspective of the other. To Mead, we would never develop a self or self-awareness by simply taking on the roles of others. We would have a nascent form of self-awareness that corresponds to the kind of reflective awareness required to use meaningful symbols. How then does a self come about? Here Mead introduces his well-known concept “the generalized other”. When children or adults take on roles, they can be said to play those roles in dyads. However, this type of exchange is quite different from the more complex behaviors required to participate in games. In the latter, we not only have to learn the responses of certain other people, but also behaviors associated with each position in the field. These can be internalized[2], and when we do that, we begin to “see” our own behavior from the perspective of the game as a whole, which is a system of organized action.

On the third place, games facilitate the development of an integrated and unified personality. Before the child reaches the play phase of socialization, "they don't organize themselves into a whole. The child has no defined character, no defined personality." However, as children begin to play, they learn to synchronize with larger groups and organize their own responses in relation to the rules of the game and the actions of the entire group. In other words, "the play requires a complete self, while the play requires only parts of the self" of the role played, without understanding the whole role; but games require a more organized self if the child is to coordinate with others. Games, with their rules and structure, help the child develop a more organized self. When the child plays, "he becomes an organic member of society." As games help the child to think in terms of the generalized other, the child is increasingly able to 'see themselves as the whole group sees them', which helps the child acquire a 'personality unit'. prove it with an I". Games provide an important transition to adulthood in large and complex societies. Once the child can relate to the games' generalized other, he gradually learns to understand the generalized other in terms of broader social institutions. “The individual has a self only in relation to the selves of other members of his social group; and the structure of his self expresses or reflects the general pattern of behavior of the social group to which he belongs, as well as the structure of the self of every other individual belonging to that social group. In fact, the structure of the whole mind reflects the structure of society. The socialization of each individual structures the mind and self in two important and complementary ways, producing (1) common traits shared with others and unique personal traits that make the person a distinct individual. The same socialization process that fosters similarities between individuals also creates differences. “The common social background and constitution of individuals also creates differences. Because no two people occupy exactly the same roles or positions in the social structure, they have different socializations and develop different identities. People want to know how they are different from others. "As it is a social self, it is a self that realizes itself in its relationship with others. Mead's discussion of multiple selves reflects his structural view of the self. By assuming the role of the generalized other and the larger community, humans tend to perceive themselves as unified beings. As we move from one set of social roles to another, different parts of ourselves are stressed.

First, the complexity of the self depends in part on a person's ability to step into the shoes of others and to see the self from the perspective of others.

SecondProblematic situations provide important experiences for self-development. Conflicts and problems make us stop and think about possible solutions to problems that may require building new relationships between ourselves and others, society or the environment.

third, the structural complexity and integration of a person's society affect the level of self-development. "The consciousness of the individual is in a way a reflection of the complex social situation in which he lives.

"I and I"

Mead divided the self into two distinct parts: the "I" and the "I".

• The "I" is the subject; the "I" is the self that we see as an object.
• The "I" is the acting I; the "I" is the I that we see as an object when we view ourselves from the other person's role.
• When we speak to someone, it is the "I" that speaks. As soon as we hear our own words, we react to ourselves as the object of observation, that is, as "I".
• “I” is unthinkable without “I”.
• For Mead, the "I" and the "I" are functional distinctions, not metaphysical ones.

This is how self-awareness develops through taking on roles. The "self" is a composite view of self seen from the perspective of people we know (significant others) and others (generalized others). "The individual sees himself from the point of view of other individuals and they form his view of himself". We can never observe the part of ourselves called "I". Any attempt to observe the "I" reveals only an "I" - that is, the I we see through introspection. It follows that "the ego cannot appear in consciousness as 'I', which is always an object, i.e. an 'I'. Only the "I" can be brought directly into consciousness. "The 'I' is beyond the reach of immediate experience."

In essence, the self of the present moment is "I." Once the "I" acts, the action slides into the past where we can observe it as part of the "I" in our memory of the previous moment. "The 'I' is his action... and it enters his experience only after he has performed the action. So he is aware of it." "The real self that appears in this act awaits the completion of the act itself." Thus the "I" is "the reflective I". When we think about our actions, we see them version of ourselves as an object called "I". Only after we have acted do we know what the "I" is, what its real abilities are. "Only after we have done what we are going to do do we realize what we are going to do do".

Since we can never fully know ourselves or the selves of others, our "explanations" or "reports" about the behavior of ourselves and others are always inaccurate to some degree. We are always partially unaware of the nature of our actions.

The "I" and the "I" have different functions, both for the individual and for society. The "I" is the source of spontaneity and innovative action. The "I" is the vehicle of self-regulation and social control. The "I" is creative. The “I” sets boundaries and orders structures based on social values. Since we can never observe the "I" directly, we can never be sure what it will do next. "The 'I' is something more or less uncertain." The 'I' is unpredictable. In this way, "the" "I" conveys the feeling of freedom, of initiative. "Exactly how we are going to act can only be experienced when the action takes place." The "I" is a conventional and habitual individual, while the "I" is the source of new reactions that break with habitual conventions and patterns. The "I" qualities are closely related to Mead's views on emergence. New things are always emerging in our world, and the "I" is the source of emergence in human behavior.

Mead did not describe the "I" as inherently wild or antisocial. The "I" is merely the source of unexpected actions. Some of these innovations can be valuable and creative contributions that benefit society; others may be socially useless or harmful. One of the functions of the "I" is to evaluate the innovations of the "I" from the perspective of society, to encourage innovations that are useful to society, and to discourage undesirable actions. "If we use a Freudian expression, the 'I' is a kind of censor." As censorship, the "I" supports the socially useful contributions of the "I" and keeps the problematic facets of the "I" in check.

Our thoughts about "self" reflect views of the generalized other - from games and institutions - and give us a form of self-control necessary to be good team players and fit into society. The "self" represents "those sets of attitudes that represent others in the community, particularly that organized set of responses that we detail when we discuss play on the one hand and social institutions on the other."

The "I" is the source of social concern. When we think about our actions, we ask ourselves whether we are helping or harming others. Thus the "I" provides an internal system of social control. "Social control is the expression of 'I' against the expression of 'I'. It sets the limits..." The kind of social control that arises from the "I" is "not simply the social control that results from blind habit, but the social control that comes from the individual having the same attitude towards themselves accepts itself, which accepts the fellowship to itself. with him.”

So the social control of the "I" does not work through mindless obedience to society. People know their duties and rights and use reflective intelligence to choose the best course of action as they see it from their particular perspective on the social process. Sometimes the reflective intelligence reveals that one's duties to others are more important than one's rights to purely personal interests. At other times personal rights outweigh duties to others.

So there are degrees of self-imposed social control. "Social control thus depends on the ability of individuals in society to adopt the attitudes of others who share with them in the common enterprise."

Mead saw society as a balance between creative diversity on the one hand and shared meanings and responses on the other. The "I" provides creativity; and the "I" the similarities. A society that encourages people to be creative and different can benefit from those people who make creative contributions to the arts, literature, science, politics, and practical matters. However, in order for society to function as an integrated whole, all unique selves must coordinate to some degree. “Society is the interaction of these selves, and an interaction that is only possible when unity emerges from their diversity. We are infinitely different from each other, but our differences enable interaction. Society is unity in diversity. However, there is always a risk of miscarriage.” Too much diversity can lead to chaos and disorganization. The "I" provides the common interests and social concerns that help people organize their creative diversity in constructive ways.

People have different mixes of "I" or "I" powers. A person can develop either “I” or “I” strengths—or both, or neither. Some people emphasize one facet of self - the "I" or the "I" - more than the other. Mead saw the 'I' and the 'I' working seamlessly together in the fully developed individual. "Both aspects of 'I' and 'I' are essential to the self in its full expression.

self and identity

Although Mead never spoke of identity as such, his theory of the self offers more fruitful insights into the process of identity construction. The theory of the self is the logical starting point for an analysis of identity formation as it occurs in relation to social and cultural difference. An even stronger starting point, and one that certainly includes the self, is Mead's important notion of sociability. This concept conveys an understanding of difference as an inherent feature of social relationships and change. Sociality as a concept was developed in his last and innovative work, Philosophy of the Present (1932).

Mead internalizes role-taking through a symbolic process that takes place reflexively.[3]not me. Mead sees that the person forms attitudes and dispositions, adopted from others, that become the basis for how one sees oneself as a social unit and as a means of developing an identity. Mead does not seem to understand self-concept as "essential," that is, innate, but neither does he deny that it occupies an important and essential place in the inner sense of self. Indeed, for Mead, self-understanding was materially based on the perceived social responses of significant others, which became part of a person's perception and relationship to himself.

Sociability, in Mead's words, is "the ability to be several things at once," so that the individual is necessarily in several positions. Mead would therefore see the difference relations as the temporal intersections of history that give structure to the self. But Mead would understand these differential relations as constitutive identity. Mead would have argued that difference resides outside, not within, identity, dispersing it into heterogeneity. Mead understands multiplicity as the underlying structuring principle of identity. Social situations are subjectively internalized by the individual as the elements from which self-identity is continually formed.

Thus, Mead's naturalistic and symbolically based pragmatic social psychology provides the tools to theorize how identity develops within a social process.

Schematic representation of Mead's Unified Theory

A biological individual (a) is born into social and physical environments (b, c and d). From these environments (e, f, and g) the individual acquires an increasingly complex repertoire of covert and overt behavior (h). As the person gains increasing skills, the person has increasing influence (i, j and k) in both micro and macro societies (b and c) and in the wider environmental system (d). Because all system components are connected into an organic whole, changes in any part of the system can affect other parts and create dynamic changes throughout the system. This order of development stems from Mead's own intellectual development, beginning with his thesis in physiological psychology in Germany, through his interest in signs, communication, language, the mind and the self, to an increasing focus on macrosociety.

Por: Parveen BansalProfileresourcesReport an error