What objections did Mead have to the tenets of behaviorism? How did Mead propose to study internal attitudes ignored by behaviorists? In Mead’s pivotal book, Mind, Self, and Society, did Mead give priority to the “social” aspect of the act or the psychological aspect of the act? minimum of 250 words, only source needed is the text provided.
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George Herbert Mead
Chapter Outline
Intellectual Roots
The Priority of the Social
The Act
Mental Processes and the Mind
Self
Society
As we will see throughout this chapter, the social-psychological theories of George Herbert Mead were shaped by a variety of intellectual sources (Joas, 1985; 2001), but of
great importance was the inuence of psychological behaviorism.1
Intellectual Roots
Behaviorism
Mead denes behaviorism in its broadest sense as simply an approach to the study of
the experience of the individual from the point of view of his conduct (1934/1962:2;
italics added). (Conduct is used here as another word for behavior.) Mead has no trouble with this approach to behaviorism, but he does have difculty with the way in which
behaviorism came to be dened and practiced by the most prominent behaviorist of
Meads day, John B. Watson (Buckley, 1989).
The behaviorism of Meads time, as practiced by Watson and most others and then
applied to humans, had been imported from animal psychology, where it worked quite
well. There it was based on the premise that it is impossible through introspection to get
at the private, mental experiences (assuming they exist) of lower animals and therefore
all that can and should be done is to focus on animal behavior. Rather than seek to adapt
behaviorism to the fact that there are obvious mental differences between animals and
humans, Watson simply applied the principles of animal behavior to humans. To Watson,
people are little more than organic machines (Buckley, 1989:x). Given this view of
1For
418
a critique of this position, see Natanson (1973b).
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people and the analogy between humans and animals, Watson rejected the idea of the study
of human consciousness by introspection or any other method. As Mead puts it, in colorful
fashion, John B. Watsons attitude was that of the Queen in Alice in WonderlandOff
with their heads! (1934/1962:23).
In Meads view, Watson seeks to use behavior (conduct) to explain individual
experience, without a concern for inner experience, consciousness, and mental imagery.
In contrast, Mead believes that even inner experience can be studied from the point of
view of the behaviorist, as long as this viewpoint is not narrowly conceived. Thus, Mead
is a behaviorist, albeit what he calls a social behaviorist. However, this seemingly
slight extension makes an enormous theoretical difference. The symbolic-interactionist
theory that emerged, in signicant part from Meads theory, is very different from
behaviorist theories (such as early exchange theory), and indeed they exist in different
sociological paradigms (Ritzer, 1975a).2
Although Mead wants to include what goes on within the mind as part of social
behaviorism, he is as opposed as is Watson to the use of introspection to study mental
processes. Mead wants to study the mind behavioristically, rather than introspectively:
The opposition of the behaviorist to introspection is justied. It is not a fruitful
undertaking from the point of view of psychological study. . . . What the behaviorist is
occupied with, and what we have to come back to, is the actual reaction itself, and it is
only in so far as we can translate the content of introspection over into response that
we can get any satisfactory psychological doctrine.
(Mead, 1934/1962:105; italics added)
Instead of studying the mind introspectively, Mead focuses on the act or, if other
people are involved, the social act. Acts are behaviors dened in part in terms of the
behaviorists notions of stimulus and response. That is, some external stimulus causes the
person to respond with an act. Meads extension here is to argue that part of the act lies
within the organism and only comes to expression later; it is that side of behavior which
I think Watson has passed over (1934/1962:6). Mead does not ignore the inner experience of the individual, because that inner experience is part, indeed a crucial part, of the
act (we will have much more to say about the act shortly). It is in this sense that Mead
contends that the existence as such of mind or consciousness, in some sense or other,
must be admitted (1934/1962:10). Mead is aware that the mind cannot be reduced
solely to behaviors, but he argues that it is possible to explain it in behavioral terms
without denying its existence.
Mead denes the mind in functional rather than idealist terms. That is, the mind is
viewed in terms of what it does, the role it plays in the act, rather than as some transcendental, subjective phenomenon. The mind is a part, the key part, of the central nervous
system, and Mead seeks to extend the analysis of the act, especially the social act, to
what transpires in the central nervous system: What I am insisting upon is that the
patterns which one nds in the central nervous system are patterns of actionnot of
2However, there are those (for example, Lewis and Smith, 1980) who argue that this difference has more to do with the way
Meads work was interpreted by his successors, especially Herbert Blumer, than with Meads theories themselves (see also
McPhail and Rexroat, 1979).
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G EORGE H ERBERT M EAD
A Biographical Sketch
Most of the important theorists discussed throughout this
book achieved their greatest recognition in their lifetimes
for their published work. George Herbert Mead, however,
was at least as important, at least during his lifetime, for
his teaching as for his writing. His words had a powerful
impact on many people who were to become important sociologists in the twentieth
century. As one of his students said, Conversation was his best medium; writing
was a poor second (T. V. Smith, 1931:369). Let us have another of his students,
himself a well-known sociologistLeonard Cottrelldescribe what Mead was like
as a teacher:
For me, the course with Professor Mead was a unique and unforgettable
experience. . . . Professor Mead was a large, amiable-looking man who wore a
magnicent mustache and a Vandyke beard. He characteristically had a benign,
rather shy smile matched with a twinkle in his eyes as if he were enjoying a
secret joke he was playing on the audience. . . .
As he lecturedalways without notesProfessor Mead would manipulate
the piece of chalk and watch it intently. . . . When he made a particularly subtle
point in his lecture he would glance up and throw a shy, almost apologetic smile
over our headsnever looking directly at anyone. His lecture owed and we soon
learned that questions or comments from the class were not welcome. Indeed,
when someone was bold enough to raise a question there was a murmur of
disapproval from the students. They objected to any interruption of the golden
ow. . . .
His expectations of students were modest. He never gave exams. The main
task for each of us students was to write as learned a paper as one could. These
Professor Mead read with great care, and what he thought of your paper was your
grade in the course. One might suppose that students would read materials for
the paper rather than attend his lectures but that was not the case. Students
always came. They couldnt get enough of Mead.
(Cottrell, 1980:4950)
Mead had enormous difculty writing and this troubled him a great deal.
I am vastly depressed by my inability to write what I want to (cited in G. Cook,
1993:xiii). However, over the years, many of Meads ideas came to be published,
especially in Mind, Self and Society (a book based on students notes from a course
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taught by Mead). This book and others of Meads works had a powerful inuence on
the development of contemporary sociology, especially symbolic interactionism.
Born in South Hadley, Massachusetts, on February 27, 1863, Mead was
trained mainly in philosophy and its application to social psychology. He received a
bachelors degree from Oberlin College (where his father was a professor) in 1883,
and after a few years as a secondary-school teacher, surveyor for railroad companies, and private tutor, Mead began graduate study at Harvard in 1887. After a few
years of study at Harvard, as well as at the Universities of Leipzig and Berlin, Mead
was offered an instructorship at the University of Michigan in 1891. It is interesting
to note that Mead never received any graduate degrees. In 1894, at the invitation
of John Dewey, he moved to the University of Chicago and remained there for the
rest of his life.
As Mead makes clear in the following excerpt from a letter, he was heavily
inuenced by Dewey: Mr. Dewey is a man of not only great originality and profound
thought but the most appreciative thinker I have ever met. I have gained more
from him than from any one man I ever met (cited in Cook, 1993:32). This was
especially true of Meads early work at Chicago and he even followed Dewey into
educational theory (Dewey left Chicago in 1904). However, Meads thinking quickly
diverged from Deweys and led him in the direction of his famous social psychological
theories of mind, self, and society. He began teaching a course on social psychology
in 1900. In 19161917 it was transformed into an advanced course (the stenographic
student notes from the 1928 course became the basis of Mind, Self and Society)
that followed a course in elementary social psychology that was taught after 1919
by Ellsworth Faris of the sociology department. It was through this course that
Mead had such a powerful inuence on students in sociology (as well as psychology
and education).
In addition to his scholarly pursuits, Mead became involved in social reform.
He believed that science could be used to deal with social problems. For example,
he was heavily involved as a fund raiser and policy maker at the University of
Chicago Settlement House, which had been inspired by Jane Addamss Hull House.
Perhaps most importantly, he played a key role in social research conducted by the
settlement house.
Although eligible for retirement in 1928, he continued to teach at the
invitation of the university and in the summer of 1930 became chair of the philosophy
department. Unfortunately, he became embroiled in a bitter conict between the
department and the president of the university. This led in early 1931 to a letter of
resignation from Mead written from his hospital bed. He was released from the
hospital in late April, but died from heart failure the following day. Of him, John
Dewey said he was the most original mind in philosophy in the America of the last
generations (Cook, 1993:194).
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contemplation (1934/1962:26). Furthermore, what goes on in the central nervous system is not really separable from the act; it is an integral part of the act. Thus, Mead does
not want to think of the mind in subjective terms but rather as something that is part of
an objective process.
Pragmatism
Another important intellectual input into Meads thinking was pragmatism; indeed,
Mead was one of the key gures in the development of pragmatic philosophy (others
were John Dewey and Charles Pierce) (Halton, 2005; Lewis and Smith, 1980; Lo Conto
and Arrington, 2007; Wiley, 2006). Mead (1938/1972) regarded pragmatism as a natural American outgrowth. Pragmatism reected the triumph of science and the scientic
method within American society and their extension into the study of the social world
(Baldwin, 1986). Instead of being contemplative and otherworldly, as were previous
philosophical systems, pragmatism adopted a focus on this world, on empirical reality.
Pragmatists believe in the superiority of scientic data over philosophical dogma and all
other types of knowledge. As John Baldwin summarizes, Science is superior to trialand-error learning, introspection, a priori logic, religious dogma, idealism, speculative
philosophy, and all other nonempirical sources of knowledge (1986:16). Science is
seen as the optimum means not only for obtaining knowledge but also for analyzing and
solving social problems. Scientic theories, as well as ideas in general, are to be tested
using the full array of scientic procedures. The ideas that survive are those that are
likely to provide knowledge that is useful and that solves problems. Pragmatists reject
the idea of absolute truths. Rather, following the scientic model, they regard all ideas
as provisional and subject to change in light of future research.
Pragmatism also involves a series of ideas that relate more directly to Meads
sociological theory (Charon, 2000). First, to pragmatists, truth and reality do not exist
out there in the real world; they are actively created as we act in and toward the
world (Hewitt, 1984:8; see also Shalin, 1986). Second, people remember the past and
base their knowledge of the world on what has proved useful to them. They are likely to
alter what no longer works. Third, people dene the social and physical objects that
they encounter in the world according to their use for them. Finally, if we want to understand actors, we must base our understanding on what they actually do in the world.
Given these viewpoints, we can understand John Baldwins contention that pragmatism
is rooted in a rough and ready American ethic developed by the settlers who had
faced the challenges of new frontiers and dealt with the practical problems of taming a
new land (1986:22). In sum, pragmatism is a pragmatic philosophy in several senses,
including the fact that it adopts the scientists focus on the here and now as well as scientic methods; it is concerned with what people actually do, and it is interested in generating practical ideas that can help us cope with societys problems.
Lewis and Smith (1980) differentiate between two strands of pragmatism
nominalist pragmatism (associated with John Dewey and William James) and
philosophical realism (associated with Mead). The nominalist position is that although
societal phenomena exist, they do not exist independently of people and do not have a
determining effect upon individual consciousness and behavior (in contrast to Durkheims
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social facts and the reied worlds of Marx, Weber, and Simmel). More positively, this
view conceives of the individuals themselves as existentially free agents who
accept, reject, modify, or otherwise dene the communitys norms, roles, beliefs, and
so forth, according to their own personal interests and plans of the moment (Lewis and
Smith, 1980:24). In contrast, to social realists the emphasis is on society and how it constitutes and controls individual mental processes. Rather than being free agents, actors
and their cognitions and behaviors are controlled by the larger community.3
Given this distinction, Lewis and Smith conclude that Meads work ts better into
the realist camp. There is much of merit in this position, and it will inform some of the
ensuing discussion (especially on the priority Mead accords to the social). However, to
classify Mead as a realist would be to include him in the same category as Durkheim,
and this is unacceptable because there are clearly important differences between their
theories. In fact, Meads theory cannot be forced into either of these categories. There are
elements of both nominalism and realism in Meads thinking. To put it more concretely,
in most of Meads work, social processes and consciousness mutually inform one
another and cannot be clearly distinguished. In other words, there is a dialectic between
realism and nominalism in Meads work.
Dialectics
This brings us to another important source of Meads thinkingthe philosophy of Hegel,
especially his dialectical approach. We have already encountered the dialectic, especially
in Chapter 6 on Marx, and many of the ideas expressed there apply to Meads thinking.
We will return to this issue later in the chapter because, as we will see, dialectical thinking
makes it almost impossible to separate Meads many theoretical ideas; they are dialectically related to one another. However, adopting the strategy followed by Mead himself,
we will differentiate among various concepts for the sake of clarity of discussion. Bear in
mind (and occasionally the reader will be reminded) through each of the specic discussions that there is a dialectical interrelationship among the various concepts.
The Priority of the Social
In his review of Meads best-known work, Mind, Self and Society, Ellsworth Faris
argued that not mind and then society; but society rst and then minds arising with that
society . . . would probably have been [Meads] preference (cited in Miller, 1982a:2).
Fariss inversion of the title of this book reects the widely acknowledged fact, recognized by Mead himself, that society, or more broadly the social, is accorded priority in
Meads analysis.
In Meads view, traditional social psychology began with the psychology of the
individual in an effort to explain social experience; in contrast, Mead always gives priority to the social world in understanding social experience. Mead explains his focus in
this way:
3For
a criticism of this distinction, see D. Miller (1982b, 1985).
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We are not, in social psychology, building up the behavior of the social group in terms
of the behavior of separate individuals composing it; rather, we are starting out with a
given social whole of complex group activity, into which we analyze (as elements) the
behavior of each of the separate individuals composing it. . . . We attempt, that is, to
explain the conduct of the social group, rather than to account for the organized
conduct of the social group in terms of the conduct of the separate individuals
belonging to it. For social psychology, the whole (society) is prior to the part (the
individual), not the part to the whole; and the part is explained in terms of the whole,
not the whole in terms of the part or parts.
(Mead, 1934/1962:7; italics added)
To Mead, the social whole precedes the individual mind both logically and temporally.
A thinking, self-conscious individual is, as we will see later, logically impossible in
Meads theory without a prior social group. The social group comes rst, and it leads to
the development of self-conscious mental states.
The Act
Mead considers the act to be the most primitive unit in his theory (1982:27). In analyzing
the act, Mead comes closest to the behaviorists approach and focuses on stimulus and
response. However, even here the stimulus does not elicit an automatic, unthinking
response from the human actor. As Mead says, We conceive of the stimulus as an occasion
or opportunity for the act, not as a compulsion or a mandate (1982:28).
Stages
Mead (1938/1972) identied four basic and interrelated stages in the act (Schmitt and
Schmitt, 1996); the four stages represent an organic whole (in other words, they are
dialectically interrelated). Both lower animals and humans act, and Mead is interested in
the similarities, and especially the differences, between the two.
Impulse
The rst stage is that of the impulse, which involves an immediate sensuous stimulation and the actors reaction to the stimulation, the need to do something about it.
Hunger is a good example of an impulse. The actor (both nonhuman and human) may
respond immediately and unthinkingly to the impulse, but more likely, the human actor
will think about the appropriate response (for example, eat now or later). In thinking
about a response, the person will consider not only the immediate situation but also past
experiences and anticipated future results of the act.
Hunger may come from an inner state of the actor or may be elicited by the presence of food in the environment, or, most likely, it may arise from some combination of
the two. Furthermore, the hungry person must nd a way of satisfying the impulse in an
environment in which food may not be immediately available or plentiful. This impulse,
like all others, may be related to a problem in the environment (that is, the lack of immediately available food), a problem that must be overcome by the actor. Indeed, although
an impulse like hunger may come largely from the individual (although even here
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hunger can be induced by an external stimulus, and there are also social denitions of
when it is appropriate to be hungry), it is usually related to the existence of a problem in
the environment (for example, the lack of food). Overall, the impulse, like all other elements of Meads theory, involves both the actor and the environment.
Perception
The second stage of the act is perception, in which the actor searches for, and reacts to,
stimuli that relate to the impulse, in this case hunger as well as the various means available to satisfy it. People have the capacity to sense or perceive stimuli through hearing,
smell, taste, and so on. Perception involves incoming stimuli, as well as the mental
images they create. People do not simply respond immediately to external stimuli but
rather think about, and assess them through mental imagery. People are not simply subject to external stimulation; they also actively select characteristics of a stimulus and
choose among sets of stimuli. That is, a stimulus may have several dimensions, and the
actor is able to select among them. Furthermore, people are usually confronted with
many stimuli, and they have the capacity to choose which to attend to and which to
ignore. Mead refuses to separate people from the objects that they perceive. It is the act
of perceiving an object that makes it an object to a person; perception and object cannot
be separated from (are dialectically related to) one another.
Manipulation
The third stage is manipulation. After the impulse has manifested itself and the object has
been perceived, the next step is manipulating the object or, more generally, taking action
with regard to it. In addition to their mental advantages, people have another advantage
over lower animals. People have hands (with opposable thumbs) that allow them to
manipulate objects far more subtly than can lower animals. The manipulation phase constitutes, for Mead, an important temporary pause in the process so that a response is not
manifested immediately. A hungry human being sees a mushroom, but before eating it, he
or she is likely to pick it up rst, examine it, and perhaps check in a guidebook to see
whether that particular variety is edible. The lower animal, on the other hand, is likely to
eat the mushroom without handling and examining it (and certainly without reading
about it). The pause afforded by handling the object allows humans to contemplate various responses. In thinking about whether to eat the mushroom, both the past and the
future are involved. People may think about past experiences in which they ate certain
mushrooms that made them ill, and they may think about the future sickness, or even
death, that might accompany eating a poisonous mushroom. The manipulation of the
mushroom becomes a kind of experimental method in which the actor mentally tries out
various hypotheses about what would happen if the mushroom were consumed.
Consummation
On the basis of these deliberations, the actor may decide to eat the mushroom (or not),
and this constitutes the last phase of the act, consummation, or more generally the
taking of action that satises the original impulse. Both humans and lower animals may
consume the mushroom, but the human is less likely to eat a bad mushroom because of
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his or her ability to manipulate the mushroom and to think (and read) about the implications of eating it. The lower animal must rely on a trial-and-error method, and this is a
less-efcient technique than the capacity of humans to think through their actions.4
Trial-and-error in this situation is quite dangerous; as a result, it seems likely that lower
animals are more prone to die from consuming poisonous mushrooms than are humans.
For ease of discussion, the four stages of the act have been separated from one
another in sequential order; however, the fact is that Mead sees a dialectical relationship
among the four stages. John Baldwin expresses this idea in the following way: Although
the four parts of the act sometimes appear to be linked in linear order, they actually interpenetrate to form one organic process: Facets of each part are present at all times from the
beginning of the act to the end,…
