George’s Meads Theory of Self — Being Mindful in Social Interactions
George Herbert Mead, a significant sociologist from the late 1800’s, is well known for his theory of the social self, which includes the concepts of ‘self’, ‘me’, and ‘I’. Mead was interested in the way the self-awareness was developed and how the self was mainly developed through our social experiences and activities. He theorized that there are three stages of self-development that we as individuals go through: Preparatory Stage, Play Stage and the Game Stage. Mead based his theory on the perspective that the self emerges from social interactions, such as observing and interacting with others, responding to others, and interacting with oneself. Mead theorized that the self was shaped by the overall view of socialization as a life-long process.
According to Mead, three stages develop the self: preparatory, play, and games. In the Preparatory Stage, ages two or less, children copy, or imitate, the behaviors of others around them without an understanding of what they are imitating. The Play Stage occurs from ages two through six, where children start role-playing and taking on the role of significant people in their lives. Children only take on one role at a time. Play develops self by allowing individuals to take on different roles, pretend, and express expectations of others. This develops one’s self-consciousness through role-playing. During role-playing, a person can internalize the perspective of others and develop an understanding of how others feel about themselves and others in a variety of social situations. For example, during the preparatory stage, children are only capable of imitation: they have no ability to imagine how others see things. They copy the actions of people with whom they regularly interact, such as their mothers and fathers.
The Game Stage occurs between the ages of seven and up, in this stage individuals learn their role in relation to others and how to take on the role of everyone else in a game. Through this stage individuals develop self by understanding and adhering to the rules of the activity. Self is developed by understanding that there are rules in which one must abide by in order to win the game or be successful at an activity. During the game stage, children learn to consider several roles at the same time and how those roles interact with each other. They learn to understand interactions involving different people with a variety of purposes. For example, a child at this stage is likely to be aware of the different responsibilities of people
Mead also finds that language is a part of developing the self, in which individuals respond to each other through symbols, gestures, words, and sounds. According to George Mead, language has a role in forming the Self and the formation of Self requires the existence of other selves. Language conveys others’ attitudes and opinions toward a subject or the person. Emotions, such as anger, happiness, and confusion, are conveyed through language. For Mead, the development of the self is intimately tied to the development of language.
Mead also describes the self as two sides or phases: ‘Me’ and ‘I’. Where ‘Me’ is considered the social aspect of the individual and represents learned behaviors, attitudes, and expectations of others and society. This is sometimes referred to as the generalized other. The ‘Me’ is considered a phase of the self that is in the past and is developed by the knowledge of society and social interactions and the individual has gained. ‘I’ is considered the present and future phase of the self. The ‘I’ represents the individual’s identity based on response to the ‘me’. The ‘I’ says, ‘Okay. Society says should behave and socially interact one way, and I think I should act the same (or perhaps different),’ and that notion becomes self. The ‘Me’ and ‘I’ have a system of checks and balances.
Mead made significant contribution to the development of concept of social self and in many ways show us how ‘I’ can be seen as our self-awareness and ‘Me’ as our self-image. These stages allow your ‘self’ and your notion of who you are, what you like, what your personality is, etc., become constructed through your experience of being in the world, through interaction, and through reflection on those interactions. The self is developed as you age and grow — it is not something biological. Through our experiences and interactions, our personalities are developed, and reflecting on that interaction, and then thinking about how others are perceiving us, allow us to generate an image of ourselves. In order for us to understand the ‘self’, we must be able to view ourselves through the eyes of others. Through socialization we learn to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes and look at the world through their perspective. This allows us to become self-aware, as we look at ourselves from the perspective of the “other.”
Mead argued that the Self, which is the part of a person’s personality consisting of self-awareness and self-image, is a product of social experience. The basic principles we come to learn through George Herbert Mead are that we have the capacity of thinking and these thoughts are formed by social interaction through interactions, symbols and different meanings which build thinking within. People can change their actions according to the situations they are involved in. People can form their own meanings of different things.