Elements of Society: Social Interaction

The process in which people act toward and respond to each other. Encounters may be face-to-face, or they may be more enduring and complex.

 

Major Perspectives

Symbolic interactionism and dramaturgy

• Interaction is mediated by symbols and meanings.

• Participants in an interaction actively create and interpret these symbols and meanings.

Exchange theory and rational choice

• Interaction is mediated by the exchange of resources, esteem, prestige, and power.

• Interaction participants actively try to maximize their rewards and minimize costs.

 

Key Concepts: Symbolic Interactionism, Dramaturgy

• Gesture: One act in an ongoing interaction among several participants. George Herbert Mead distinguishes two types. Non-significant gestures include automatic reflexes such as breathing or blinking. Significant gestures include actions perceived as intentional; interaction participants try to interpret their intentions before responding to them.

• Roles: Expectations about how people will behave in interactions that endure over time and across different situations. Such expectations make interaction more smooth and predictable. Contrast with Social Structure > Key Concepts > Functionalist Approach > Role.

• Taking the role of the other: Imaginatively putting oneself in another’s situation. Mead claims this is necessary in attaching meanings to others’ gestures and anticipating their future actions, and is thus essential to all social interaction.

• Impression management: Interaction participants’ attempts to control the impressions about themselves that others receive so that they appear to have a particular role or status or simply appear in a favorable light. (Dramaturgy)

• Front stage and back stage: Two socially defined regions in which interaction occurs. The front stage is where impression management takes place; the back stage is where participants may relax and prepare for the next performance. (Dramaturgy)