Introduction: What is Social Behaviorism?

What “Social Behaviorism” is NOT

1. It is not Watsonian “Radical” Behaviorism

When most people hear the word “behaviorism,” they think of John B. Watson or B.F. Skinner—scientists studying rats in mazes and explaining all behavior as mechanical “conditioned reflexes” (1; 2; 3). Watson believed that science should only study observable, external actions, and he went so far as to deny that the “mind,” “consciousness,” or private imagery even existed (4).

What “Social Behaviorism” IS

1. Working “From the Outside to the Inside”

With social behaviorism, Mead flipped the traditional script of psychology. Rather than starting with the individual, his social behaviorism starts with the observable social group (8; 9). For Mead, the fundamental unit of study is the “social act”—the dynamic, ongoing, cooperative behavior of a group. He argued that society is logically and biologically prior to the individual. Mead explains that individual acts are “involved in larger, social acts which go beyond himself and which implicate the other members of that group” (Mead, 1934, p. 7).

Hans Joas, Ph.D., a world-renowned German sociologist and social theorist, explains it this way:

“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” (Joas, 1985, p. 112)

Therefore, social behaviorism works from the outside to the inside: it observes the complex social process first, and then explains how the inner, private experience of the individual arises out of that social process (10; 11).

“An objective psychology is not trying to get rid of consciousness, but trying to state the intelligence of the individual in terms which will enable us to see how that intelligence is exercised, and how it may be improved. It is natural, then, that such a psychology as this should seek for a statement which would bring these two phases of the experience as close to each other as possible, or translate them into language which is common to both fields.”

~George Herbert Mead (1934, pp. 39-40)

2. The Mind as “Internalized Behavior”

Mead called his approach “behaviorism.” He agreed with Watson that we should study human experience in terms of conduct and action. However, Mead expanded the definition of behavior to include things that happen beneath the skin.

Mead wrote:

“It is behavioristic, but unlike Watsonian behaviorism it recognizes the parts of the act which do not come to external observation, and it emphasizes the act of the human individual in its natural social situation” (Mead, 1934, p. 8).

In Mead’s social behaviorism, the “mind” is not a physical object or a magical substance; it is an action. Specifically, mind is the process of taking the external communication we engage in with others (the “conversation of gestures” or language) and importing it into ourselves. When you think, you are essentially just behaving inwardly—carrying on a conversation with yourself using the same symbols you use to communicate with the outside world (14).

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Social behaviorism is the theory that we don’t possess a “mind” that creates society; rather, society creates the mind. By interacting cooperatively with others through language (the “social”), we eventually learn to have those same conversations internally (the “behavior”). For Mead, thinking is simply a social act that we have learned to perform inside our own heads.

The Two Sides of the Self: The “I” and the “Me”

To understand how we can be both social conformists and unique individuals, Mead divided the self into two interacting phases: the “I” and the “Me” (15). He built upon the foundational ideas of earlier thinkers like William James, who famously distinguished between the “I” as the active “knower” or thinker, and the “Me” as the objectified “known” self (16). In Mead’s framework, the “Me” is the organized set of attitudes, expectations, and laws of the community that we have internalized (17; 18). It represents the conventional, rule-abiding part of ourselves. This part understands our social duties. It also anticipates what others expect of us (19).

The “I,” on the other hand, is our organism’s spontaneous, unpredictable response to the “Me” (Mead, 1934, p. 175). As sociologist Herbert Blumer later emphasized, this dynamic interplay means that the self is not a static psychological structure. Instead, it is a constant, moving process of self-interaction (20). We don’t just blindly react to social forces; rather, the “I” gives us the freedom and initiative to actively construct our own actions in the face of the “Me”.

“Self-indication is a moving communicative process in which the individual notes things, assesses them, gives them a meaning, and decides to act on the basis of the meaning.“

~Herbert Blumer (1969, p. 81)

This ongoing internal dialogue creates a necessary balance between social control and personal creativity. When you encounter a problem, the “Me” sets the stage by laying out the social facts and potential consequences, but exactly how the “I” will respond is never entirely calculable until it actually happens. In fact, it is only after the “I” acts that its action becomes a memory and transforms into a new part of the “Me” (21).

The ‘I’ and ‘Me’ in Other Theories

We can see echoes of this push-and-pull in the work of Erving Goffman, who similarly viewed the individual in everyday life as divided into an active “performer” who fabricates impressions and the socially acceptable “character” they are tasked with portraying to an audience (Goffman, 1959, p. 197). While the “Me” is absolutely necessary to anchor us in a community, it makes cooperative social life possible. It is the unpredictable “I” that introduces novelty. This prevents us from becoming mere conventional robots. It allows individuals to actually change their society (22).

As Charles Horton Cooley wisely observed, a healthy self cannot be rigidly confined by social purpose; it must remain vigorous and plastic, guided by social sympathy but always retaining a spirit of genuine freedom and renewal (23).

The Generalized Other: Your Internal Audience

As you navigate through life, you aren’t just reacting to the specific individuals standing right in front of you; you are also performing for what Mead famously called the “generalized other.” This concept represents the organized attitudes, rules, and expectations of your entire community. You have internalized these elements to the point that they act as a constant, internal audience (24). Mead’s concept of “generalized other” correlates well with what we commonly refer to as social norms.

While earlier thinkers like Charles Horton Cooley focused on the “looking-glass self“—how we build our identity by reacting to the immediate, imagined judgments of specific people around us—Mead realized that a healthy, stable self requires a broader anchor (25; 26). The generalized other allows you to transcend the pressure of pleasing whoever happens to be in the room by providing a consistent, objective set of inner standards (27).

You might act honestly in a competitive situation for reasons other than your friends watching. One reason could be that you have internalized the community’s abstract principle of “fair play”. By carrying this generalized audience within your own mind, you gain a vital sense of personal autonomy, allowing you to maintain your character, evaluate your own actions, and resist fleeting social pressures even when you are entirely alone (28).

How the Self Develops: The Play and Game Stages

To explain exactly how a child’s self-awareness emerges, Mead outlined two distinct, sequential stages of development: the “play” stage and the “game” stage (29). He observed that children do not possess a fully formed self from birth; instead, the self evolves progressively as they practice taking on the roles of the people around them (30; 31).

Margaret Mahler, M.D. (1897-1985), preeminent authority on child development, also makes note of the developmental process of self. She wrote:

“The biological birth of the human infant and the psychological birth of the individual are not coincident in time. The former is a dramatic, observable, and well-circumscribed event; the latter is a slowly unfolding intrapsychic process” (32).

The Play Stage

In the earlier “play” stage, children experiment with the world by taking on the roles of specific, discrete individuals (33). When you observe a child playing, you might see them acting as a mother, a teacher, a police officer, or a pirate (34; 35). At this point, the child is essentially interacting with imaginary partners, practicing the ability to adopt another person’s viewpoint (36). However, in this stage, the child passes from one role to another purely as their whim takes them (37). There is no overarching structure; they are simply mimicking isolated behaviors and learning to anticipate the responses of a single other person at a time (38; 39).

The Game Stage

The true passage into a fully developed, self-conscious identity occurs when the child advances to the “game” stage (40). Unlike unstructured play, an organized game involves regulated procedures, shared goals, and rules (41; 42). Mead famously illustrated this with the game of baseball. If a child is playing first base, it is not enough for them to simply act out their own part; they must also understand the roles of the pitcher, the catcher, and the batter. To successfully participate, the child must be ready to take the attitude of everyone else involved in the game and understand how those different roles relate to one another (43).

By participating in games, the child learns to organize the attitudes of multiple people into a unified whole, which ultimately forms what Mead called the “generalized other.” Through this transition—from the simple, fragmented mimicry of “play” to the complex, rule-bound coordination of the “game”—the child internalizes the expectations of their broader community and establishes a stable, mature self (44; 45).

Symbolic Interactionism: Mead’s Legacy

George Herbert Mead never actually used the term himself. However, his ideas laid the essential foundation for one of the most influential schools of modern sociology. This school is known as symbolic interactionism (46; 47). The term was coined in 1937 by his former student Herbert Blumer, who acted as a relentless champion of Mead’s theories and brought them into the mainstream (48; 49).

At its core, symbolic interactionism builds directly on Mead’s premise that humans act toward things based on the meanings those things have for them, and that these meanings are constantly generated and modified through our social interactions (50). Instead of viewing society as a rigid, self-operating machine that pulls our strings from the outside, this perspective sees human group life as a dynamic, ongoing process of people creatively interpreting, negotiating, and adjusting to each other’s actions (51; 52). While later thinkers may have narrowed some of his original focus—such as leaving behind his deep interest in history and biological evolution—Mead remains the undeniable “ancestral progenitor” of a movement that fundamentally changed how we understand human society and everyday conduct (53).

See Symbolic Interactionalism for more on this concept

The Dramaturgical Perspective: Life as a Performance

Building directly on the idea that our identities are shaped by social interaction, sociologist Erving Goffman took these theories a step further by comparing everyday life to a theatrical performance (54). In what is known as the dramaturgical perspective, Goffman argued that when we enter the presence of others, we act as “performers” trying to guide and control the impressions our “audience” forms of us—a process widely known as impression management (55; 56).

Just like in a theater, we maintain a “front region” where we play our assigned roles with the proper polite decorum, often presenting an idealized version of ourselves (57). Meanwhile, the “backstage” is a private area where the audience is excluded; here, we can drop our masks, relax, and stop worrying about the strict rules of our public performance. Whether you are a doctor projecting calm competence while examining a patient, you are actively managing your social script to prevent embarrassing disruptions. Or you might be a host hiding cooking clutter to present a serene dining room to your guests. Either way, you maintain a stable, predictable reality (58).

Carl Jung, reflecting on his own childhood interactions with his friends, wrote:

“I found that they alienated me from myself. When I was with them I became different from the way I was at home. It seemed to me that the change in myself was due to the influence of my schoolfellows, who somehow misled me or compelled me to be different from what I thought I was” (59).

We put on an act, not consciously, performing for an audience, presenting ourselves as we wish to be seen.

Why Social Behaviorism Matters Today

It might be easy to look at George Herbert Mead’s ideas from the early 20th century and wonder how they apply to our modern, hyper-connected world. But in an era dominated by social media, rapidly shifting cultural norms, and complex social networks, social behaviorism is more relevant than ever. Mead and his successors—such as Charles Horton Cooley and Erving Goffman—teach us that our minds and identities are not isolated fortresses. Instead, they are entirely intertwined with the people around us (60; 61). We live in a world of meaningful objects, and our reality is constantly being negotiated and constructed through our daily interactions (62).

The meaning of anything and everything has to be formed, learned, and transmitted through a process of indication —a process that is necessarily a social process.

~Herbert Blumer (1969, p. 12)

Understanding that our “self” is a social process gives us a powerful toolset for navigating life. We are not just passive products of our environment; we are active participants who can shape our minds and our societies (63).

Blumer wrote:

“The process of self-interaction puts the human being over against his world instead of merely in it, requires him to meet and handle his world through a defining process instead of merely responding to it, and forces him to construct his action instead of merely releasing it. This is the kind of acting organism that Mead sees man to be as a result of having a self” (Blumer, 1969, p. 64).

Once we understand this powerful dynamic between self and society, we gain leverage in our ability to make changes.

Here are five practical ways we can use the insights of social behaviorism to improve our daily lives:

1. Master the art of “taking the role of the other”

For Mead, the defining feature of human intelligence is our ability to step outside ourselves and imagine the world from another person’s perspective.

Mead wrote:

“To take a distinctively human, that is, self-conscious, social attitude toward another individual, or to become aware of him as such, is to identify yourself sympathetically with him, by taking his attitude toward, and his role in, the given social situation, and by thus responding to that situation implicitly as he does or is about to do explicitly in essentially the same way you take his attitude toward yourself in gestural conversation with him, and are thus made self-conscious” (Mead, 1934, p. 300).

When you find yourself in a conflict, try to literally pause and mentally play out the scenario from the other person’s point of view. By understanding the attitudes and expectations of those you are interacting with, you can adjust your own behavior to communicate more effectively and cooperatively. Mead believed that practicing this on a wide scale is what ultimately builds a more empathetic, “universal” human society (64).

The human social ideal — the ideal or ultimate goal of human social progress — is the attainment of a universal human society in which all human individuals would possess a perfected social intelligence.

~George Herbert Mead (1934, p. 310)

2. Choose your “looking glass” carefully

Charles Horton Cooley famously introduced the “looking-glass self,” the idea that our self-image is built out of the imagined judgments of others (65). Modern research backs this up, showing that our self-concept changes when we internalize the public behaviors we perform in front of others (66). Because you are constantly absorbing the appraisals of your community, you can improve your mental well-being by actively curating your environment. We have the ability to select whose opinions matter to us (67). Surround yourself with “significant others” who reflect a positive, edifying image back to you, and distance yourself from audiences that demand degrading or toxic performances (68).

In an awesome, self-liberating way, we can influence the environment that has such a powerful impact on how we perceive ourselves.

3. Use your “internal conversation” to stop impulsive reactions

Unlike lower animals that react instantly to a stimulus, humans have the unique ability to delay our reactions. Mead explains that it is the “entrance of the alternative possibilities of future response” that decisively contrasts “intelligent conduct or behavior with reflex, instinctive, and habitual conduct or behavior — delayed reaction with immediate reaction” (Mead, 1934, p. 98).

Mead pointed out that our internal thinking is actually a conversation of gestures carried out inside our own heads. The next time you feel a surge of anger or frustration, use this mechanism to hit pause. Mentally test out different possible responses and foresee their consequences before you actually act. This “delayed reaction” is the essence of rational intelligence and gives you the power to choose your behavior rather than being controlled by raw emotion.

4. Balance fitting in with building your own competence

While the “Me” (our internalized social rules) ensures we fit into society, an over-reliance on the approval of others can leave us feeling empty or anxious (69; 70). To build a healthy self, you must also nurture your sense of personal efficacy. Cooley observed that a strong self is also forged through “appropriative behavior”—the active, striving effort to create things and overcome obstacles. You can boost your self-esteem by mastering a new skill, creating art, or dedicating yourself to a project where you can see the direct, tangible impact of your own actions on the world, independent of social applause.

The point is that when we plan what we should for the day, or set goals for the future, we should consider how they impact our image of ourselves. Successful attainment of goals does more than get us the primary objective; it also builds character, self-efficacy, and confidence. In psychology, we refer to this as the progress principle: Success breeds more success.

5. Become aware of your everyday “performances”

Sociologist Erving Goffman expanded on these ideas by showing that all of us are essentially actors on a stage, carefully managing the impressions we give to others to maintain social harmony (71; 72). Recognizing that everyday life is a performance helps in two ways: First, it allows you to intentionally manage the “front” you project—such as displaying competence at work or warmth on a date—to smoothly achieve your goals. Second, it fosters “tact” (73). When you realize that everyone else is also working hard to keep up their own social masks, you become more forgiving of their minor awkward moments and slip-ups, creating a more gracious and supportive social environment for everyone (74).

Associated Concepts

• Reference Groups: The specific social groups (friends, colleagues, influencers) that we use as a standard for evaluating our own behavior and identity.
• Reciprocal Determination: This is a concept developed by psychologist Albert Bandura, which posits that a person’s behavior both influences and is influenced by personal factors and the social environment. In other words, a person’s actions can impact their environment, which in turn can shape their behavior, creating an ongoing cycle of influence.
• Labeling Theory: How the labels society places on us (e.g., “troublemaker” or “genius”) are internalized and become part of the “Me.”
• Social Identity Theory: This theory delves into the intricate dance between self-conception and group affiliation, explaining how group membership impacts an individual’s sense of self and belonging, and how it can be a powerful motivator.
• Role Strain vs. Role Conflict: The stress experienced when the “Internal Script” of one role (like being a parent) clashes with another (like being a professional).
• Force Field Analysis: This is a diagnostic tool used to identify the forces for and against a change, developed by Kurt Lewin. By visualizing these “driving” and “restraining” forces, individuals can determine how to shift the balance.
• Social Constructionism: The theory that our shared understanding of the world is constructed through social agreement and language.

A Few Words by Psychology Fanatic

In exploring George Herbert Mead’s social behaviorism, we have journeyed through the fascinating idea that our sense of self is not a solitary construct but rather shaped by our interactions with others. Just as a bustling city square thrives on the exchange between its inhabitants, so too does our identity emerge from the rich tapestry of social connections and shared experiences. This perspective encourages us to view ourselves as active participants in an ongoing dialogue with those around us, reminding us that every conversation and interaction plays a role in sculpting who we are.

As we wrap up this exploration into Mead’s theory, it becomes clear that understanding our identities through the lens of social behaviorism can empower us to navigate life more thoughtfully. By recognizing how deeply intertwined we are with our communities, we can approach relationships with greater empathy and awareness. Whether it’s learning to take another’s perspective or curating positive influences in our lives, these insights provide valuable tools for personal growth and connection. Embracing this dynamic process allows us not just to discover who we are but also fosters a deeper appreciation for the vibrant social world we inhabit together.

Last Edited: March 2, 2026

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