BASILISCO, JALEFAYE PROFESSOR: NERISSA MAE HERNANDEZ

EXPLAIN THE INTERACTIONIST THEORIES AND DICUSS THE

METHODS OF COMMUNICATION FOR LEARNING

Much explanation of human behavior is based on assumptions about animal

behavior. Two major contemporary theories, Behaviorism and Freudianism place
major emphasis upon the human being as animal. Many middle-level theories have
no reference to man's distinctive social characteristics. However, social
explanations of behavior do have a heuristic advantage in the study of human
functioning and "social pathology." Symbolic interaction theory operates on the
assumption that man lives in a symbolic environment as well as in a physical
(animal) environment. Symbolic learning emanates from the social processes men
experience. Symbols represent personal meanings, values and associated feelings.
In symbolic communication, one person, seeking to elicit specific behavior from
another, selects a symbol from his "library." The individual believes that he has
chosen the one symbol likely to create the desired behavior. He encodes the
symbol into a "signal" and broadcasts the signal by some means of communication.
He may use speech, writing, or some non-verbal act, and he may not broadcast the
signal perfectly. Then the receiver tries to decode the signal into a symbol, by
retrieving what he thinks are the appropriate meanings and values. If the symbol
has approximately the same meaning and value to both people, the desired action
may occur. Because each person associates the symbol with his own meanings and
values, which are based on his past social learning, much depends on whether both
people have had similar past social learning.
 Meaning refers to the way in which people actually use a particular term in
their behavior. A "value" is a learned attraction or repulsion which the individual
relates to a particular symbol or meanning. A "symbol" represents an incipient or
telescoped act in which the later stages (involving elements of both meaning and
value) are implied in the first stage. People learn symbols by interacting with other
people. We can view symbols as having common or shared meanings and values
for most people in a society. This provides the society's "mainstream population"
with a quality of "consensual validation," even though the consensus of
understandings is never complete. Mainstream people share many common norms
and ideals. Norms are direct guides to positive acts or values. Ideals are what the
individual says or believes he would like to do. Norms sometimes coincide with
ideals. Even when ideals do not coincide with norms, they provide guides to
behavior as "remote goals to be reached indirectly." Much adult behavior is learned
from symbolic communication of norms and ideals rather than from direct trial and
error. A culture is an elaborate set of meanings and values tied to symbols and
shared by others in society. Culture guides human behavior. By learning the
culture, men are able to predict each other's behavior most of the time and to gauge
their own behavior to the way they expect others to act. A society is possible only
when common symbols and expectations exist. However, a person does not act in
predeterminable ways even though his actions are purposeful and voluntary. Each
person acts according to his "definition of the situation." He has to interpret other
people's behavior and to make a personal assessment of what is "right and proper"
at the moment. People interpret symbols emotionally as well as intellectually.
When a person makes a rational, substantive "definition of the situation" he also
makes an affective definition of the situation. Ideally, the affective definition deals
primarily with deciphered meanings rather than feelings. The effective system can
operate in one of a number of ways: 1. As a support of the rational analytic system
2. As a diversion from the rational analytic system 3. As opposition to the rational
analytic system 4. As a neutral process .
 The way in which the emotional system operates can affect the way a person
decides to behave, the sharpness of his perception, the way he chooses to decode
other people's signals, and the success with which he chooses the symbols he
transmits. So feelings are important because they can augment or impede a person's
encoding and decoding abilities. People also use feelings when they decide what
experiences and interactions to have in the future. To the interactionist, social
organization is the end product of behavior patterns which evolve from people's
attempts to achieve goals. No two people define situations identically, and people
are always re-interpreting their situations, so behavior is always changing.
Interactional "stabilities," which come from a shared culture, give people a
behavioral referent. From the interactionist view, a fully functional person is one
with an adequate repertoire of roles, role behaviors, norms, symbols, and role
equipment. The fully functional person has tested these roles in experiences within
the "mainstream" of societal interaction. In such a "competent" person the variety
of symbols, meanings, values and other role equipment are -deqpzate to secure a
reasonable "fit" in communication with most other persons in his society. This
"actor" has, thereby, earned so complete a sense of security in his role competence
that he is able to balance a sense of personal autonomy with a countervailing sense
of responsibility to others and society. This is what might be described as the most
highly developed level of normative behavior. The deviant, from the interactionist
view, is someone with problems of communication and understanding.
Interactionist theory defines deviance as more than an abnormality on the part of
an individual or individuals. Instead it posits that failures of communication, past
and present, cause the individual to construct a definition of the situation which is
much different from other peoples' definitions of the situation. Such conflict of
"definitions" is a product of the communications and understandings of more than
one person. People become "more than animals" by a process of socialization
which moves through psychogenic, blockage and word stages.
 In time a person gains a personal sense of "reality" which is established and
maintained by the consensus of the groups which have meaning to him. "Objective
reality" differs from "consensual reality" in that it is validated by accepted
"experts" over a period of time. Learning occurs primarily in relation to significant
others. The significant other is someone with whom the individual participates in
role reciprocity. These significant others encourage and constrain each other's
behavior through validation or non-validation of each other's acts. Only from a
sense of congruity of meanings with significant others does one derive "social
security." Therefore, the meanings used by significant others have strong affective
or expressive significance, and define the intensity of relationships. The significant
other serves as a model for the individual and helps shape the individual's self-
concept. This self-concept is basic to self-esteem. Developmentally, behavior
precedes meanings and feelings. The individual's ability to communicate with
himself enables him to consciously construct his behavior beyond rote
performance. As the individual observes the behavior of others he arrives at
hypotheses about the motives of others. Motives are a category of meanings.
Continued consideration of other peoples' motives is a necessary process for social
interaction. Interpreting other peoples' behavior helps the individual define who he
is, and where he stands. In a sense, motives can be interpreted as rules or
guidelines of interaction and have been labeled "interactional hypotheses." These
hypotheses can be either instrumental or terminal. Instrumental hypotheses make
possible the mutual exploration of motives for the planning of future interactions.
Terminal hypotheses interpret the behavior, meanings or feelings of others in such
a way that interactions between the self and others are distorted, constrained or
prevented. The individual who is unable to arrive at workable instrumental
hypotheses, or who has learned distorted sets of symbols and meanings, or whose
"creativity" produces meanings and values not understood by others will exhibit
behavior considered deviant by the conventional society. Let us consider the
"operational reality" by which behavior is judged.
 The operational reality must enable individuals to predict what others will
do, and to foresee the results of their own actions. It must contain a logical unity
and be simple enough to be useful. It must have a self-correcting capacity. It must
be fairly stable and upheld over time. To understand behavior, we must also
consider anxiety. Anxiety, as defined by Kelley, is the encountering of a situation
for which there is no previous socialization. Anxiety is manifested in stress and
discomfort. As socialization (that which the individual knows and accepts)
interacts with anxiety, a struggle ensues between the two processes. Deviant
behavior occurs when anxiety, rather than socialization, predominates in the
individual's dynamics. When an individual commits behavior which the
operational reality classifies as illegal, immoral, non-conformist or unanticipated,
the behavior is considered deviant. Interactionist societal theory holds that the
nature of the transaction or confrontation is not as important as the meanings which
people attach to their own actions and to the actions of others. A person does not
act in a predeterminable way; his actions are purposeful and voluntary. Thus,
actions are not as much the result of exchange or of coercion, as they are the result
of the individual's differing situation definitions. It should be noted that a residual
effect occurs when a person does not have an adequate repertoire of symbols,
meanings, values and roles necessary to deal with a situation. In such instances he
reverts to animal-like behavior and this is often evident in times of violence,
aggression, or escape. Among the various societal theories, interactionism is
probably singular in its emphasis upon the mutual causality of communication
difficulty and deviance. It takes two or more persons to create communication
ineffectiveness. Functional deviance is a product of ineffective communication.
According to this theory, such problems as non-somatic mental illness, mental
retardation, neurosis, character disorders, and difficult interpersonal relations can
be traced to misperception, misinterpretation, mis-orientation, and inadequately
provided and perceived socialization. (See Blumer 1967, Blumer 1969, Scheff,
Glisinian, Hurwitz, Rose, Nannis, Melther, Dreitzel, Gordon and Gergen, Kuhn,
Thomas, Berger and Lucman, Shibutani 1961, and Shibutani 1970.)