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Symbolic Interactionism

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

  • 76 Accesses

Synonyms

Agency; Interactive determinism; Microsociology; Pragmatism; Social psychology; Symbolization

Definition and Introduction

Symbolic interactionism (SI) is an American sociological theoretical framework and research tradition that focuses on small-scale interactions between individuals. SI emphasizes the microprocesses through which individuals construct meaning, identity, and collective actions. As a scholarly tradition, SI asserts that meaning is not inherent and is rather constructed through multiple interactions in certain times and contexts. The symbolic interactionist framework posits that aspects of the surrounding social world – objects, ideas, events, people, etc. – impact and change humans, and humans in turn assign meaning to these interactions in order to determine how to act when in those specific environments, confronted with particular stimuli, or encountering distinctive properties of the social world. This framework focuses on explaining how (1) humans act and...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Elon University, Elon, NC, USA

    Alexis Franzese & Carrie Seigler

Authors
  1. Alexis Franzese
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  2. Carrie Seigler
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alexis Franzese .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Virgil Zeigler-Hill

  2. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland

    Anna Czarna

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Franzese, A., Seigler, C. (2018). Symbolic Interactionism. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_2125-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_2125-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

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