Symbolic Interactionism

Mead's theory of symbolic interactionism helped me get a better view of who I am personally and the people that surround me on a regular basis. The three core principles of this theory are meaning, language and thought. For me, I have mostly focused on the thought principle throughout my life because I am always concerned about how I present myself to others and how I view myself. I think it is interesting how the chapter in the book talks about 'The Looking Glass Self". Although I try not to focus on how I define myself based on what I think others see me as, I always find myself subconsciously thinking about it. Now that I'm older, I've started to realize that only I can shape the person that I am but when I was younger, I allowed the views of others to shape my behavior.

When I was in middle school, I had a group of really close friends. My best friend Sarah and I were inseparable. I guess you could consider us 'popular'. Usually the things that we did and said became popular around school. People were always wanting to sit with us at lunch or hang out with us on the weekend. The other kids in our middle school treated us as if we were better than everyone else, so in turn, we acted like it. This isn't a proud moment I've had but it is a perfect example of how the views of other people changed how I thought of myself. Even though the way people viewed me was overall positive, the affects that were causes by behavior were negative. I would often disregard people who weren't part of our group as 'lame' and 'antisocial' because in my mind, if they weren't with us, they were against us. At lunch we would often sit around and talk about kids that we didn't like or kids that weren't 'like us'. It wasn't until after my 7th grade year ended that I realized that
I had become a bully and it all started because other people thought I was 'popular'.