George Herbert Mead

 He is an American Philosopher and Social Theorist

 Although he did not utilize this nomenclature, he is widely regarded as the

founder of the school of Symbolic Interactionism in sociology and social
psychology.
 Mead produced a theory of action, a metaphysics or philosophy of nature that em
phasizes emergence and temporality, in which the past and future are perceived 
through the lens of the present

3. Roles, the Self, and the Generalized Other

 Mead's explanation of the significant symbol's assumption that anticipatory
experiences are essential to language development is one of its most notable
characteristics. Regarding our language gestures, we have the capacity to put
ourselves in the shoes of others in order to predict their reactions. The growth of
the self and self-awareness also depends on this skill. The self is fundamentally
social and cognitive for Mead. It needs to be distinguished from the person, who
possesses non-cognitive characteristics as well. Therefore, the self is related to
self-consciousness and is not the same as the individual. It starts to take shape
when people engage with one another and perform roles.

 Roles are collections of behaviors that are reactions to particular behavioral

patterns displayed by other people. We are all aware with the concepts of role-
taking and role-playing from sociological and social psychology literature. Taking
on someone else's views or opinions is a part of role-playing. Perspective-taking
is linked to significantly more complex actions than just roles.

 According to Mead, if we just played the parts of other people, we would never
become ourselves or become conscious of ourselves. We would have a
 developing self-awareness that is similar to the kind of reflexive awareness
needed for the usage of meaningful symbols.
 A role-taking (self) consciousness of this sort makes possible what might be
called a proto-self, but not a self, because it doesn't have the complexity
necessary to give rise to a self. How then does a self-arise?
 When children or adults take roles, they can be said to be playing these roles in
dyads. However, this sort of exchange is quite different from the more complex
sets of behaviors that are required to participate in games. In the latter, we are
required to learn not only the responses of specific others, but behaviors
associated with every position on the field. These can be internalized, and when
we succeed in doing so, we come to “view” our own behaviors from the
perspective of the game as a whole, which is a system of organized actions.

 The organized community or social group which gives to the individual his unity
of self may be called “the generalized other.” The attitude of the generalized
other is the attitude of the whole community.

 For Mead, although these communities can take different forms, they should be
thought of as systems

 In his Principles of Psychology, a book Mead knew well, William James

discusses various types of empirical selves, namely, the material, the social, and
the spiritual.

a. In addressing the social self, James notes how it is possible to have multiple
selves.
b. Properly speaking, a man has as many social selves as there are individuals
who recognize him and carry an image of him in their mind. To wound any
one of these his images is to wound him. But as the individuals who carry the
images fall naturally into classes, we may practically say that he has as many
different social selves as there are distinct groups of persons about whose
 opinion he cares. He generally shows a different side of himself to each of
these different groups. (James 1890, 294)
 From Mead's vantage point, James was on the right track. However, the notion of
audience is left undeveloped in James, as is the manner in which language is
utilized in the genesis of the self and self-consciousness. For Mead, James's
audiences should be thought of in terms of systemically organized groups, such
as we find in certain games, which give rise to generalized others. Further, we
need an account of how we come to view ourselves from the perspective of
these groups that goes beyond the concept of “sympathetic attachments.” Such
an account involves reflexivity, which originates with the vocal gesture and is
essential to taking roles and the perspective of the generalized other. In addition,
reflexivity helps make possible the capacity to “see” us from ever wider or more
“universal” communities. Mead relates the latter capacity to cosmopolitan political
and cultural orientations. It's worth noting that for Mead a full account of the self
should address the phylogenetic as well as the ontogenetic.

Development of the Self

 Actually, there are three activities that develop the self, according to mead:
language play and games.
 Language
a. Allows people to communicate with one another through signs, gestures,
words, and sounds, developing their sense of self.
b. Language reveals the attitudes and beliefs of others regarding a topic or an
individual.
c. Language is used to express emotions like rage, joy, and confusion.
 Play
a. Allows people to pretend, play different roles, and communicate expectations
of others, which helps them build their sense of self.
 b. Through role-playing, play improves one's self-consciousness.
c. A person can internalize other people's viewpoints and develop an awareness
of how others feel about themselves and other people in a range of social
circumstances through role-playing.
 Games
a. Enabling people to comprehend and abide by the activity's rules helps them
to create their own sense of self.
b. Understanding that there are rules that one must follow in order to win the
game or succeed at an activity helps one develop their sense of self.

George Herbert Mead suggested that the self develops through a three stage role
taking process. These stages include preparatory stage, play stage, and game stage.

Preparatory Stage
 The time frame of this stage starts from the moment we are born and lasts until
we are about 2 years old.
 In this stage children mostly mimic the sounds around them. This is the time
where their brains are very active to the sound, like for some instances if you
think that a child can already read at the age of two it is not actually reading, they
just memorized the book that have bean read to them.
Stage 2: The Play Stage
 Children are in the play stage from around two to six years of age. Children who
are in the play stage pretend to play and disregard the rules of structured sports
like soccer or frozen tag.
 In this stage they don’t follow rules, they tend to just go with anything and keep
playing, they make and abide their own rule rather than following the structured
rule of the game.

Stage 3: The Game Stage

 Children might start to comprehend and follow game rules at this age. Because
they start to comprehend other people's perspectives—or the perspective of the
generalized other—they can start playing more organized games.