Interactionism and

Interactionism is micro-sociological perspective that argues meaning to be produced through the

interactions of individuals.

The social interaction is a face-to-face process consisting of actions, reactions, and mutual adaptation
between two or more individuals, with the goal of communicating with others. (It also includes animal
interaction such as mating.) The interaction includes all language (including body language) and
mannerisms. If the interaction is in danger of ending before one intends it to, it can be conserved by
conforming to the others' expectations, by ignoring certain incidents or by solving apparent problems.

Erving Goffman underlined the importance of control in the interaction: one must attempt to control the
others' behaviour during the interaction, in order to attain the information one is seeking and to control
the perception of one's own image. Important concepts in the field of interactionism include the "social
role" and Goffman's "presentation of self."

Interactionism, in Cartesian philosophy and the philosophy of mind, those dualistic theories that hold
that mind and body, though separate and distinct substances, causally interact. Interactionists assert
that a mental event, as when John Doe wills to kick a brick wall, can be the cause of a physical action, his
leg and foot moving into the wall. Conversely, the physical event of his foot hitting the wall can be the
cause of the mental event of his feeling a sharp pain.

In the 17th century René Descartes gave interactionism its classical formulation. He could give no
satisfactory account of how the interaction takes place, however, aside from the speculation that it
occurs in the pineal gland deep within the brain. This problem led directly to the occasionalism of
Nicolas Malebranche, a 17th–18th-century French Cartesian who held that God moves the foot on the
occasion of the willing, and to various other accounts of the mind-body relation. These include the
theory of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a 17th–18th-century German philosopher-mathematician, of a
harmony between the mind and body preestablished by God at creation, and the rejection of dualism by
the 17th-century Dutch Jewish rationalist Benedict de Spinoza in favour of a monistic theory of mind and
body as attributes of one underlying substance.

Two difficulties confront the interactionist: (1) As different substances, mind and body are so radically
different in quality that it is difficult to imagine how two such alien things could influence one another.
(2) Physical science, when interpreted mechanistically, would seem to present a structure totally
impervious to intrusions from a nonphysical realm, an appearance that would seem to be as true of the
brain as of any other material aggregate. See also mind-body dualism.
Interactionist Theory

What is interactionist perspective? Interactionism is one of the four common perspectives on society in
the field of sociology which observes human societies, chiefly from the perspective of the interactions
between individuals in various relationships. It can also examine the interactions between and within
small groups. It is distinct from the theory of dualist interactionism, which is a philosophical theory. The
interactionist perspective on society states that societies are ultimately the product of millions of daily
social interactions between individuals.

Prominent individuals who promoted interactionist theory include:

What is the interactionist perspective? There are many examples of the perspective of interactionists on
daily events and ubiquitous social settings. For example, an interactionist would view the act of dating
another person through the lens of acceptable social conduct in this circumstance.

Another frequent situation that would be analyzed by interactionists is the similarities and differences
between how children treat different adults in their life. For example, interactionists would examine
their behavior toward teachers and other people in non-familial positions of authority as compared to
how they treat their own parents.

Interactionism (Theory)

Interactionism – or symbolic interactionism - is a broad sociological perspective. It is a micro action

theory rather than a macro structuralist one and is interpretivist rather than positivist. Associated with
George Herbert Mead and Max Weber, it is a perspective that sees society as the product of human
interactions, and the meanings that individuals place on those interactions. Instead of trying to explain
human behaviour in the context of large social structures or fundamental conflicts or cleavages in
society, they look on a smaller level, acknowledging that humans have agency and are not swept away
by forces outside their control and create their own meanings. Weber recognised that small-scale
interactions and social structures influenced human behaviour.