Symbolic

Interactionist
CHAPTER
6 Theorizing

M
ost of early sociology was decidedly macro in its concerns with the big changes in
human societies that came with industrialization and modernity. There are hints of
a more micro-level focus in Emile Durkheim’s analysis of religion and rituals, in
Georg Simmel’s analysis of the modern self in complex societies revealing multiple and cross-
cutting group affiliations, in Max Weber’s analysis of four types of action undergirding legiti-
mated orders, in Herbert Spencer’s concern with ceremonial institutions, and even in Karl
Marx’s portrayal of alienation and the emotional arousal accompanying mobilization for con-
flict. But, most of this work was intended to explain more macro-social forces and societal-level
evolutionary trends.
In the United States, in the last two decades of the nineteenth century and into the first
three decades of the twentieth century, there was a convergence of thought from diverse dis-
ciplines on understanding human behavior and social interaction. The most important figure
in this more micro analysis was George Herbert Mead1 who was a philosopher at the Univer-
sity of Chicago and advocate for a school of philosophy known as pragmatism.
Pragmatism argued that humans constantly seek to make adjustments in their actions so as
to adapt to ongoing social processes. People do “what works,” and this criterion of adaptation
can explain a great deal about the development of persons from their first moments in
societies. Pragmatism was a broad intellectual movement that still has adherents, but several
generations ago, many more key figures in the history of philosophy, psychology, and sociol-
ogy considered themselves pragmatists. And, it is from the synthesis of their ideas by
George Herbert Mead that micro sociology was born, despite the fact, which perhaps is embar-
rassing for the discipline, that Mead was not a sociologist.

George Herbert Mead’s Synthesis

Mead not only followed the general philosophy of pragmatism, but he also saw an affinity
of pragmatism with behaviorism, utilitarianism, and Darwinism. To him, these theoretical

1
Mead’s most important sociological ideas can be found in the published lecture notes of his students from his
course in social psychology. His most important exposition is found in his Mind, Self, and Society, ed. C. W.
Morris (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934). Other useful sources include George Herbert Mead, Selected
Writings (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1964) and Anselm Strauss, ed., George Herbert Mead on Social Psychology
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964).

96
 Chapter 6: Symbolic Interactionist Theorizing   97

approaches in, respectively, psychology, economics, and biology described human behavior
as adaptation.2 If behaviorism is freed from its strict methodology of avoiding the black box
of human cognition, then behaviors hidden in the human brain—that is, capacities to learn
language, think and make decisions, see and evaluate self from the perspective of others and
cultural codes, and cooperate with others in organized groupings—can be seen as behaviors
that are learned because they bring the rewards associated with cooperating with others in
societies. Similarly, the utility-seeking, rational, and decision-making actors of utilitarianism
and neo-classical economics are also doing the same thing: trying to adjust and adapt to social
circumstances in order to maximize utilities or rewards. And Darwin’s notion of natural selec-
tion can be applied to social behaviors, whereby those behaviors that facilitate adjustment and
adaptation to the social environment are retained in the behavioral repertoire of a person.
And so, for Mead, the basic question was this: What behavioral capacities do humans learn dur-
ing the course of their lives that enable them to adapt to ongoing coordinated actions in societies?
His answer to this question pulls ideas from philosophy and the social sciences; and in bringing
related strands of thinking together, Mead accomplished what no one else had ever done: uncover
fundamental processes of social interaction among human beings. Human behavior, interaction,
and social organization are possible by virtue of several unique human abilities, beginning with the
capacity to use and read conventional or significant gestures that mean the same thing to the send-
ing and receiving organism. Mead incorrectly thought that only humans had this capacity to
develop conventional meanings for words and body gestures that mean the same thing to all par-
ties in an interaction, but still, humans can probably engage in interactions using arbitrary symbols
and signs more than any other animal. With the ability to use significant gestures, humans learn to
take the role of the other or role take, by which he meant humans’ capacity to read the conventional
gestures of others, put themselves in each other’s place, anticipate the role they are likely to play out,
and then make the necessary adjustments to others so as to facilitate cooperation.
With the ability to read, interpret, and use conventional gestures and, then, to role take with
others come additional capacities. One is the capacity for mind that Mead adopted from his
colleague at the University of Chicago, John Dewey.3 For Dewey, mind is the ability to imagi-
natively rehearse covertly alternative lines of conduct, to perceive the likely consequences of
these alternatives in a situation, and then to select that alternative that would facilitate adjust-
ment to, and cooperation with, others. If an organism can engage in such covert behaviors,
Dewy asserted, it had the behavioral capacity for mind. Thus, for Dewy and Mead, mind is not
a thing, but rather, a behavioral ability that is learned like any other behavior response: if it
brings reinforcement and rewards by facilitating adjustment and adaptation to the social envi-
ronment, it will be retained in the behavioral repertoire of an individual. Thus, while minded
behaviors have a biological basis, this basis is only used when it is mobilized to facilitate
adjustment and adaptation of individuals to ongoing social contexts. Because humans must
cooperate in groups to survive, having the abilities outlined by Dewy for mind would be
highly rewarding. With mind, role-taking can be much more subtle and complex, and this
too is rewarding because it makes cooperation more viable.

Jonathan H. Turner, Contemporary Sociological Theory (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2012), pp. 312–313.
2

3
John Dewey, Human Nature and Human Conduct (New York: Henry Holt, 1922), p. 190. For an earlier statement
of these ideas, see John Dewey, Psychology (New York: Harper & Row, 1886).
98   THEORETICAL SOCIOLOGY

With the ability to read and use conventional gestures, to role take, and anticipate likely
responses of others to various lines of behavior (i.e., to have a facility for mind), another critical
behavioral capacity is acquired: The ability to see one’s self as an object in a situation. Mead bor-
rowed this idea from Charles Horton Cooley4 at the University Michigan, where Mead had begun
his career, and from the famous pragmatist psychologist, William James.5 Cooley used the interest-
ing phrase “looking glass self ” to outline self-related behaviors. People read the conventional ges-
tures of others as if looking into a mirror (or, the “looking glass,” which was a term used for “mir-
ror” in the nineteenth century). By looking into this mirror, one’s self is reflected, or at least the
reactions of others are reflected; and as a person interprets these gestures of other, this person will
experience self-feelings ranging from pride at the positive end of emotions to shame at the negative
end of the continuum. By seeing “oneself as an object” (reflected in the gestures of others operating
as a kind of mirror), individuals make adjustments to their behaviors so as to sustain a positive
reflection of themselves. William James added to this kind of analysis the notion that people’s
images of themselves, as reflected in the mirror of others gestures, will crystallize over time into
more enduring views of self that persons carry with them. James also emphasized that individuals
develop different types of selves—material, social, and spiritual, for example—that become rele-
vant to them in various situations and that they seek to verify in the eyes of others.
Mead took these ideas and developed a view of individuals as deriving a self-image from the
responses of others, which they evaluate for what these responses of others say about a person’s
conduct in ongoing groups; then, he added James’ key idea: from these self-images that arise in
every interaction, people’s sense of self becomes codified into a more stable and enduring self-
conception. This self-conception is more stable, and it represents the fundamental cognitions, feel-
ings, and evaluations of self that emerge over a person’s lifetime. It is this self-conception that, once
formed by young adulthood, gives persons’ actions a certain predictability and constancy because
people’s behaviors reflect the kind of persons that they consider themselves to be.
Mead added several refinements to his notion of self. He recognized that individuals do not
just role take with specific others in a situation. The can often role take with others who are
not co-present but who are important to an individual and whose evaluation is particularly
significant. A person can imagine what these others would say, do, or think about their
actions, as if they are present in the situation; and often, people are responding to these distant
drummers more than the people right in front of them. Mead then added yet another critical
idea: people role take with what he termed the generalized other or a “community of attitudes”
and the broader perspective of a situation. Indeed, Mead felt that people’s capacities for role-
taking were not complete until they could assume the perspective—the values, beliefs, collec-
tive attitudes—of communities of others. These communities of attitudes can be the immediate
group, to ever-larger and more encompassing structures, including a whole society. Thus, in
Mead’s view, culture comes to individuals through role-taking with generalized others.
These are the basic ideas in Mead’s theory of interaction, and they capture the core processes of
face-to-face interaction that have served sociology for one hundred years. These ideas have been
expanded upon, as we will see in this and the next chapter, but without Mead’s synthesis, none of

Charles Horton Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order (New York: Scribner’s, 1902) and Social Organization:
4

A Study of the Larger Mind (New York: Scribner’s, 1916).

William James, The Principles of Psychology (New York: Henry Holt, 1890), vol. 1, pp. 292–299.
5
 Chapter 6: Symbolic Interactionist Theorizing   99

this subsequent elaboration of his scheme would have been possible. Mead’s ideas have been car-
ried forward through a theoretical perspective known as symbolic interactionism. This label was
given to Mead’s work by Herbert Blumer6 who took over Mead’s famous social psychology course
at the University of Chicago upon his death. I am not sure that Mead would have approved of this
label, but it has stuck as the name for theorizing in the Meadian tradition. The label, symbolic
interactionism, denotes a wide range of phenomena, from the mutual signaling of gestures in
interaction to the codification of a self-conception, but it is last element of Mead’s scheme—the
social self—that has been the focus of symbolic interactionists over the last few decades.

Contemporary Symbolic Interactionism

and the Analysis of Identities
For some decades, the terms self-image, self, and self-conception were used by symbolic interaction-
ists, but in recent decades, the label identity has become more widespread. The reason for this shift
in terminology is that sociologists have increasingly theorized many dimension, types, and forms
of self, and clearly, the notion of identities captures this emphasis. As Mead recognized but did not
elaborate upon, people have multiple selves that differ along a number of potential dimensions,
including: How emotional attached are individuals to diverse identities? How general or situation-
specific are various identities? How connected to culture and its moral codes are various identities?
How salient or relevant are various identities in particular situations? And, how high or low in a
hierarchy of identities is any particular identity? These kinds of question have become increasingly
important as theorists pursued Mead’s and the sources of Mead’s ideas over the last thirty years.

Multiple Identities
For many decades after Mead’s great synthesis, theorists followed Mead’s lead and distinguished
between identities tied to particular situations—family, work, school, church, team, etc.—and the
general self-conception that a person has of himself or herself. But, empirical research has revealed
that people have potentially many more identities, including a general conception of themselves as
a certain kind of person, as well as a host identities tied to various types of situations. There is no
consensus about basic types of identities, but a set of distinctions that I work with captures the
current state of theorizing on types of identities. Figure 6.1 outlines four basic types and levels of
identity in terms of their generality and emotional content.7 Some identities are very general and,
moreover, are always with a person, much like a shell on the back of a snail. We walk around with
them, and they are almost always relevant and salient to a certain degree. At the other extreme,
some identities are tied to a particular role in a particular social structure. For example, I have an
identity of myself as a professor as a role in a particular type of organization. A female may have
an identity of herself as mother in a family structure. These identities are clearly narrower than a

Herbert Blumer, Symbolic Interaction (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1969).
6

7
Jonathan H. Turner, Face-to-Face: Toward a Sociological Theory of Interpersonal Behavior (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2002); See also, Jonathan H. Turner, Theoretical Principles of Sociology, Volume 2 on Microdynamics
(New York: Springer, 2011).
100   THEORETICAL SOCIOLOGY

more general self-conception. Yet, we need to be careful here because some role-identities may also
be central to a person’s more general self-conception. For example, the longer that I have been a
professor, the more of my general identity is tied up with my role as professor, and such is often the
case for women’s role-identities as a mother.
In Figure 6.1, I placed what I term as core-identity at the top of a hierarchy that also empha-
sizes two dimensions of identities: (1) the emotions tied to them and (2) the degree to which we
are cognizant of the nature of an identity. I would argue that people will have some difficulty in
articulating their core-identity or what some now call person-identity. The reason for this is that
some dimensions of this identity are unconscious, or even repressed, but these elements still
influence how persons act and even how they evaluate themselves. A great deal of emotion is
tied up in identities, especially core-identities, and people react very emotionally to failure to
verify this level of identity. As a result, they often push the negative emotions that come with
failure below the level of consciousness, but this does not mean the emotions go away or the
evaluations of others about core-identities are ignored. They are pushed below the level of con-
sciousness, but eventually, the emotions will come out, often in rather transmuted form, as we
will see later in discussing more psychoanalytic theories of symbolic interactionists.
At the bottom of the hierarchy in Figure 6.1 are role-identities, which people can usually describe
with accuracy. Thus, if you asked someone what kind of father, student, professor, mother, worker,
etc. they are, they can usually respond with clarity and specificity. These ­identities are evaluated by

Figure 6.1 Types and Levels of Identity Formation

Core-Identity

Social-Identity

Group-Identity

Role-Identity

Level of Level of Level of

inclusiveness/ conscious emotional
generality awareness intensity
 Chapter 6: Symbolic Interactionist Theorizing   101

individuals, and so like all identities, there is emotion attached to them, but not to the extent of a
core- or person-identity. Yet, as noted above, if a particular role is bound up with a person’s funda-
mental feelings about themselves at the person-identity level, then there will be much more emo-
tion inhering in individuals’ description of a particular role-identity.
Between these levels of core- and role-identities are two others that I typically highlight. One
is a group-identity, which is a step up from a role-identity. These are identities built around
membership in, desire to be a member in, or vicarious identification with a group or organiza-
tion. A fan of a sports team is a good example of group-identity built around often excessive
identification. As is all too evident, rabid sports fans are quite emotional about their identifica-
tion with a team; they can talk about their identity at quite some length, often endlessly. As a
student, even after graduation, you may have the identity of once being a member and now an
alumnus of a university or college, and people vary enormously in how important this group-
identity is. A worker usually has some sense of identity with his or her place of work, even if it
is negative, and we rarely have any trouble talking about how we see our workplace. Indeed, like
role-identities, group-identities (as well as organizational and community) can carry emotion
but remain cognitive in that people can articulate the nature of the identity. Moreover, the iden-
tity is generally confined and not highly general, unless group membership in an important part
of a person- or core-identity. The final level and type of identity is what is called a social-identity
in the psychological literature; this identity is about broad social categories that people belong
to, such as gender, ethnicity, religion, age, social class, and any social category that is salient in a
society. These identities are quite general and must be carried around like person-identities
because our gender, age, ethnicity, and other memberships in social categories are often quite
visible, but more importantly, there are beliefs, evaluations, expectations, and norms associated
with each of these social-identities.8 People may not like them, or embrace evaluations and
expectations, but emotions are almost always tied to social-identities. People have cognitive
awareness of the nature of this identity, but if they are ashamed of their social-identity, then
emotions and defense mechanisms distort these cognitions, with the result that people’s ability
to describe their social-identity accurately is less than is normally the case for describing their
group- and role-identities.
These are not the only identities found in theory and research on self. Recently, for exam-
ple, some have argued that there is a separate “moral identity”9 whereby people have concep-
tions about how moral they are and how they feel about this morality. This moral identity
might be considered a component of a core-identity, but since so much research is being
conducted on this question of conscience and morality, it may become a distinctive identity
in social science typologies, if only because it has been studied as a distinct level and type of
self. But, those who make the argument for a moral identity point out that it affects all of the
other levels of identity enumerated in Figure 6.1. Time will tell on how this, and other poten-
tial candidates for a new type of identity, shake out in the theoretical literature over the next
decade.

8
In the expectation-states literature, these memberships in categoric units are conceptualized as “diffuse status
characteristics” about which there are status beliefs about the worth and characteristics of members. These trans-
late into a series of expectations for how these members of social categories should behave.
See, for example, Steven Hitlin, ed., Handbook of The Sociology of Morality (New York: Springer, 2010); Steven
9

Hitlin, Moral Selves, Evil Selves: The Social Psychology of Conscience (London, UK: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2008)
102   THEORETICAL SOCIOLOGY

Hierarchies of Salience and Prominence

Much theorizing on identities sees identity dynamics as revolving around a hierarchy of
salience and prominence. The underlying idea in these approaches is that identities consti-
tute a hierarchy of how important they are to people in how many situations. The more
people present a particular identity in situations, the higher in the hierarchy it is, and the
more important is this identity to a person. If the identity is verified and accepted by others,
it remains in the hierarchy. However, if people do not accept this identity, and consistently
so, it will move down the hierarchy and, in extreme cases, disappear. Thus, this literature
brings an important force into interaction: people seek to have others verify and confirm
those identities that are high in a hierarchical ranking of all identities. Much of what goes
on in interaction is an effort to present to others a particular identity with the hope and
expectation that others will accept this presentation and, thereby, verify this identity. Iden-
tities that get consistently verified, then, will move up and stay high in the hierarchy of
salience and prominence. At times, social-structural and cultural constraints restrict the
range of identities that can be presented to others, as might be the case in a formal office
setting, but even with these restrictions, people can often present multiple identities, and
when an identity is high in the salience hierarchy, it is sure to be one of those identities that
is added to a person’s presentation of self to others. There are some variations in theories
using this basic idea of hierarchy, and so, let me outline two of the most important theories.

Stryker’s Theory of Identity Salience

Sheldon Stryker10 argues that people become committed to identities, for a variety of rea-
sons: an identity is positively valued by others and by broader cultural definitions; it is con-
gruent with the perceived expectations of others on whom one will be dependent for identify
verification; it is an identity that is part of a more extensive network of persons who have
expectations for this identity; and it may be an identity that larger numbers of people, regard-
less of their network location, expect a person to play.
Identities to which persons have commitments move up the salience hierarchy, with the
result that individuals will emit role performances to others that are consistent with this
highly salient identity. Moreover, identities high in the salience hierarchy are likely to push
individuals to perceive that a given situation is an opportunity to present this identity; and
more generally, persons are likely to seek out situations where they can present this salient

10
Sheldon Stryker, Symbolic Interactionism: A Structural Version (Menlo Park, CA: Benjamin/Cummings, 1980);
“Identity Salience and Role Performance: The Relevance of Symbolic Interaction Theory for Family Research,”
Journal of Marriage and the Family (1968): pp. 558–564; “Fundamental Principles of Social Interaction,” in
Sociology, 2nd ed., Neil J. Smelser, ed. (New York: Wiley, 1973), pp. 495–547. For a more recent version of the
theory, see Sheldon Stryker and Richard T. Serpe, “Commitment, Identity Salience, and Role Behavior,” in
Personality, Roles, and Social Behavior, eds. William Ickes and Eric Knowles (New York: Springer-Verlag,
1982), pp. 199–218; Richard T. Serpe and Sheldon Stryker, “The Construction of Self and the Reconstruction of
Social Relationships,” Advances in Group Processes, 4 (1987): pp. 41–66; and Sheldon Stryker, “Exploring the
Relevance of Social Cognition for the Relationship of Self and Society,” in The Self-Society Dynamic: Cognition,
Emotion, and Action, eds. Judith Howard and Peter L. Callero (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991),
pp. 19–41.
 Chapter 6: Symbolic Interactionist Theorizing   103

identity. However, if the identity is not verified by others, for whatever reason, it will move
down the hierarchy.
Identities link people to structures because people are more likely to play identities that are
consistent with cultural beliefs and values, with norms in situations where they have opportu-
nities to present an identity, with networks of persons who have expectations for certain kinds
of role performances, and situations where a person is allowed to present an identity. These
pressures mean that there will generally be correspondence between identities that are highly
salient to a person and the expectations inhering in social structures and the cultures of these
structures. The self-esteem of a person is dependent upon playing a highly salient identity, and
thus self-esteem is also dependent upon meeting the expectations of networks, social struc-
tures, and culture. In this way, person, salient identity, roles displaying this identity, social
structure, and culture are lined up and generally compatible.
If the structure and culture of a situation change, however, then identity salience and commit-
ment will change, and any identity can change if it is consistent with the person’s value com-
mitments. When people experience strong negative emotions in situation, this almost always
means that there is discordance with the identity presented and situational expectations
generated by networks, social structures, and culture. Individuals will, therefore, frequently
have to alter their commitments to an identity and seek out a new identity that is compat-
ible with a situation that has changed. Thus, the emotions attached to an identity are both an
early warning system that something is amiss as well as the motivational force that pushes
individuals to find either a whole new network of relations or alter an identity. The latter is
more likely because people are generally not free to change social structures on which they
depend, and thus, an unverified identity will move down the hierarchy, and an identity more
consistent with situational expectations will move up the hierarchy.

McCall and Simmons’ Hierarchy of Prominence

George McCall and J. L. Simmons focus on role-identities.11 Role-identities are tied to roles,
and these roles are, in turn, tied to social structures and culture. While social structure and
culture constrain the roles that a person can play, and how they play these roles, there is always
a certain amount of latitude in how a person presents himself or herself to others in a situa-
tion. McCall and Simmons posit a hierarchy of prominence among various role-identities,
which consists of several elements: (a) the idealized view that individuals have of themselves
(e.g., smart, funny, intelligent, etc.) that will determine not only which role they will play but
also how they will play this role; (b) memories about the extent to which these ideal views of
self have been supported by audiences; (c) emotional commitments to those roles that, in the
past, have been supported; and (d) the amount of previous investment in time and energy for
a particular identity that has been played out in a role.
Because most interactions are somewhat underspecified about how one should behave, this
ambiguity gives individuals some flexibility in presenting roles to others. This ambiguity can be
reduced by role-taking with other individuals, and through what McCall and Simmons call an

George P. McCall and J. L. Simmons, Identities and Interactions (New York: Basic Books, 1960). A second edition
11

of this book was published in 1978, although the theory remained virtually unchanged.
104   THEORETICAL SOCIOLOGY

inner forum (or minded deliberations in G. H. Mead’s scheme), persons adjust their roles and the
identities embedded in them to accommodate others’ dispositions and likely actions, if they can.
There are always expressive strategies for orchestrating gestures in order to present a certain kind
of self to others during their role-taking, and these expressive and strategically presented gestures
will typically present a role-identity high in a person’s hierarchy of prominence.
Undergirding this strategic presentation of self is an exchange dynamic (see previous chap-
ter). There can be extrinsic rewards in a situation, such as money, and there are almost always
intrinsic rewards, such as satisfaction, pride, happiness, sense of efficacy, and role support by
others. Indeed, one of the most important intrinsic rewards is others’ support for a role-
identity that a person presents, and individuals are highly motivated to secure this support
because it offers the most reward for presenting a role-identity. There is, McCall and Simmons
argue, a kind of marketplace for exchanges of rewards, and like any exchange in a quasi mar-
kets, individuals try to exchange similar rewards that allow both parties to an interaction to
realize a profit—rewards less costs and investments in securing roles. There is also always a
calculation of fairness and justice that determines if rewards given to each person are propor-
tional to their respective costs and investments in a particular role-identity.
McCall and Simmons distinguish between situated self and ideal self. A situated self is the
role-identity to which a person is committed in a situation and is most likely to present to
others. The elements of a situated self will vary, depending upon the situation where indi-
viduals can have somewhat different hierarchies of prominence. The ideal self, like G. H.
Mead’s self-conception or core-self (see Figure 6.1 above) is more permanent and is almost
always present in self-presentations; and thus, this ideal self is generally the self that is high-
est in the prominence hierarchy. This self, then, is the most salient identity, and individuals
fill in elements of other role-identities around this ideal self.
Finally, McCall and Simmons anticipate more psychoanalytically oriented symbolic interac-
tionist approaches by noting that when a self-presentation is not fully accepted by others, indi-
viduals will engage in defensive strategies to protect themselves. They list a number of potential
strategies: (1) selective perception of others’ gestures so as to ensure identity verification and sup-
port; (2) selective interpretation of others’ gestures; (3) disavowal of a performance as not truly
indicative to self and disavowal of the audience as not important or relevant to self-evaluation; and
(4) riding out the temporary incongruity between sense of self and others’ evaluations of self by
drawing upon past memories in which the self presented has indeed been verified. These defensive
strategies will not always work, but they can allow individuals to get through situations where self
is not perceived to have been verified by others. Since support and verification of a role-identity
are the most valuable intrinsic rewards for individuals, emotions run high in the process of mutual
role-taking and presentation of role-identities; and so it is not surprising that individuals seek to
protect self from painful negative emotions like shame.

Emotions, Defensive Strategies, and Defense Mechanisms

A basic principle in all symbolic interactionist theorizing about identity is this: When an
identity goes unverified by others, persons will experience powerful negative emotions and be
motivated to bring the identity presented and the responses of others back in line, or
­congruity. McCall and Simmons emphasize adjustments to role behaviors as well as defensive
 Chapter 6: Symbolic Interactionist Theorizing   105

strategies. Another theory that has addressed this issue is Peter J. Burkes’ and, at times, Jan E.
Stets’ Identity Control Theory.12

Burke’ and Stets’ Identity Control Theory

Peter Burke first developed this approach to identity dynamics, and he and Jan E. Stets have
recently expanded the theory.13 The basic argument is that individuals have multiple identities
that are only loosely arranged in a hierarchy. Using the identity levels in Figure 6.1, they posit
that people evidence a person-level identity or what is also called core-identity in the figure,
a number of social-identities, and many potential role-identities. For each of these identities
there is what they term a comparator, which is an identity standard against which the behav-
iors of a person and the responses of others are compared to see if indeed behavioral outputs
by a person and role-taking inputs subject to reflective appraisal meet identity standards. If
they do, then a person experiences positive emotions and continues to play out an identity. If,
however, there is a lack of congruence between the comparator, on the one hand, and behav-
ioral outputs of the individual, inputs of people’ reaction to behavioral outputs, and reflective
appraisal, on the other, then a person will experience negative emotions such as distress,
anxiety, sadness, shame, and other negative emotions about self.
Humans are cybernetic organisms in that they seek to sustain an equilibrium for each iden-
tity. Thus, when an identity goes unverified, and a person experiences negative emotions, this
individual will work to restore the balance by (a) adjusting behavioral outputs that allows oth-
ers to verify the identity and (b) presenting a new identity with a different identity standards
and comparator. There is of course an alternative, not part of Burke and Stet’s theory: invoke
one of the defensive strategies suggested by McCall and Simmons—selective perception and
interpretation of others’ responses, disavowal of the audience’s right to evaluate a set of behav-
ioral outputs, or disavowal the behavioral outputs as indicative a person’s self. This is about as
far as most identity theories will go, but another, much smaller group of symbolic interaction-
ists emphasizes repression and use of more powerful defense mechanisms to sustain, at the
least, a sense of equilibrium. But, once emotions are repressed, the dynamics of self change
significantly. Repressed emotions will often transmute to other negative emotions, and indi-
vidual will no longer have full cognitive access to the original repressed feelings, with the result
that this person’s actual behaviors may not correspond to self-perceptions of these behaviors.
Moreover, others’ evaluation of these behaviors will be difficult to interpret because these oth-
ers may be reacting to emotional cues about which the person has little awareness.

Peter J. Burke, “The Self: Measurement Implications from a Symbolic Interactionist Perspective,” Social
12

Psychology Quarterly 43 (1980): pp. 18–20; “An Identity Model for Network Exchange,” American Sociological
Review 62 (1997): pp. 134–150; “Attitudes, Behavior, and the Self,” in The Self-Society Dynamic, eds. Judith
Howard and Peter L. Callero (cited in note 10), pp. 189–208, “Identity Processes and Social Stress,” American
Sociological Review 56 (1991): pp. 836–849; P. J. Burke and D. C. Reitzes, “An Identity Theory Approach to
Commitment,” Social Psychology Quarterly 54 (1991): pp. 239–251; P. J. Burke and Jan E. Stets, “Trust and
Commitment through Self Verification,” Social Psychology Quarterly 62 (1999): pp. 347–366; and Peter J.
Burke and Jan E. Stets, Identity Theory (New York: Oxford University Press).
Peter J. Burke and Jan E. Stets, Identity Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
13
106   THEORETICAL SOCIOLOGY

Thus, in Burke’s (and Stet’s) theory, the more salient an identity in a role, the more motivated
are individuals to achieve a sense of congruence between the expectations established by the
identity standard and the responses of others in a situation. When the responses of others match
the expectations dictated by an identity standard, the more positive are the emotions experi-
enced by individuals and the greater is their level of self-esteem. People experience enhanced
positive emotions when self is verified by others; and as a result, they develop positive emotions,
trust, and commitments to these others. In contrast, the less responses of others match an iden-
tity standard, the more likely are the emotions experienced by individuals to be negative, with
such incongruence between expectations set by an identity standard and the responses of others
increasing when individuals have (a) multiple and incompatible identity standards from two or
more role-identities, (b) an over-controlled self in which the elements of the identity are tightly
woven into inflexible identity standards, (c) little practice in displaying an identity in a role, and
(d) consistent failure in their efforts to change and/or leave the situation.
The intensity of negative emotions from these failures to verify an identity increases with (a)
the salience of an identity in the situation, (b) the significance of the others who have not
verified an identity, and (c) the degree of incongruity whether above or below expectations
associated with an identity standard. In contrast, the intensity of negative emotions from the
failure to verify an identity will decrease over time as the identity standard is readjusted down-
ward so as to lower expectations, thereby making congruence between identity standards and
reflected appraisals of people’s response to behavior output. Yet, like so many symbolic interac-
tionist approaches, the Burke-Stets model does not consider another way to create congruence:
repression of the negative emotions aroused when an identity is not verified or supported by
others. This oversight has called for more psychoanalytical theories.

Psychoanalytic Symbolic Interactionist Theories

Thomas Scheff and Jonathan Turner are the most prominent theorists who have blended iden-
tity theories from symbolic interactionism with the basic argument of psychoanalytical theory. The
general line of argument is that when interpersonal behaviors lead individuals to experience
shame, persons often repress in some way this very painful emotion. When they do so, the person
no longer has direct access to this shame but will experience other emotions such as anger and will
act in ways that further disrupt interpersonal processes. The important point is that people often
protect self by repressing negative emotions—shame but also other emotions like anger, guilt,
humiliation, frustration, etc.—that signal incongruity between people’s presentations of self and
others’ negative responses to efforts to get this self verified. Let me first review Scheff ’s theory.

Scheff on Pride, Shame, and Interpersonal Attunement

One of the great shortcomings of George Herbert Mead’s synthesis is that emotions are
not examined. The potential to address emotions surrounding self and identity was there
in the sources of Mead’s synthesis; indeed, Charles Horton Cooley14 emphasized that
people have feelings about themselves as they read the gestures of others in role-taking.

Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order (full citation in note 4).
14
 Chapter 6: Symbolic Interactionist Theorizing   107

For Cooley, people are in a constant state of low-level pride and shame, depending upon
what they “see” in the looking glass. When the gestures of others signal that a person has
behaved properly, this person will experience mild levels of pride. But, when the gestures
of others signal that a person has acted inappropriately, the negative feelings about self will
revolve around various levels of shame.
Symbolic interactionists who have followed Cooley as much as Mead have generally been
sympathetic to psychoanalytic theorizing because, as Sigmund Freud15 emphasized, negative
emotions like shame and guilt are painful, and individuals will often invoke defense mecha-
nisms to protect self. Thomas Scheff has for many decades been the most persistent advocate
of incorporating at least elements of psychoanalytical theory into symbolic interactionism,
although he has been reluctant to characterize his theory as I have (that is, as “psychoanalytic”).
Scheff16 adopts Cooley’s view that humans are in a constant state of self-feeling, particularly
with respect to pride and shame. This state of self-feeling is an outcome of the fact that people
are also in a constant state of self-evaluation, even when they are alone and think back on situ-
ations; in addition, as they evaluate themselves in situations, they will experience either pride
or shame. Pride is a positive emotion that verifies self and thus generates a sense of well-being;
moreover, pride generally makes individuals more attuned to others and more willing to offer
supportive responses to these others. Thus, pride is a key mechanism by which strong social
bonds and social solidarity are generated in face-to-face encounters and, ultimately, in societ-
ies. In contrast, shame is a negative emotion and, if unrecognized by a person, leads to a loss of
attunement with others and, if widespread among many others, in a society as a whole.
Thus, pride and shame not only have consequences for individuals’ self-feelings; they also
affect attunement in social relations and, potentially, the viability of larger-scale social struc-
tures, including the society as a whole. Pride and shame, Scheff argues, are emotions that are
essential to the social order; and yet, they are virtually invisible, for several reasons. One is
that they are generally experienced at relatively low levels of intensity. Another is that they can
be repressed to a certain degree—pride because a person does not want to reveal “too much”
pride to others (less they see it as vanity) or too much shame to others and to oneself. Another
reason for the apparent invisibility of shame is that it is often repressed. Scheff borrows from
the psychoanalyst, Helen Lewis,17 to emphasize that shame is often unacknowledged, denied,
or repressed. When such is the case, a shame-anger cycle can be initiated in which shame is
transmuted to anger, with each outburst of anger causing more shame that is denied in ways
escalating the intensity of the next outburst of anger.
Following Lewis, Scheff emphasizes that one path to denying shame is through the expe-
rience of overt, undifferentiated shame, in which the person has painful feelings that come
with shame but hides from the real source of these feelings: shame. The shame is disguised

15
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (London: Hogarth Press, 1900).
16
For examples of Scheff ’s work, see “Shame and Conformity: The Deference-Emotion System,” American Sociological
Review 53 (1988): pp. 395–406; “Socialization of Emotion: Pride and Shame as Causal Agents,” in Research Agendas
in The Sociology of Emotions, ed. T. Kemper (Albany, NY: SUNY Press), pp. 281–304; “Shame and the Social Bond: A
Sociological Theory,” Sociological Theory 18 (2000): pp. 84–99; “Shame and Community: Social Components in
Depression,” Psychiatry 64 (2001): pp. 212–224; “Shame and Self in Society,” Symbolic Interaction 26 (2002):
pp. 239–262.
17
Helen Lewis, Shame and Guilt in Neurosis (New York: International Universities Press, 1971).
108   THEORETICAL SOCIOLOGY

by words and gestures signaling feelings other than shame. People can blush, slow their
speech, lower the auditory levels of their voices, and utter such words as “foolish,” “silly,”
stupid,” and other such labels that denote negative feelings but hide that fact that these feel-
ings have arisen because of shame.
Another path to denying the shame is to bypass the shame. When this defense mechanism is
employed, individuals engage in hyperactive behavior such as rapid speech and demonstrative
gesturing before the shame can be fully experienced for what it is. The result is for individuals to
avoid the pain of shame but at a high cost of having to live with unacknowledged shame that, in
turn, will often disrupt social relations.
Later, Scheff began to term these two paths to denial of shame underdistancing (overt,
undifferentiated) and overdistancing (bypassed) shame. In both cases, the shame is repressed
from conscious awareness and, ultimately, leads to anger and hostility that, in turn, disrupt
interpersonal attunement. Without attunement, it is difficult for individuals to develop
mutual respect and solidarity. In Figure 6.2, I have drawn out Scheff ’s underlying model.
Across the top of the figure, the receipt of deference from others leads to positive self-evalua-
tions and a sense of pride, which encourages interpersonal attunement, mutual respect, and
social solidarity. It is the dynamics below this top row of processes that is the cause of problems
for persons and, potentially, larger-scale social structures. When individuals perceive that oth-
ers exhibit a lack of deference, they experience negative self-evaluations that cause shame. If,
however, the shame can be “acknowledged” and seen for what it is, it can lead to efforts at
interpersonal attunement between a person and others, ultimately causing mutual respect, and
social solidarity. When the same is denied by overdistancing or underdistancing, it can initiate
the anger-shame cycle that ensures that individuals will lack proper deference to others and
perceive a lack of deference from others. In turn, the negative evaluations will cause shame that,
if acknowledged at this point, can perhaps lead to attunement and mutual respect, but if the
anger-shame cycle becomes habitual, then the denial of shame only stokes the emotional hos-
tility that sustains the cycle at the bottom of Figure 6.2.
Figure 6.3 outlines some of the more macrostructural implications of the anger-shame cycle
outlined in Figure 6.2.18 If social structures and the culture in the broader society systematically
generate shame, as is often the case when relations are hierarchical, but at the same time,
impose prohibitions against acknowledging shame, societies can reveal the potential for collec-
tive violence. If enough persons in enough encounters over long periods of time are forced to
endure shame but cannot acknowledge it but, instead, must repress their shame, the lack of
interpersonal attunement and the shame–anger–more shame–more hostility cycle is sustained,
individuals in this state can be mobilized for collective action, often of a highly violent nature.
Thus, if the experience of shame is widespread and if cultural prohibitions inhibit individuals
from acknowledging their shame, denial of this negative emotion can become an emotional
powder keg in a society. Events at the micro-interpersonal level can, therefore, have far reach-
ing consequences for the stability of macrostructural formations and their cultures.

See for examples of work on conflict and violence from repressed shame the following: Thomas J. Scheff and
18

Suzanne M. Retzinger, Emotions and Violence: Shame and Rage in Destructive Conflicts (Lexington, MA: Lexington
Books, 1991). For an example of work arguing much the same as Scheff from a psychiatrist, see Vamik Volkan,
Killing in the Name of Identity: A Study in Bloody Conflicts (Charlottesville, VA: Pitchstone Press, 2006), Bloodlines:
From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism (Charlottesville, VA: Pitchstone Press, 1999).
 Figure 6.2   Scheff’s Model of Emotions, Attunement, and Solidarity

+ + +

Perception of Positive self + Mutual respect

+ + Arousal Interpersonal + +
deference by evaluation between self Social solidity
of pride “attunement” with others
person by person and others
+ −

Efforts of alter
+ behaviors of self or
Individual’s perception reactions of others
of the responses
of others
Acknowledgment of
shame arousal
Over-distancing
if:
+
+

Perception of a Negative self +

+ + Arousal of Repression/ Agression/
lack of deference evaluation hostility
shame denial of shame
from others by person
+
+
Under-distancing

+ = has positive effect on − = has negative effect on

109
110
Figure 6.3 Scheff‘s Model of Emotions, Macrostructures, and Potential for Collective Violence

Cultural norms and

taboos against the
expression of shame
+
+
+ +
Hierarchical + Encounters marked + + Lack of + Potential for
Diffuse
social by arousal and interpersonal collective
hostility
structures repression of shame attunement violence
+ +
+ +
Cultural norms and
prohibitions against
acknowledging of
shame
 Chapter 6: Symbolic Interactionist Theorizing   111

Jonathan Turner’s Theory of Transactional Needs

As part of my general theory of microdynamic processes,19 I see transactional needs as a
critical force in human interaction. Humans have certain fundamental need-states that, to
varying degrees, are always activated when individuals interact. These are transactional needs
in two senses: First, some of these needs and typically all of them are activated during interac-
tion; and second, success or failure in meeting these needs dramatically affects the flow of
interaction. Here, I will only focus on the most important need in this hierarchy of need-states:
the need to verify the identities making up self. As Figure 6.1 on page 100 summarizes, I have
come to visualize self as composed of four fundamental identities, although people can prob-
ably have an identity about almost anything. For example, as noted earlier, recently there has
been great interest in people’s moral identities or the extent to which, and the arenas into
which, people see themselves as “moral.” Still, the most central identities are (1) core-identity,
or the fundamental cognitions and feelings that people have about themselves that are gener-
ally salient in almost all situations (some have termed this person-identity); (2) social-identities,
or the cognitions and feelings that people have of themselves as members of social categories (for
example, gender, sexual preference, ethnicity, class, or any social category) that define people as
distinctive and that generally lead to differential evaluation of memberships in social catego-
ries; (3) group-identities, or cognitions and feelings about self that stem from membership in,
or identification with, corporate units revealing divisions of labor (groups, communities, and
organizations being the most likely sources of a group identity); and (4) role-identities or the
roles that people play in any social context, but particularly the roles associated with member-
ship in the divisions of labor in corporate units and, at times, memberships in social categories
or what I term categoric units.20 I am skeptical that there is a neat linear hierarchy of promi-
nence or salience among identities, as is posited by most identity theories, but I do believe that
some are more general than others, as was summarized in Figure 6.1.
The dynamics of identities reveal many of the cybernetic processes outlined in Burke’s theory.
People orchestrate their behaviors in an effort to verify any or all of the four identities in a situ-
ation; if others signal their acceptance of an identity or identities, a person will experience posi-
tive emotions from satisfaction at the lower-intensity end to joy and pride at the higher-intensity
end of positive emotions. In contrast, if an identity is not verified, individuals will experience
negative emotions such as anger, fear, embarrassment, shame, guilt, and many other negative
emotions. When people become aware of their negative emotions, these emotions signal to them
that, a la Stryker’s argument, something has gone wrong in the presentation of self and that,

19
See, for examples, my A Theory of Social Interaction (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988); Face-to-Face and
Theoretical Principles of Sociology, Volume 2 on Microdynamics (cited in note 7); Human Emotions: A Sociological Theory
(London: Routledge, 2008); “Toward a Theory of Embedded Encounters,” Advances in Group Processes 17 (2000): pp.
285–322; Jonathan H. Turner and Jan E. Stets, “The Moral Emotions,” in Handbook of The Sociology of Emotions, Jan E.
Stets and Jonathan H. Turner, eds. (New York: Springer, 2006), pp. 544–568; Jonathan H. Turner, “Emotions and Social
Structure: Toward a General Theory,” in Emotions and Social Structure, D. Robinson and J. Clay-Warner, eds. (New York:
Elsevier, 2008), pp. 319–342; Jonathan Turner, “Self, Emotions, and Extreme Violence: Extending Symbolic Interactionist
Theorizing,” Symbolic Interaction 30 (2008): pp. 275–30l; “Toward A Theory of Interpersonal Processes,” in Sociological
Social Psychology, J. Chin and J. Cardell, eds. (Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 2008), pp. 65–95; Jonathan Turner,
“Identities, Emotions, and Interaction Processes,” Symbolic Interaction 34 (2011): 330–339.
20
See Turner, Face-to-Face and Theoretical Principles of Sociology, volume 2 (both cited in note 7).
112   THEORETICAL SOCIOLOGY

f­ollowing Burke’s theory, motivates individuals to re-appraise their behavior and modify their
actions so as to secure verification of an identity. But, these dynamics only unfold if a person
becomes fully aware that an identity has not been verified.
As McCall and Simons suggest, people often invoke a variety of “defensive strategies” to pro-
tect self from this fate. People can engage in selective perception and/or interpretation of the
responses of others; they often disavow the audience that has rejected their claims to verification;
and they often leave situations where they cannot have identities confirmed by others. Yet, I do
not think that McCall and Simons go far enough; people often repress the negative emotions
that have come from failure to verify an identity. They simply push these feelings below the level
of consciousness and do not feel them consciously, although the emotions may still be evident
to others or become transmuted to a new, often more volatile negative emotion that others must
endure. Thus, true defense mechanisms break the cybernetic cycle outlined by Burke and
implied in other identity theories. The break prevents individuals from accurate “reflected
appraisals” among their identity standard, behaviors, and others responses to behaviors.
In Table 6.1, I enumerate various types of defense mechanisms, seeing repression as the master
mechanism that removes emotions from consciousness; then, additional types of defense mech-
anism may be subsequently activated: displacement (venting emotions directed at self on others),
projection [imputing the repressed emotion(s) to other(s)], sublimation (converting negative
emotions into positive emotional energy), reaction formation (converting intense negative emo-
tions into positive emotions directed at others who caused the negative emotion), and attribu-
tion (imputing the source cause of emotional reactions). The first five defense mechanisms
are those often posited by those working in the psychoanalytic tradition, while the last—
attribution—comes from cognitive psychology (and earlier, from Gestalt psychology).
Attribution is generally not considered a defense mechanism, but I think that it may be the most
sociologically important mechanism. People make attributions for their experiences, and they
generally make self-attributions (that is, see themselves as responsible) when experiencing positive

Table 6.1 Repression, Defense, Transmutation, and Targeting Emotions

Defense Transmutation
Repressed Emotions Mechanism to Target
anger, sadness, fear displacement anger others, corporate units
shame, guilt, and alienation and categoric units
anger, sadness, fear, projection little, but some imputation of anger, sadness, fear,
shame, guilt, and alienation anger shame or guilt to dispositional state
of others
anger, sadness, fear, reaction positive others, corporate units, categoric
shame, guilt, and alienation formation emotions units
anger, sadness, fear, sublimation positive tasks in corporate units
shame, guilt, and alienation emotions
anger, sadness, fear attribution anger others, corporate units, categoric
shame, guilt, and alienation units
 Chapter 6: Symbolic Interactionist Theorizing   113

emotions, whereas with negative emotions, they may blame others, categories of others, and social
structures in an effort to protect self from having negative self-feelings.
This proximal bias for positive emotions to be attributed to self or others in the immediate situ-
ation and the distal bias for negative emotions to target more remote objects as responsible for these
negative feelings have important implications for people’s commitment to others and social struc-
tures. People feel positive emotions about themselves and perhaps immediate others when experi-
encing the positive emotions that come with identity verification. They feel that they have been
positively sanctioned and have met situational expectations, and in so doing, they feel good about
themselves because their identity or identities have been verified. In contrast, when people have not
met expectations, have been negatively sanctioned, and hence have failed to confirm an identity in
a situation, the negative emotions aroused, such as shame, are too painful and are repressed; then
more remote social units, such as members of a social category or the social structures of a corpo-
rate unit, are blamed for their feelings. In this way, despite feeling negative emotions, a person can
protect self by seeing objects outside of self as causally responsible for his or her negative feelings.
These negative emotions generate prejudices against members of social categories (by gender, eth-
nicity, religious affiliation, for example) and alienation and/or loss of commitment to social struc-
tures. In contrast, positive emotions increase commitments to others and situations.
Yet, if emotions have these proximal and distal biases, how are more remote objects, such as
social structures, to be the targets of commitments by individuals when self-verification, meet-
ing expectations, and receiving positive sanctions from others activate the proximal bias—
thereby, remaining local, tied to encounters at the micro level of social organizations? What
would allow for positive emotions to break the centripetal force of the proximal bias built into
attribution processes? My answer is that when people consistently experience positive emotions
in particular types of situations, they begin to make attributions to the larger social structures
in which these situations are embedded. As they do so, they develop positive feelings about,
and commitments to, these structures because they see these structures as causally responsible
for the verification of self and the positive feelings that arise from identity verification.
In this manner, consistent self-verification will ultimately lead to commitments to those
social structures in which encounters have aroused the positive emotions that come with self-
verification. And, the more identities that are verified, the greater will these commitments
ultimately be. Indeed, if a group-identity with particular types of corporate units or even a
whole society did not already exist, it is likely to form when individuals validate other identi-
ties within a particular type of social structure. And to the extent that other identities are tied
to roles in divisions of labor and are verified in encounters within this division of labor, iden-
tity dynamics become the underlying force behind commitments to this social structure and
perhaps the larger institutional domain in which this structure is lodged. For example, a good
student who has consistently been rewarded and had the role-identity of student verified will,
over time, develop commitments to successive schools and eventually the entire institutional
domain of education (compare my argument with Lawler et al., pp. 86–91, whose exchange
theory is very much like my theory from entirely different sources and traditions).
In this way, forces like transactional needs for verification of self can have large effects
on more macro-level social structures, and vice versa. Macrostructures that set people up for
success in verifying role-identities and any other identities tied to these roles in groups
and organizations will reap what they sow: commitments from individuals. And these
114   THEORETICAL SOCIOLOGY

c­ ommitments may eventually move to the institutional domains or whole society in which
these groups and organizations are embedded.

Conclusion
Symbolic interactionism has carried the synthesis of George Herbert Mead into the twenty-
first century, and in so doing, it has come to emphasize the importance of identities in interac-
tion and the dynamics revolving around individuals’ efforts to have their identities verified.
But, as is evident with Stryker’s, McCall and Simons’, Burke and Stets’, Scheff ’s, and my theo-
ries, there has also been a serious effort to connect these identity dynamics to social structures
and cultures. Identities can only be played out within the confines of culture and structure,
which set limits on which identities can be presented in what manner; and once the verifica-
tion of identities becomes tied to social structure and culture, they can operate to sustain and
reinforce social structures. Identities that are not viable in a situation will move down the
hierarchy of salience or prominence, and new identities more compatible with structure and
culture will move up, thus increasing congruence among self, social structure, and culture in
a society.
In more psychoanalytic oriented theories, the arousal of negative emotions around self-
presentations to others, the negative emotions experienced when others do not verify self or
accept particular lines of behavior more generally, lead a person to experience negative emo-
tions like shame, which if not fully acknowledged and/or if repressed will transmute into other
emotions and associated behaviors that break the social bond. Once the social bond is broken,
interactions become disruptive and destroy group solidarity. When emotions are repressed,
they often transmute into anger and other negative emotions that disrupt interaction and
ensure that persons will have trouble verifying their identities, which only leads to more
negative emotions.
Emotions aroused at the level of interpersonal behavior are subject to attributions by indi-
viduals as to who or what causes these emotions. Positive emotions lead to positive sanctions
toward others and, typically, stay local in the situations where they were first aroused. Nega-
tive emotions tend to be more distal because of the effects of repression to protect self. When
negative emotions are repressed, they often transmute into anger and anger-driven cognitive
states like prejudice that target social structures, culture, and categories of others—thereby
protecting self and the local situation. Thus, many macro-level processes, such as conflict,
ethnic violence, and mass mobilizations of angry persons can be often tied to what people
have experienced at the level of interaction and in their efforts to get identities verified.
Verification of identities consistently across situations begins to break the proximal bias of
positive emotions, causing people to make external attributions to local groups, and then the
larger social structures in which groups are almost always embedded. This embedding generates
conduits for positive emotions to move outward to macrostructures and potentially the whole
society, creating commitments and legitimacy for macrostructures built ultimately from indi-
viduals at the micro level to verify key identities across many diverse micro-level interactions.
Thus, theoretical sociology has taken Mead’s ideas considerably beyond his original formu-
lation, and so we can conclude by outlining the basic elements of symbolic interactionism as
it has developed over the last one-hundred years.
 Chapter 6: Symbolic Interactionist Theorizing   115

1. Individuals are born into ongoing social activity constrained by social structures
and regulated by culture. Individuals will learn and retain in their behavioral reper-
toire those behaviors that facilitate adaptation to ongoing patterns of cooperative
behavior.
2. The first critical behavioral capacity that individuals learn is conventional gestures that
carry the same meaning for the person sending and receiving communication. Such
capacities are adaptive because they allow individuals to effectively communicate their
needs and intentions.
3. With the adaptive capacity for using conventional gestures, individuals acquire the
capacity to role take with other and to place themselves in the role of these others and
to determine their perspective on, and likely course of action in, a situation, and thereby,
to cooperate with these others in ongoing coordinated activity. Over time, the ability to
role take expands so that individuals can role take with
A. Multiple others at the same time engaged in coordinated activities
B. Others who are not present in the situation
C. Generalized others that personify values, beliefs, attitudes, and perspectives of situa-
tions, groups, organizations, communities, institutional domains, and even the entire
society
4. With role-taking comes the capacity for mind, or the ability to imagine alternative
courses of action, to visualize their likely consequences in a situation, and to select that
course of action that will best facilitate cooperation with others.
5. With the capacity for (2), (3), and (4) above, individuals acquire the ability to see them-
selves as an object in a situation, to read and interpret the gestures of others for what
they say about a person’s presentation of self, to evaluate self from the perspective of
others and generalized others, and to derive images and conceptions of themselves in a
situation.
6. These images of self will, over time, crystallize into conceptions of self that make up a
series of identities that, in turn, individuals seek to verify in their interactions with oth-
ers. These identities can develop along several basic dimensions:
A. Core- or person-identity, which is the more permanent and stable cognitions and emo-
tions that persons feel about themselves in all situations
B. Social-identities, which are those conceptions, evaluations, and emotions of self
tied to memberships in social categories that are salient in a situation and, more
broadly, in a society
C. Group-identities, which are conceptions of self and states of emotional arousal tied to
identification with, or membership in, groups, organizations, and communities
D. Role-identities, which are conceptions of self and emotions of self arising from incum-
bency in social structures and playing roles in this structure
7. Identities can be arranged into hierarchies of prominence and salience, which determine
how often, when, and where a particular identity will be presented to others.
116   THEORETICAL SOCIOLOGY

8. Identities are one of the most powerful motivating forces in human action because all
identities in all situations are presented with an eye to having others verify the identity
A. When identities are verified by others, individuals will experience positive emotions,
positively sanction others, and develop commitments to others and the situation
B. When identities are not verified by others, individuals will experience negative emo-
tions and seek to bring their identity presentations and reactions of others into con-
gruence through a number of ways:
1. Adjusting behaviors so that others will verify an identity
2. Changing the identity presented to others
3. Avoiding situations where identities are not verified
4. Engaging in defensive strategies, including the following:
a. Selective perception of the responses of others
b. Selective interpretation of the responses of others
c. Disavowing behaviors that led to a failure to verify self
d. Disavowing the audience as having the right to evaluate self
e. Using credits from past experiences where identity was verified to ride out a
particular situations where it was not
f. Repressing negative emotions associated with failure to verify self
9. Verification or failure to verify self at any identity level can have repercussions for per-
son’s commitments to others, situation, and broader social structure, depending upon
the attributions that individuals make for their emotional experiences
A. When self and identities are verified, individuals develop positive emotions for self and
others and commitments to others and the local situation
B. When self and identities are verified consistently across a larger number of situations
within a variety of institutional domains in a society, individuals will experience
positive emotions that will begin to target macrostructures and, thereby, lead them
to develop commitments to more macro social structures and their cultures
C. When self and identities are not verified, individuals will generally make more exter-
nal attributions to categories of others and external social structures rather than to
self or others in the local situation and, in so doing, lower their commitments to
these external social structures
10. Patterns of social organization and culture constrain individuals are created, sustained,
and changed by individuals revealing the above behavioral capacities, with verification
of self leading to commitments that sustain social structure and culture and with fail-
ure to verify self leading to negative emotions targeting external social structures and their
cultures. Thus, the positive emotions arising for verification of self sustain and legiti-
mate social structures, whereas the negative emotions arising from failure to verify self
can lead to change in social structure and cultures when sufficient numbers of indi-
viduals have such negative emotional experiences.