social behaviorism

Meaning: Mead held that the self is not present at birth. It emerges from social experience, as a person learns to view themselves as an object by taking the perspective of others (role-taking), using language and symbols. He divided the self into the "I", the spontaneous, active response, and the "me", the internalized expectations of society.

Mead described three stages: Preparatory stage: the child imitates others without understanding the meaning. Play stage: the child takes on one role at a time, usually a significant other such as a parent. Game stage: the child holds several roles at once and understands the generalized other, the shared attitudes of the community.

On the MCAT: A passage may describe a child pretending to be a firefighter, or a child on a team who must anticipate several teammates at once, and ask which stage is shown. Questions also link Mead to symbolic interactionism, or compare him with Cooley's looking-glass self, in which we imagine how others see and judge us.

Common confusion: Despite the name, this is not Skinner's behaviorism, which explains behavior through reinforcement and punishment. Mead's focus is how the self forms through symbolic interaction. Within his stages, the significant other belongs to the play stage, while the generalized other marks the game stage.