Abstract
This paper is an attempt to examine G.H. Mead's Social Behaviorism, and, by this examination, to clarify his approach to the process of interaction in his conception of social behaviorism.
G.H. Mead's social behaviorism is known as “an approach to the study of the experience of the individual from the point of view of his conduct, particularly, but not exclusively, the conduct as it is observed by others”, as explained by himself in 'Mind, Self, & Society'. Although it has been emphasized through some discussions in recent years to realize the importance of the conception of social behaviorism in understanding the works of him on the whole, what the importance is, and what the implications are seem to remain questions.
Getting close to his well-known concept of the self, we can see his illustrating the process of interaction between individuals in terms of 'stimulus' and 'response', which are the key concepts of 'Behaviorism' first advocated by J.B. Watson. Mead, criticising Watson's methodology of behaviorism, does make use of behaviorism in his own way. But by insisting on such 'behaviorism', Mead doesn't insist on investigation into the inner experience of the individual which he thinks was inadequetely denied by Watson, nor takes over or extends the methodology of the objective observation of human behaviors, which was required by Watson seeking to make psychology a natural science. Mead's behaviorism is never a mere alternative to Watson's as the latter is to introspective psychology in respect of methodological concerns. Social behaviorism is more than an insistence on a methodology.
By demonstration of these different implications of Mead's 'social behaviorism' and Watson's 'behaviorism' as regards such concepts as 'act', 'observation', 'others', and 'acting individuals', of both behaviorisms, we are going to see that social behaviorism is the perspective that gets into view of us the process of interaction between individuals, which would be one of the most important subjects of Mead to be studied.
