An interactionist believes that behavior and social reality arise from the continuous interplay between an individual’s internal characteristics and the external environment. This perspective moves past the simplistic “nature versus nurture” debate by asserting that neither personal traits nor external factors alone determine human action or societal function. Instead, it proposes that human experience is a product of a dynamic, ongoing relationship where the individual and the world constantly shape one another. This viewpoint forms the foundation for theories spanning both sociology and psychology, offering a unified way to understand complexity in human action.
The Core Principle of Reciprocal Causation
The interactionist view is founded on the concept of reciprocal causation, which describes a continuous feedback loop among three elements. Psychologist Albert Bandura articulated this as triadic reciprocal determinism: personal factors, behavior, and the environment all mutually influence one another. Personal factors include cognitive elements like beliefs, expectations, and emotional states, while the environment covers the physical and social context. Behavior is the resulting action or response, which then feeds back to alter the person and the environment.
This idea challenges the notion of linear cause and effect. For example, a person with high self-efficacy (a personal factor) is more likely to seek out challenging environments, and success in that environment (behavior) will further reinforce their initial belief. Conversely, a restrictive environment can limit behavioral choices, which may lead to negative beliefs about one’s own capability, creating a self-perpetuating cycle. Reciprocal causation thus provides a framework for understanding how individuals are active participants in creating the circumstances to which they respond.
Symbolic Interactionism: Meaning and Shared Reality
Symbolic Interactionism is the most recognized sociological application of the interactionist framework, focusing on how individuals create social reality through face-to-face exchanges. This micro-level theory posits that human interaction is mediated by symbols, such as gestures, language, or objects that carry a shared meaning. The meaning of these symbols is not inherent; it is collectively negotiated and interpreted during social interaction. Through this process, individuals develop common understandings that form the basis of social life.
People act toward things—whether objects, other people, or concepts—based on the meanings they have ascribed to them. For instance, the symbolic meaning of a wedding ring or a traffic signal dictates behavior toward those items. These shared understandings are how social constructs, such as money, deviance, or gender roles, are created and sustained. Reality is therefore understood to be socially constructed, existing because people define it as such through continuous interaction.
The theory also contributes the idea that the “self” emerges from social interaction, often related to Charles Horton Cooley’s “looking-glass self.” Individuals develop their self-concept by imagining how others perceive them and interpreting the reactions of those around them. This means a person’s identity is not a fixed, internal entity but is constantly shaped and renegotiated based on social interactions. Theorists like George Herbert Mead and Herbert Blumer were instrumental in detailing how this meaning-making leads to the formation of the individual self and the larger social order.
The Person-Situation Dynamic in Psychology
The interactionist perspective in psychology resolves the historical debate between personality psychologists, who emphasized internal traits, and social psychologists, who focused on external situations. This resolution is rooted in the dynamic Person-Situation interaction model, summarized by Kurt Lewin’s formula: Behavior (B) is a function of the Person (P) and the Environment (E), or $B = f(P, E)$. The formula indicates that behavior is not the sum of person and situation effects, but a product of their interaction.
This dynamic means the effect of a personality trait on behavior depends entirely on the situation. For example, an aggressive person might not display this trait in a calm, low-stakes environment. However, under specific high-pressure conditions, such as intense competition or public challenge, that person may exhibit aggressive behavior. The situation acts as a trigger, determining whether and how strongly a personal characteristic is expressed.
Psychologists also examine this dynamic through “if-then” behavioral signatures. This concept suggests that personality is defined by the consistent pattern of variation in behavior across different situations, not by a single, constant trait. A person’s unique response—acting aggressively if insulted, but remaining calm if ignored—demonstrates that behavior is predictable only when both the person and the specific situational context are considered. This integrated model is used to understand the consistency and variability of human actions.