1800s: Martineau · Tocqueville · Marx · Spencer · Le Bon · Ward · Pareto · Tönnies · Veblen · Simmel · Durkheim · Addams · Mead · Weber · Du Bois · Mannheim · Elias In micro-sociology, interactionism is a theoretical perspective that sees social behavior as an interactive product of the individual and the situation.
Interactionism thus argues that the individual is an active and conscious piece of the social-context system, rather than merely a passive object in their environment.
[5] George Herbert Mead, as an advocate of pragmatism and the subjectivity of social reality, is considered a leader in the development of interactionism.
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.
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.
Statistics allows cause-and-effect to be shown,[citation needed] as well as isolating variables so that relationships and trends can be distinguished over time.
Interactionism, or the idea that individuals have more awareness, skill and power to change their own situation, links to several other theories.