Symbolic interactionism plays a huge role in many societies around the world. It is also found her - right in our own country. Symobolic interationism is a huge part of American culture. We make split-second decisions about people using our past experiences. One of the main problems is, we don't always know that they are correct - in fact, we can never know for certain.
While visiting the mall, the first person I chose to interpret was a middle aged, well dressed white male pushing a stroller. At this point, I was able to make judgments about the person. My guess is that he was a rich white male living in Miami. I was thinking he makes over 100 thousand dollars a year in his household, has a wife, at least one kid (the one in the stroller). I could also assume that since he was at the mall in the middle of the day, that he was either off work for that day, or does not work and lives off his wifes salary. I would assume that a stay at home father would be very new age, and therefore- very liberal. I could go on to assume that the man drove a Toyota Prius, recycles on a regular basis, buys light bulbs that conserve energy, and will be voting for Barak Obama next month.
The next man was a high school kid wearing his pants down to his knees. He was of african-american decent, had an oversized jacket on, and was walking like he had a prosthesis. His hair style was like many of the lower class people I have met, dreads and rubber bands in his hair I, along with the people I was around automatically made assumptions about the man. He had a tattoo on his leg (he was obviously not 18 years old), so we assumed that he was deviant, at least when it came to self-mutilation. We assumed that he had no children due to his age, came from a moderate-low class family, and assumed that he would probably not continue on to college. We made the assumption that he also may lack a good father figure. These things were all how we have been conditioned to think by society....