Social behavior

It is now time to define social interaction. As previously discussed, behavior comes in many forms--blinking, eating, reading, dancing, shooting, rioting, and warring. What then distinguishes social behavior? Behavior that is peculiarly social is oriented towards other selves. Such behavior apprehends another as a perceiving, thinking, Moral, intentional, and behaving person; considers the intentional or rational meaning of the other's field of expression; involves expectations about the other's acts and actions; and manifests an intention to invoke in another self certain experiences and intentions. What differentiates social from nonsocial behavior, then, is whether another self is taken into account in one's acts, actions, or practices.

For example, dodging and weaving through a crowd is not social behavior, usually. Others are considered as mere physical objects, as human barriers with certain reflexes. Neither is keeping in step in a parade social behavior. Other marchers are physical objects with which to coordinate one's movements. Neither is a surgical operation social behavior. The patient is only a biophysical object with certain associated potentialities and dispositions. However, let the actor become involved with another's self, as a person pushing through a crowd recognizing a friend, a marcher believing another is trying to get him out of step, or a surgeon operating on his son, and the whole meaning of the situation changes.

With this understanding of social, let me now define social acts, actions, and practices. A social act is any intention, aim, plan, purpose, and so on which encompasses another self. These may be affecting another's emotions, intentions, or beliefs; or anticipating another's acts, actions, or practices.¹ Examples of social acts would be courtship, helping another run for a political office, teaching, buying a gift, or trying to embarrass an enemy.