Risk Interactionism

Risk analysis and information

Within interactionism some will believe that we have perfect information or an approximation of this. If people have an idea of risk so that they are aware that smoking leads to a very high risk of cancer, they are more likely to avoid smoking and to discourage young children from smoking. If they have no information about this they will not take any action to avoid cigarettes.

Most schools will have an outside agency such as the police to warn them of some dangers such as taking drugs. Doctors and other people concerned with health strongly advocate that children should also be warned of the problems arising from oking and unhealthy eating.

Sociologists have often looked at causes of inequality and we will see

Rationalists assume that people have good information about likely outcomes and therefore can work out both the risks and benefits of any actions. People who believe in symbolic interactionism believe that people respond to what they perceive to be the reality of life.

The majority of individuals belong to some form of society and therefore there is an interaction between the society and the individual. There have been a very few cases of people being brought up solely with animals.

One of the features of social interactionism is therefore that human beings base their ideas on the objects which they see around them on a personal basis. They also interact with each other by defining what other people have done and try to interpret this.

It is m ore difficult judge how hs

This is different from snarling dogs as we can reasonably predict how one snarling dog will react to

The extreme authoritarian regime such as Nazi Germany in the 1930s or the Soviet regime will mean that majority of individuals within those regimes would have been conditioned to react to other groups in different ways.

Social Interactionists suggest that we try to understand and focus on other human beings to judge what the best form of action is. Human beings therefore use past experience to judge how they can react in the best possible way.

Interactionists will suggest that we do not have to be prisoners or controlled by the past but are free to take our own courses of action. Not everyone would necessarily agree with these conclusions and might think that people who have been bought up to label other groups such as Roman Catholics or Protestants as a separate inferior tribe in Northern Ireland they will find it difficult to think of them without the labelling. The film “12 years a slave” (2013) which is based on a true story shows how different groups i.e. white slave owners, people who have always been slaves and the central character who was born a free man but has become a slave react to their particular