As their name implies, symbolic interactionist theories emphasize the mutual sending and interpreting of gestures that carry conventional meanings. Gestures are symbols that mean the same thing to the sending and receiving parties in interaction. In symbolic interactionism, then, individuals are conceptualized as reading the gestures of others – words, facial expressions, bodily countenance, or any behavior that carries common meaning – in a process of mutual role-taking in which people mentally place themselves in the place or role of the other. From mutual role-taking, individuals adjust their respective lines of conduct in ways that facilitate the smooth flow of interaction or, if desired, disrupt and breach the interaction. During role-taking, individuals not only see others as objects in a situation, they also see themselves as objects. For interactionists, it is this behavioral capacity for self (or the ability to see oneself as an object in a situation) that is the central dynamic of all social interaction.

In every situation, individuals role-take, assess the dispositions and likely course of action of others, and evaluative self from the point of view of others. Inherent in this process are the dynamics of social control, operating at several levels. First, role-taking allows each person to predict the behaviors of others and make necessary adjustments to assure some degree of cooperation. Second, in seeing self as an object of evaluation, each person can adjust behaviors so as maintain esteem in the eyes of others and, by extension, the broader cultural scripts that provide the moral yardstick for making evaluations.