Manford H. Kuhn (1911-1963) was the founder of the Iowa School of Symbolic Interactionism. The other major school of thought was the Chicago school, associated with Herbert Blumer. Both schools emerged from the writings and teachings of George Herbert Mead.

Some main concepts in symbolic interactionism are self, self-concept, self theory, identity, role taking, role theory, status, and social construction of reality. Kuhn's greatest contribution to social psychology was his development of the concept of a core self and his coining of the term, self theory, for his brand of symbolic interactionism. His underlying theoretical assumption was that every person has stable components of their self that are unchanging from situation to situation. Whereas Blumer saw behavior as situational, emergent, and nondeterministic, Kuhn believed that it was determined by pre-existing variables having to do with static and measurable aspects of the self in combination with social, historical, and...