Concept
generalized other
Mead’s concept: the standpoint of the organised community or social group that gives the individual a unity of self; the individual internalises it in organised games and social participation.
According to Mead, a child builds the self in two stages. In play the child takes the roles of particular others. In organised games (a baseball team, for example) the child must carry the responses of everyone on the team within their own position. Mead calls the standpoint of this organised whole the “generalized other”: the organised community or social group that gives the individual their unity of self.
Society influences a person’s behaviour and thinking in this form; even in abstract thought a person takes the attitude of the generalized other. The concept is broader than Cooley’s looking-glass self, which rests on the judgment in one other mind: here the other is not one person but an organised whole.
When you ask in everyday speech “what will people say?”, the “people” you call up is the generalized other.
Example
A baseball player keeping in mind, at the same moment, the roles of the teammates who will throw and catch the ball.