This thesis by Erick James Weinberg investigates the effect of radiative corrections on spontaneous symmetry breaking using a functional formalism. The author demonstrates that in certain models, such as massless gauge theories with scalar mesons, radiative corrections can induce spontaneous symmetry breaking, even when the classical approximation suggests a symmetric vacuum. This phenomenon leads to a relationship between the masses of scalar and vector mesons, predicting that scalar mesons are much lighter. The analysis is applied to models where the classical approximation indicates an asymmetric vacuum, including one where the classical treatment does not fully specify the vacuum nature. The use of renormalization group methods is also explored to improve the analysis of these models. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the implications and a comparison with a theorem by Georgi and Glashow.This thesis by Erick James Weinberg investigates the effect of radiative corrections on spontaneous symmetry breaking using a functional formalism. The author demonstrates that in certain models, such as massless gauge theories with scalar mesons, radiative corrections can induce spontaneous symmetry breaking, even when the classical approximation suggests a symmetric vacuum. This phenomenon leads to a relationship between the masses of scalar and vector mesons, predicting that scalar mesons are much lighter. The analysis is applied to models where the classical approximation indicates an asymmetric vacuum, including one where the classical treatment does not fully specify the vacuum nature. The use of renormalization group methods is also explored to improve the analysis of these models. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the implications and a comparison with a theorem by Georgi and Glashow.