George C. Homans

1
George C. Homans

• Born in Boston, Massachusetts
• August 11, 1910
• Homans entered Harvard College in 1928 with
• an area of concentration in English and
• American literature.
• In the 1930s he attended a faculty-student
• seminar at Harvard with Pareto.
• In 1939 he became a Harvard faculty member,
• a lifelong affiliation in which he taught both
• sociology and medieval history.
• In 1964 Homans was elected President of the
• American Sociological Association.

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Homans continued

• Homanss work is divided into two phases
• The first phase is considered inductive and the
  second phase is considered deductive.
• Credited as the founder of behavioral sociology
  and the social exchange theory.
• Other social exchange theorists John Thibaut,
  Harold Kelley, Peter Blau.
• Died in Cambridge, Massachusetts May 29, 1989.

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Publications

• English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century
  (1941)
• The Human Group (1950)
• Social Behavior as Exchange (1958)
• Social Behavior Its Elementary Forms (1961,
  revised 1974)
• Coming to My Sense The Autobiography of a
  Sociologist (1984)

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Link to Behavioral Psychology

• Operant conditioning the use of consequences
• to modify the occurrence and form of behavior.
• - Skinner and the pigeon experiment
• This kind of psychologist is not interested
• in how the behavior was learned learning
• theory is a poor name for his Skinners field.
  
• Instead, he is interested in what determines the
  rate of emission
• of learned behavior, whether pecks at a target or
  something else.
• -Homans

Sources http//www.reference.com/search?qoperant
20conditioning
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Operant Conditioning

• Satiation the rate of behavior falls off if the
  behavior is often reinforced.
• When the pigeon is given much more corn each time
  it pecks, the less hungry it will become and the
  less it pecks.
• Extinction the rate of emission of behavior
  stops when it is not reinforced.
• If the pecking is not reinforced with corn,
  eventually the pigeon will stop pecking.
• Cost aversive stimulation, results in a decrease
  in the emission of behavior.
• Fatigue is an example of a cost.
• Other examples A Clockwork Orange, treatment for
  alcoholism

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An Exchange Paradigm

• Homans notes that Skinners pigeon experiment
  cannot really be an exchange since the behavior
  of the pigeon hardly determines the behavior the
  psychologist.
• In the case of two men, however, where exchange
  is real and determination is equal, each is
  emitting behavior reinforced to some degree by
  the behavior of the other.
• Smiling, nodding, furrowing of the brow, etc.
• Talk show hosts
• NOTE The concern is not how each learned in the
  past the behavior he emits or the behavior he
  finds reinforcing.
• Values reinforcers that which strengthens a
  response.
• As he emits behavior, each man may incur costs,
  and each man has more than one course of behavior
  open to him.

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An Exchange Paradigm

• The problem is not, as it is often stated,
  merely, what a mans values are, what he has
  learned in the past to find reinforcing, but how
  much of any one value his behavior is getting him
  now.
• - Homans

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The Influence Process

• Cohesiveness anything that attracts people to
  take part in a group.
• Two kinds of reinforcing activity social
  approval and activity valuable in other ways,
  such as doing something interesting (Festinger).
  
• Communication/Interaction measure of the
  frequency of emission of valuable and costly
  verbal behavior.

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The Influence Process

• The more cohesive a group is, the more valuable
  the social approval or activity the members
  exchange with one another and the greater the
  average frequency of interaction the members.
• Question What is an example of a group thats
  cohesiveness is proportionate to the social
  approval and activities members exchange with
  each other?

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The Influence Process

• Conformer people whose activity the other group
  members find valuable.
• Since members are satiated by the conformers
  behavior, interaction with him/her is less.
• Deviates a member whose activity is not
  particularly valuable.
• Interaction with a deviant is high in order to
  increase the cohesiveness of the group. However,
  if the deviate fails to change his behavior and
  subsequently reinforce the other members, they
  start to withhold social approval from him/her.

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Practical Equilibrium

• We sometimes observe equilibrium, that for
  the time we are with a group-and it is often
  short-there is no great change in the values of
  the variables we choose to measure.

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Practical Equilibrium

• The more closely a members activity conforms to
  the norms of the group, the more interaction and
  liking choices he gets from them too.
• Other variables affect the relationship between
  liking and conformity. For instance, if the
  person who conforms the most also exerts some
  authority over the group, members may like this
  person less than might have otherwise.

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• An incidental advantage of an exchange theory is
  that it might bring sociology closer to
  economics-that science of man most advanced, most
  capable of application, and, intellectually, most
  isolated. Economics studies exchange carried out
  under special circumstances and with a most
  useful built-in numerical measure of value.
• -Homans
• Discussion Address the critique that Homans
  social exchange theory reduces human interaction
  to a purely rational process that arises from
  economic theory.

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Social Behavior as Exchange (1958)Profit and
Social Control

• Less valuable actions by an individual member
  lead to less value reinforcement from other
  members.
• Less valuable actions, however, mean a reduction
  in costs which off set the loss in sentiment
  (reinforcement).

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Profit and Social Control cont.

• Problem of social control
• So, why does every members behavior persist?
• If this were true behaviors would not stabilize
• People stabilize their behavior at the point
  where they are doing the best they can for
  themselves under the circumstances.
• Their actions may not be the rational best
• Homans support for this theory lack of another
  answer

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Profit and Social Control cont.

• Supportive Experiment H.B. Gerard The
  Anchorage of Opinions in FacetoFace Groups

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Profit and Social Control cont.

• Formed artificial groups to discuss a topic and
  to express their opinions about the outcome of
  the discussion.
• Types of groups
• High-attraction people would like one another
• Low-attraction people would not like one
  another
• Measured opinions during and after discussion
  looking at the number of subjects who changed
  their opinions to meet those of the group
  majority or a paid participant.

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Profit and Social Control cont.

• Percentage of subjects changing toward someone in
  the group
• Percentage of subjects changing toward the paid
  participant

Group type Agreement Mild Disagreement Strong Disagreement
High-attraction 0 12 44
Low-attraction 0 15 9
Group type Agreement Mild Disagreement Strong Disagreement
High-attraction 7 13 25
Low-attraction 20 38 8
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Profit and Social Control cont.

• Gerard found more shifting of opinions toward the
  group majority, and less shifting of opinions
  toward the paid participant in the
  high-attraction group as compared to the
  low-attraction group?
• Question Based on Homans notions of value and
  reinforcement, how would you explain this outcome?

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Profit and Social Control cont.

• If you think that members of a group have much to
  give you in this case, acceptance you are
  more apt to give them much in return here, a
  change in opinion. Otherwise you will not
  receive the reward.
• If you feel the group has little to offer you,
  you will give it little value and will not be
  willing to sacrifice much cost.

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Profit and Social Control cont.

• Homanss explanation
• Participants expected 2 different types of
  reinforcement from their group
• acceptance from their agreement with the group
• maintenance of ones personal integrity from
  sticking to their own opinion when in opposition
  to most of the group

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Profit and Social Control cont.

• Participants assign value to each type of
  reinforcement
• Those in the high-attraction group assign a
  higher value to acceptance.
• Value for maintenance of personal integrity
  depends on the subjects original position in
  relation to the others in the group

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Profit and Social Control cont.

• Rewards are in competition with one another
  rewards are alternatives to each other.
• Profit Rewards Cost
• The cost of a particular action is the equivalent
  to the foregone value of the alternative reward.

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Profit and Social Control cont.

• High-Attraction group
• Agreement subjects they get much in acceptance
  and has to sacrifice little of personal
  integrity. Therefore, they have a high profit
  and re not likely to change their opinion
• Strong disagreement subjects get much reward for
  maintaining their personal integrity, but they
  also have to sacrifice much in group acceptance.
  Therefore they have low profit and are more
  likely to change their opinion.

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Profit and Social Control cont.

• Low Attraction group
• Mild disagreement subjects receive little reward
  for maintenance of personal integrity, but have
  little cost in acceptance either. Therefore,
  their profit is low, and they are likely to
  change their opinion.
• Strong disagreement high reward for maintenance
  of personal integrity and low cost for
  acceptance. Therefore, they have a high profit
  and are not likely to change their opinion.

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Profit and Social Control cont.

• Thus, change in behavior is greatest when ones
  perceived profit is the least.
• When a person reaches their highest profit i.e.
  does the best they can in a given situation -
  behavior is least likely to change and it becomes
  stabilized.

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Profit and Social Control cont.

• In a social group or organization, an individuals
  profit is partly at the mercy of others. Thus,
  an individuals profit may not be as high in a
  group it they would be individually.

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Profit and Social Control cont.

• Given the Homanss explanation that profit
  reward cost, and his ideas about social
  control, do you accept his theory that an
  individuals behavior stabilizes when people do
  the best they can? Can you think of any examples
  that would either support or contradict his
  ideas? Do you see any limitations in his theory?

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Social Behavior as Exchange (1958)Distributive
Justice

• Practical equilibrium is more probable than the
  individual pursuit of profit left to itself.
• An Example of this is behaviors of subgroups.
• 2 groups working together the group who has
  more responsibility (more pressure, larger
  stakes) demands more pay than the other group
• This is not a dispute over absolute wages, but
  over wage differentials.

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Distributive Justice cont.

• Wage and responsibility provide status within the
  group
• Known as status factors
• When status factors are in line there is status
  congruence
• Leads workers to not complain about their
  position relative to other workers
• Pay is the reward
• Responsibility (foregone peace of mind) is the
  cost

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Distributive Justice cont.

• Distributive justice claims that if the costs of
  on person is higher than another, the rewards
  shall be higher as well.
• The inverse of this theory should also be true
  and is known as noblesse oblige.

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Distributive Justice cont.

• Profit Reward Cost
• Pay is the reward
• Responsibility (foregone peace of mind) is the
  cost
• Though the reward and cost are different, profit
  should be the same
• Distributive justice is one condition of group
  equilibrium.

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Distributive Justice cont.

• Do you believe that Homanss theory of
  distributive justice is a reasonable account of
  how social equilibrium is achieve in society?
  What problems or limitations could arise in this
  theory?

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Social Behavior as Exchange (1958)Exchange and
Social Structure

• Example of Social Structure
• Agents of an investigative firm have the duty to
  prepare reports for the law. Reports have to be
  prepared carefully, in proper form and agents
  have to take strict account of any regulations.
  Agent are reluctant to ask their supervisors
  questions believing it would reflect negatively
  on their ability to do their job. Instead, they
  seek assistance from other agents.

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Exchange and Social Structure cont.

• Because of the amount of consultations between
  agents, the value of any one consultation becomes
  deflated and the cost of the many interruptions
  becomes inflated
• The more prestigious agents have more
  consultations relative to other agents. Thus
  their prestige was given less value and their
  interruptions were more costly. For less
  prestigious agents, a feeling of inferiority was
  more costly.

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Exchange and Social Structure cont.

• The result More equal exchanges between agents.
• More prestigious agents consulted less often with
  other highly competent agents
• Less prestigious agents interacted more often
  with other agents at their same level

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Exchange and Social Structure cont.

• Rewards advice
• Cost time lost because of interruptions,
  feelings of inferiority.
• More prestigious agents sacrificed less cost with
  less interaction among other highly prestigious
  agents.
• Less prestigious agents had less feelings of
  inferiority by interacting with other agents at
  their same level.

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Exchange and Social Structure cont.

• This theory illustrates how social structures in
  equilibrium might be the result of a process of
  exchanging behavior rewarding and costly in
  different degrees, in which, the increment of
  reward and cost varied with the frequency of the
  behavior i.e. with the frequency of the
  interaction.

39
Exchange and Social Structure cont.

• Can you think of any other examples of how social
  interactions have lead to the establishment of
  social structures? How have these examples
  influenced the social equilibrium?

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The Logic ofCollective Action
41
Mancur Olson

• Born 1932 Died 1998
• A leading American economist and social scientist
• He made contributions to institutional economics
  on the role of private property, taxation, public
  goods, collective action, and contract rights in
  economic development.

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• In his first book, The Logic of Collective
  Action Public Goods and the Theory of Groups,
  he said that only a benefit reserved strictly for
  group members will motivate one to join and
  contribute to the group. This means that
  individuals will act collectively to provide
  private goods, but not public goods.

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Collective Action

• His most famous contribution is the idea of
  collective action.
• Collective action is the pursuit of a goal or set
  of goals by more than one person.
• The premise of this theory was that the rational
  person would not participate in collective action
  because its benefits could not be mutually
  exclusive.

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• Mancur Olson made the highly controversial claim
  that individual rational choice leads to
  situations where individuals with more resources
  will carry a higher burden in the provision of
  the public good than poorer ones. Poorer
  individuals will usually have little choice but
  to opt for the free rider strategy, i.e. they
  will attempt to benefit from the public good
  without contributing to its provision. This also
  encourages the under-production (inefficient
  production) of the public good.
• However, further theoretical analysis showed that
  this is not the case when individuals have
  widely-differing perceptions of the utility of
  the public good.

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• "But it is not in fact true that the idea that
  groups will act in their self-interest follows
  logically from the premise of rational and
  self-interested behavior. It does not follow,
  because all of the individuals in a group would
  gain if they achieved their group objective, that
  they would act to achieve that objective, even if
  they were all rational and self-interested.
  Indeed unless the number of individuals in a
  group is quite small, or unless there is coercion
  or some other special device to make individuals
  act in their common interest, rational,
  self-interested individuals will not act to
  achieve their common or group interests."(pg. 2)

46

• "Since a uniform price must prevail in such a
  market, a firm cannot expect a higher price for
  itself unless all of the other firms in the
  industry have this higher price. But a firm in a
  competitive market also has an interest in
  selling as much as it can, until the cost of
  producing another unit exceeds the price of that
  unit. In this there is no common interest each
  firm's interest is directly opposed to that of
  every other firm, for the more the firms sell,
  the lower the price and income for any given
  firm. In short, while all firms have a common
  interest in a higher price, they have
  antagonistic interests where output is
  concerned."(pg. 9)

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Examples

• OPEC
• National Art Association

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Discussion Questions

• What are some reasons that people would
  participate in collective action if others could
  reap the benefits of their work?
• What are some other examples of organizations
  that are built upon the idea of collective action?

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James Samuel Coleman Rights to Act
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James Samuel Coleman

• Born May 12, 1926 in Bedford Indiana
• Died March 25, 1995
• Coleman was a sociological theorist who studied
  sociology of education and public policy
• Coleman received his bachelor's degree in
  Chemical Engineering from Purdue in 1949, and
  received his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1955
• Colemans Foundations of Social Theory stands as
  one of the most important sociological
  contributions of the 20th century.

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What are Rights?

• If a person has a legal right to take an action
  or to use or dispose of a good or a resource or
  to control the outcome of an event, this implies
  that the person may do so without interference
  from legal authorities. Clear cut definition.
• None of this causes any problems, however, the
  problems that arise lies in the broad area of
  rights that are not covered by law.

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What are Rights?

• For example, if Bob feels that he has the right
  to smoke at a given place and time but Susan does
  not, it cannot be said that Bob has the right,
  despite the fact that he believes he does. It can
  only be said that the right to smoke at that time
  and place is in dispute.
• According to Coleman, it can be provisionally
  said that an actor has a right to carry out an
  action or to have an action carried out when all
  who are affected by exercise of that right accept
  the action without dispute.

53
What are Rights?

• This conception of rights implies that there is
  not a single objective structure of rights of
  control, but a structure of rights of control
  subjectively held by each actor in the system

54
Private Worlds

• The private world of an actor consist of the full
  distribution of rights as perceived by the actor,
  together with the actors interest.
• Two sources of conflict in the system of private
  worlds
• One source is a difference in perceptions of
  where rights lie One actor perceives a right to
  be in his/her hands, and second actor perceives
  the right not to be in the first actors hands,
  but in his own.
• A second source is a conflict of interest that
  can exist even when the locus of rights is
  perceived the same by all.

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Private Worlds

• In this conception there are as many systems of
  actions as there are actors and each actor has a
  set of interest in events, as well as a
  subjective conception of rights of control for
  all events in which he/she has some interest.
• This interests of different actors taken together
  produce an overall structure of interest.
• Each actors subjective conception of rights
  cover covers all events in which he/she has some
  interest, as well as some in which he/she does
  not.
• This is a portion of overall structure of rights
  that overlaps extensively with that of others
  and the different conceptions may be
  inconsistent.

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The Example
Nonsmokers conception of who holds the right
Nonsmokers
Smokers
1 2
3 4
Smokers
Smokers conception of who holds the right
Nonsmokers
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Who holds smoking rights?

• Smokers Nonsmokers
• Cell Conception Conception
• 1 Smokers Smokers
• 2 Smokers Nonsmokers
• Nonsmokers Smokers
• Nonsmokers Nonsmokers

Action
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Who holds the right of an action?

• There is a general tendency for the conceptions
  of different persons about who holds the rights
  into agreement overtime.
• The actions that take place in cells 2 and 3 of
  the table tend to bring conceptions into
  consistency. The dispute that arises in cell 2
  leads each actor to recognize that his conception
  of rights is not universally held. If the dispute
  involves more than two persons, one side will
  recognize that it is in the minority and may
  yield to the majority. In cell 3 the actions of
  the actors produce a less strong movement toward
  consistency, because there is no confrontation.
  There will, however, be a recognition that ones
  own conception of rights is not universally held,
  and some movement toward the local majority can
  be expected.

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Equilibrium Changes

• In the case of smoking, exogenous changes such as
  increased concerns with health, coupled with
  evidence about the negative effects of smoking on
  the health of smokers and that of others nearby
  have moved the conceptions of smoking rights in
  many settings out of cell 1, an equilibrium
  state, and into cell 2 or 3.

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Equilibrium Changes

• If nonsmokers are, as might be expected, more
  health conscious and quicker to accept evidence
  of negative health effects of smoking than are
  smokers, the movement will in most instances be
  from cell 1 to cell 2. As long as the exogenous
  effects continue to move people from a conception
  that smokers have the right to control smoking to
  the conception that nonsmokers have it,
  majorities against smokers rights to smoke will
  develop in both cells 2 and 3, and this will move
  the system toward the new equilibrium, in which
  all agree that nonsmokers control those rights.

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Equilibrium Changes

• Once the new equilibrium is established, it is
  meaningful to say that nonsmokers hold the rights
  regarding smoking just as it is meaningful to
  say that smokers hold the rights regarding
  smoking when there is an equilibrium in cell 1.

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Formal Authority

• Example A memorandum distributed by a library
  administrator to faculty members who had studies
  in the University of Chicago library in the fall
  of 1988
• In re
• Smoking in Faculty Studies I have been asked
  to request that faculty who smoke in their
  studies please keep the study door closed. It
  seems a reasonable request and so I am
  distributing this note and asking that smokers
  cooperate with their neighbors. I also wish to
  remind everyone that smoking is not permitted in
  the corridors.
• Thank you.

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Formal Authority

• As this memorandum indicates, formal authority
  over actions of faculty members in their library
  studies that affect others is held by library
  administrators. The right of control over actions
  is implicitly given up by a faculty member in
  acquiring a study.

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Formal Authority

• In view of the theory of rights as based on
  power-weighted consensus, one may ask, what can
  be said about how rights ought to be distributed.
  That is, what distribution of rights is right?
  The implication of this theory is that the
  question is unanswerable in general it can be
  answered only in the context of a particular
  system of action, and there the answer is that
  the existing distribution of rights is right.
• What is right is defined within the system
  itself, by the actors interests and relative
  power in that system. The theory implies that
  moral philosophers searching for the right
  distribution of rights are searching for the pot
  of gold at the end of the rainbow.