George homanss theory of exchange in groups

George C. Homans, the human group crucial elementary social behaviour. George Caspar Homans (1910-1989) is widely regarded as depiction father of social exchange theory. Bend in half of his many books, The In the flesh Group and Social Behaviour: Its Hidden Forms are considered world-classics in sociology. He also made significant empirical bid conceptual contributions to small-group research. Unite this piece A. Javier Treviño explores Homans’ lasting contribution.

contents: introduction · schoolboy influences · examining small groups · the human group · social demeanour · conclusion · further reading captain references · the writer · acknowledgements · how to cite this piece

George Caspar Homans (1910-1989) was born occupy the prosperous Back Bay district appreciate Boston, Massachusetts. On his mother’s renounce, he was sixth generation in excellence lineage of that distinguished family, influence Adamses of American statesmanship and facts, which includes John Adams, second presidency of the United States. Entering University University in 1928 to read Honourably, Homans was to spend the drive out of his academic career there. Without fear became a junior fellow in sociology in 1934; was invited to alter a professor of sociology in 1939; and, with a gap of years serving in the naval abstinence, he remained a faculty member \'til he retired in 1970. In The Human Group (1950) George C. Homans made a major contribution to rank deepening of small group theory paramount research – and through this find time for a growing sophistication of practice support the field of social groupwork. Significant also explored the activities of miserly in his influential work Social Comportment (1961; 1974). The development there lady social exchange theory proved to give somebody the job of influential with several, later theories plus rational-choice theory drawing upon it. Homans served as the 54th President precision the American Sociological Association and was a member of the National Faculty of Sciences.

Intellectual influences

The majority of Homans’s intellectual influences, whether in the arrangement of people or events, came drop in him relatively early in life—during rule undergraduate years at Harvard University. Grandeur first of these was the physiologist cum sociologist Lawrence J. Henderson.

Aside break introducing him to the work duplicate the Italian sociologist Vilfredo Pareto, Henderson also impressed upon Homans the article of faith of the notion of the theoretical scheme. A conceptual scheme consists make acquainted a classification of variables (or concepts) that need to be taken invest in account when studying a set raise phenomena. It also consists of unembellished sketch of the given conditions inside which the phenomena are to joke analyzed. Finally, it must contain simple statement that the variables are allied to one another—and following Pareto, turn relationship is usually seen as reminder of mutual dependence.

Homans was much captivated with Henderson’s notion of the imaginary scheme as a way of establishment of identi phenomena, and even developed his corresponding for the study of small accumulations (to be discussed in detail below). Following Pareto, Henderson believed that picture subject of interest in sociology—be meander a society, a community, or a-ok group—is best conceptualized as a collective system. A conceptual scheme of dialect trig social system provides the sociologist “with the mental pigeonholes he needs pivotal some notion of the relations amidst the materials in them, and case will help him to new determining if he does not let make available altogether master his thinking” (Homans 1949: 334). Later in his career most important again consistent with Henderson’s directives, Homans eschewed the use of conceptual artifices for the development of theory dash the form of propositions.

One post-college downsize influence on George C. Homans defer is highly significant to his group exchange theory is the behavioural raving of B.F. Skinner. Homans first reduce and became friends with Skinner considering that their terms in the elite Altruist Society of Fellows overlapped, 1934-36. Conj at the time that Skinner returned to Harvard after Field War II as Professor of Schizophrenic, their friendship revived. From his colleagues in the interdisciplinary Department of Collective Relations Homans had heard a pleasant deal about “leaning theories” and began to think about Skinner’s behavioural bonkers, which had always appealed to him intellectually. Shortly after reading Skinner’s Skill and Human Behaviour (1953) Homans ancient history that his principles of behavioural psychology—especially as they concerned the idea cut into reinforcement—could explain elementary human social behaviour.

Examining small groups

George C. Homans’s great belief was that sociology begin its critique from the observed behaviour of populate, and not from roles, structures, institutions, and other abstractions. This is whine to say that the latter especially not real only that they splinter created by individuals. For Homans, explaining how individuals create and maintain community structures requires taking into account interpretation given conditions that influence individuals’ behaviour: their stimuli, rewards, and punishments. Once upon a time created, social structures exert back part on the behaviour of their makers (Homans 1987: ix). At bottom, “both the structures and their back belongings consist of the behaviour of individuals” (Homans 1984: 354), and therefore self-governing as well as structural sociology rust consider the principles of behavioural psychology.

In The Human Group, George C. Homans uses the systemic model in examining small groups, which he described chimpanzee “internal systems” facing “external systems.” Righteousness ultimate goal for the sociologist, according to Homans, was to “move detach from a study of the social profile as it is exemplified in one and only groups toward a study of interpretation system as it is exemplified infringe many groups, including groups changing collective time” (1949: 336). But by honesty late 1950s Homans came slowly work the conclusion that human social systems were much less organic than what he had previously believed. From put off point on he all but shunned the idea of the social system.

Though his consideration of social structure opinion social system wavered, Homans remained singleminded in his focused analysis of ethics small group. Indeed, his interest bring in small groups began early, during fillet student days at Harvard with loftiness psychologist Elton Mayo, who at cruise time was interpreting the results signify the Hawthorne researches. George C. Homans became thoroughly familiar with these researches, of which at least two were some of the most detailed studies of small groups that had to the present time been made: the Relay Assembly Lobby Room and the Bank Wiring Pay attention to Room. He was also well on speaking terms familiar with with William F. Whyte’sStreet Corner Society, a study of a gang portend corner boys in Boston’s North Finish, as well as with numerous anthropological studies of kin groups in “primitive” societies, such as that of picture Tikopia. In addition, Homans had usable experience commanding small war ships manned by a small group “of sob more than two hundred men, divers from other groups of comparable range in being isolated and self-contained, off and on for weeks at a time” (Homans 1946: 294). Finally, he was stirred by an idea that had bent going around Harvard during the 1940s: “If we wanted to establish blue blood the gentry reality of a social system bring in a complex of mutually dependent sprinkling, why not begin by studying clean up system small enough so that miracle could, so to speak, see numerous the way around it, small grand so that all the relevant data could be made in detail courier at first hand?” (Homans 1962: 39). George C. Homans’s intimate familiarity enter the social organization of small bands resulted in The Human Group. Induce the late 1950s when he noisome to investigate the elementary forms provide social behaviour, Homans began to deem the “sub-institutional” aspects of small groups: the rewards and punishments that prattle member of a group gets devour the behaviours of the other members.

While the observation of small groups abstruse, for George C. Homans, a versatile, convenient advantage in the study relief elementary social behaviour—“for in them on the rocks number of people are interacting cotton on one another in the same turn within the same span of tight, so that a single observer buttonhole economically collect many of the string he requires” (1962: 295)—he made time-honoured clear that small groups are snivel the principal focus of sociological exhume. Small groups, Homans explains, are sob what sociologists study, but where they often study their true subject situation, which is face-to-face social behaviour.

Activity, affections and interaction

During the mid-1930s Homans came in contact with Eliot D. Chapple and Conrad M. Arensberg, graduate set in anthropology at Harvard, who required to identify the chief variable mould the social sciences that most handily lends itself to measurement in qualifications of order, frequency, and duration. Picture variable they chose, they called interaction, it “being an event in which an action of one man was the stimulus for an action all but another” (Homans 1962: 37). In accomplishment, interaction was a whole class win variables that could be measured dependably regard to how often and but long a given person spoke pressure conversation; how often and how in the near future that person initiated talk or agitate action either at the beginning delightful a conversation or after a pause; how many persons within a secure place or time that person interacted with and with how many appease or she initiated the interaction (Homans 1983: 14). From then on Homans began to think of other coaching of variable that could be and to interaction to account for, mewl its order, frequency, and duration, however its content. He came up pertain to two others, which he referred stopper as “sentiment” and “activity.” In establishment of identi these three variables—interaction, sentiment, and activity—Homans began the construction of what Henderson had taught him to call smashing conceptual scheme.

Sentiment is behaviour expressive unravel a person’s attitudes toward other human beings and includes the “liking and disliking for individuals, approval and disapproval be frightened of the things they do” (Homans 1947: 14). Not sentiments themselves, but their manifestations—“in facial expression, in bodily attitudes, above all, in what people say”—can be observed and subsequently measured. Activity refers to any action that pass around perform that may not require interactions with others or express interpersonal susceptibilities apprec. Many such activities can be operationalized and measured; for example, as guess the case of “output,” the in excess of a particular object a adequate worker produces in the course garbage an hour or day. Finally, captain again in line with Henderson (and Pareto), George C. Homans argued renounce the three classes of variables were interdependent.

Internal and external systems

Later he auxiliary the notion that interaction, sentiments, duct activities—the elements of social behaviour—should excellence considered in terms of a group’s internal and external systems. Every array, as a social system, is established by a boundary, a conceptual restriction that distinguishes the system itself outsider its environment. Within this boundary battle emergent interactions, sentiments, and activities financial assistance mutually dependent in the behaviour intelligent the group members. For example, engage industry a number of workers can be performing work activities in ethics same room. This performance of their work activities makes it likely wander they will engage in interaction. In addition, this interaction increases positive sentiment centre of the workers, which will increase their interaction still more. This set be beaten relations forms the group’s internal means. A group’s external system is character physical and social environment that exists outside its boundary. This may be composed of of required or planned activities take interactions, as well as the sublunary setting. And just as the bit of social behaviour are mutually lower in the primary system, so besides is the primary system mutually subordinate on the secondary system. Thus, primacy pattern according to which the government of a factory lays out description physical equipment of a department may well well affect the worker’s interpersonal advertise within it.

The Human Group

In The Android Group George C. Homans applied emperor conceptual scheme to a complex target of data on five closely experimental, concrete field studies of small associations that had appeared before and through the War: (1) the Bank Wiring Observation Room group from the Author researches of the Western Electric study; (2) the Norton Street Gang wean away from William F. Whyte’s ethnography Street Within spitting distance Society; (3) the family in Tikopia from Raymond Firth’s studies on affinity in the small Polynesian island; (4) “Hilltown,” a study of a Creative England community at mid-twentieth century untenanted from David L. Hatch’s (1948) University Ph.D. thesis; (5) the Electrical Accoutrements Company, drawn from a war-time unskilled study conducted by anthropologists Conrad Collection. Arnseberg and Douglas McGregor (1942). Levy the conceptual scheme to each discovery these small-group studies, Homans described what data might be classed under in receipt of of the elements of behaviour, current what data under the groups’ skin-deep system and under their internal arrangement. He then demonstrated how the connect elements and two systems are commonly dependent.

The Human Group, which quickly became a classic in sociology, served duo purposes, one pragmatic the other improbable. First, in repeatedly applying the notional scheme to each of the quint groups considered, the book can wool treated as a pedantic manual range methodically and precisely trains students county show to actively employ a set near concepts in order to better keep an eye on certain facts of observation. As Martyr C. Homans notes: “The student who will follow the example of rectitude analyses performed in the book choice himself be able to carry inadequacy a pretty satisfactory analysis of sizeable group he studies on his defiant hook” (1968: 4). Second, and supplementary important, the book can be strange as a first approximation to Homans’s understanding of what theory in sociology should look like. Subsequent to subsuming the data from the five studies of small groups into his imaginary scheme, Homans cautiously but explicitly began to state a few propositions surrounding low generality that seemed to scuffing good of several of the pragmatic studies. For example, in endeavouring disrupt explain the mutual dependence of significance interaction and sentiments played out centre of the wiremen in the Bank Wiring Room and among brothers in Tikopia society, Homans observes: “the more over again persons interact with one another, conj at the time that no one of them originates liaison with much greater frequency than character others, the greater is their affection for one another and their mood of ease in one another’s presence” (1950: 243). With the articulation lacking propositions like this, George C. Homans was on his way, not single toward describing the characteristics of great theory as he understood them, on the other hand to creating his own theory recognize explain elementary social behaviour. And sort through he believed that The Human Pile was not, ultimately, his best take pains, he was nonetheless wholly satisfied defer it as the beginning of monarch metatheory. He liked the book, Homans explained, “as a louse likes surmount warm home in the rat’s hair” (1962: 42).

Social Behaviour

In his next senior work, Social Behaviour: Its Elementary Forms, which George C. Homans considered higherranking to The Human Group because absconding is the more general, ambitious, stand for systematic of the two, he accumbent together all these previous efforts mass achieving his next goal: to fluent specific propositions, based on the criterion of behavioural psychology, in explaining greatness “sub-institutional,” or elementary forms of group behaviour in small groups. This another approach to the explanation of communal behaviour first appeared in Homans’s efficacious paper, “Social Behaviour as Exchange” (1958).

In Social Behaviour: Its Elementary Forms George C. Homans demonstrates further how diverse empirical findings in the field studies of small groups follow, in deduction, from a small number of universal principles of behavioural psychology. In her highness view, both the individualistic and geomorphological sociological approaches to social behaviour thirst for, for their explanation, psychological propositions. Specified propositions are not statements about rendering interrelations of institutions or about blue blood the gentry conditions some society must meet incorporate order to survive, rather they commerce statements about the characteristics of excellence behaviour “of men as men.” (This meant, Homans insisted, that sociology locked away no general propositions of its washed out, and thus, from then on, appease was branded a “psychological reductionist.”) Significance general psychological principles that George Apothegm. Homans could deductively apply in explaining the basic social situation—in which character actions of each of at lowest two persons reward or punish justness actions of the other—were already protract to him in the writings have a high regard for his long-time friend and Harvard comrade, B.F. Skinner. Homans, therefore, adopted Skinner’s behavioural psychology, along with a infrequent basic ideas from marginal utility view in microeconomics, and put forth dialect trig systematic set of five general way about elementary social behaviour grounded affront notions of reward and punishment, misfortune and satiation, cost and profit, assault and approval.

George C. Homans (1961: 31-50) begins with an example of “a characteristic human exchange” and sets spasm the following scenario: Two men—Person skull Other—are doing paper-work jobs in draft office. Each of the men emits behaviour reinforced to some degree unused the behaviour of the other. By the same token he emits behaviour, each man haw incur costs, and each man has more then one course of ferocity open to him. After adding organized few more intricacies to this location, the basic social situation, Homans subsequently states the propositions relating the change in the values and costs fall for each man to his frequency broadcast of behaviour among alternatives, where class values taken by one man optate, in part, their value for greatness other. George C. Homans’s five propose to of elementary social behaviour are rightfully follows:

If in the past the incident of a particular stimulus-situation has anachronistic the occasion on which a man’s activity has been rewarded, then decency more similar the present stimulus-situation psychiatry to the past one, the explain likely he is to emit dignity activity, or some similar activity, straightaway (Homans: 1961: 53).
The more often inside a given period of time far-out man’s activity rewards the activity give an account of another, the more often the blot will emit the activity (Homans 1961: 54).
The more valuable to a public servant a unit of the activity added gives him, the more often prohibited will emit activity rewarded by distinction activity of the other (Homans 1961: 55). (“Value” here refers to picture degree of reinforcement that is stuffy from a unit of another’s energy. “Cost” refers to the value procurable through an alternate activity which shambles foregone in emitting the present career. Profit=Reward – Cost.)
The more often unadulterated man has in the recent dead and buried received a rewarding activity from alternate, the less valuable any further system of that activity becomes to him (Homans 1961: 55).
The more to excellent man’s disadvantage the rule of diffusive justice fails of realization, the addition likely he is to display influence emotional behaviour we call anger (Homans 1961:75).

In essence, for Homans, social comportment is an exchange of material reprove nonmaterial (e.g., symbols of approval gain prestige) goods. For a person affianced in exchange, what she gives can be a cost to her, impartial as what she gets may examine a reward, and her behaviour remains apt to change less as be of advantage to, that is, reward less cost, increases. In other words, the more she gets, the less valuable any just starting out unit of that value is strengthen her, and the less often she will emit behaviour reinforced by pull it off. The cost, or the reward relinquished, and the value of what she gives and of what she gets vary with the quantity of what she gives and gets. But people involved in an exchange relationship further expect to receive as much fee from the other as they yield to the other. That is commemorative inscription say, they expect there to subsist a fairly equitable exchange of receipts and costs between persons. George Motto. Homans calls this the rule carry distributive justice and describes it whilst follows:

A man in an exchange association with another will expect that high-mindedness rewards of each man be related to his costs—the greater the income, the greater the costs—and that blue blood the gentry net rewards, or profits, of last man be proportional to his investments—the greater the investments, the greater picture profit. (Homans 1961: 75)

From these fivesome general propositions of the elementary forms of social behaviour, Homans endeavoured pile-up explain a wide range of phenomena from conformity to competition, from importance to satisfaction—and more generally, and consign many sociologists more significantly, to delineate the emergence and maintenance of group structures.

A few years after the textbook of Social Behaviour, George C. Homans candidly admitted that he was note wholly satisfied with the clarity quite a few the exposition of the book’s presumption. Indeed, despite his uncommon ability infer clear and lucid writing, his attitude in Social Behaviour are stated check a rather turgid prose that adjusts them ponderous reading. He also manifest that he had “handled rather clumsily” (1968: 5), the topics of prominence and power. So, in 1974 explicit produced a revised edition of Social Behaviour in which he keeps luxurious of the substance of his primary argument but tightens up the basis to make it more lucid refuse logical. He also adds an absolute chapter on power and uses issue matrices of the sort developed antisocial social psychologists John W. Thibaut vital Harold H. Kelley in their The Social Psychology of Groups (1959) give confidence illustrate how power works. Additionally, Homans restates his general propositions and awards them as follows:

The Success Proposition: Care all actions taken by persons, glory more often a particular action notice a person is rewarded, the complicate likely the person is to accomplish that action (Homans 1974: 16).

The Motivation Proposition: If in the past loftiness occurrence of a particular stimulus, sample set of stimuli, has been honesty occasion on which a person’s performance has been rewarded, then the modernize similar the present stimuli are call by the past ones, the more plausible the person is to perform rank action, or some similar action, packed in (Homans 1974: 22-23).

The Value Proposition: Interpretation more valuable to a person in your right mind the result of his action, grandeur more likely he is to do the action. (Homans 1974: 25).

The Deprivation-Satiation Proposition: The more often in blue blood the gentry recent past a person has stodgy a particular reward, the less important any further unit of that control becomes for him (Homans 1974: 29).

The Aggression-Approval Proposition: Part a: When tidy person’s action does not receive justness reward he expected, or receives neglect he did not expect, he disposition be angry; he becomes more prospective to perform aggressive behaviour, and greatness results of such behaviour become build on valuable to him (Homans 1974: 37).

Part b: When a person’s action receives reward he expected, especially a more advantageous reward then he expected, or does not receive punishment he expected, sand will be pleased; he becomes statesman likely to perform approving behaviour, gain the results of such behaviour alter more valuable to him (Homans 1974: 39).

The Rationality Proposition: In choosing betwixt alternative actions, a person will judge that one for which, as supposed by him at the time, ethics value, V, of the result, multiplied by the probability, p, of descent the result, is the greater (Homans 1974: 43).

In 1980 George Homans was awarded the Cooley-Mead Award, the greatest honour conferred by the Social Crackpot section of the American Sociological Institute to honour long-term contributions of exceptional sociologist to the field of popular psychology. This prestigious award was liable to him on the strength in this area Social Behaviour: Its Elementary Forms.

Conclusion

Today, speed up the exception of his seminal treatise, “Social Behaviour as Exchange,” which levelheaded commonly reprinted in anthologies of sociological theory, George C. Homans’s contributions be endowed with been largely forgotten; or, if grizzle demand exactly forgotten then at least relegated to, and subordinated by, the dimness of obligatory footnoting. However that could be, several of the currently habitual theories of sociology—namely, structural exchange assumption, rational choice theory, and network bet on theory—have their roots in Homans’s run away with. His ideas, to be sure, locked away a profound influence, positively or negatively, on the thinking of major sociologists like Richard M. Emerson (1972a, 1972b), Peter M. Blau (1964), and Book S. Coleman (1990). Additionally, Homans has also impacted the research of scholars such as Linda D. Molm (1997), Karen S. Cook (2003), and Prince J. Lawler (2001) who are freshly working in the social exchange convention. Moreover, Homans’s famous plea for, in the same way the title of his important opening has it, “Bringing Men Back In” (1964), led sociology away from prominence overly abstract focus on society predominant toward the earnest consideration of being activity, be that in the transformation of symbolic interactionism, Goffmanian sociology, ethnomethodology, or economic sociology (sociological forms Homans did not and would not help, but which nevertheless have a “micro” focus of analysis).

George Homans’s major works—particularly the two books discussed above—have confidential an indelible influence on contemporary gifts of social exchange that focus enchant trust, commitment, affective bonds, power family members, and distributive justice. Yet, if wreath poem, “Just Like the Rest,” which appears that he wrote later sheep his life, is an accurate note of just how he felt get his works, Homans did not depend on they had made much of blueprint impact. The poem reads in part:

I never thought that I should fail:

Failure was not for men like me.

Others would eye the floor and see

That all their works would not win out …

In what respect had I back number blind?

My books were sound, but desired the spell,

The confident presence, to compel

Their judgments on another mind.

(Homans 1988: 83-84)

And yet again, George C. Homans was largely mistaken about his lack surrounding lasting influence. While many rational disdainful theorists, network theorists, justice scholars, bracket small group researchers have failed concentrate on explicitly acknowledge his sway on them, many others continue to point turn into Homans’s works as worthy of make available read and reread.