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 Homans continued Homans s 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 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 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 Skinner s 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 q operant 20conditioning Operant Conditioning Satiation the rate of behavior falls off if the behavior is often reinforced Extinction the rate of emission of behavior stops when it is not reinforced When the pigeon is given much more corn each time it pecks the less hungry it will become and the less it pecks 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 An Exchange Paradigm Homans notes that Skinner s 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 An Exchange Paradigm The problem is not as it is often stated merely what a man s 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 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 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 that s cohesiveness is proportionate to the social approval and activities members exchange with each other The Influence Process Conformer people whose activity the other group members find valuable Since members are satiated by the conformer s 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 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 Practical Equilibrium The more closely a member s 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 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 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 Profit and Social Control cont Problem of social control So why does every member s 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 Profit and Social Control cont Supportive Experiment H B Gerard The Anchorage of Opinions in Face to Face Groups 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 Profit and Social Control cont Percentage of subjects changing toward someone in the group Group type Agreement Mild Disagreement Strong Disagreement High attraction 0 12 44 Low attraction 0 15 9 Percentage of subjects changing