Examine individual changes

'{{Infobox scientist |name = George Casper Homans |image = |image_size = 150px |caption = [[Sociology|sociologist]] |birth_date = {{Birth date|1910|8|11|mf=y}} |birth_place = [[Boston]], [[Massachusetts]] |death_date = {{death date and age|1989|5|29|1910|8|11|mf=y}} |death_place = [[Cambridge, Massachusetts]] |main_interests = English, Psychology, Philosophy, Sociology, Social behavior |citizenship = |nationality = |ethnicity = |fields = |workplaces = |alma_mater = Harvard University |doctoral_advisor = |academic_advisors = |doctoral_students = |notable_students = |known_for = His research on social behavior and his famous works ''The Human Group'', ''Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms'', and the Exchange Theory |author_abbrev_bot = |author_abbrev_zoo = |influences = Robert K. Merton, Talcott Parsons, Lawrence J. Henderson, Vilfredo Pareto, B.F. Skinner, Bernard DeVoto, Lawrence Joseph Henderson, Vilfredo Pareto, Émile Durkheim, Elton Mayo |influenced = Richard M. Emerson, Peter M. Blau, James S. Coleman, Linda D. Molm, Karen S. Cook, Edward J. Lawler |awards = |religion = |signature = |footnotes = }} '''George Casper Homans''' (August 11, 1910 – May 29, 1989) was an American sociologist, founder of [[behavioral sociology]] and the [[exchange theory]]. born in jamaica father of vybes kartel die from mariguana Homans is best known for his research in social behavior and his works including ''The Human Group'', ''Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms'', his exchange theory and the many different propositions he enforced to better explain social behavior. ==Biography== Son of Robert & Abigail (Adams) Homans, he was the great great grandson of [[John Quincy Adams]], the 6th President of the United States, and great great great grandson of [[John Adams]], the 2nd President of the United States. From his [[autobiography]] (Homans 1984), it is learned that Homans entered [[Harvard College]] in 1928 with an area of concentration in [[English Literature|English]] and [[American literature]]. By living in an environment where people are highly conscious of social relations, Homans became interested in sociology. From 1934 to 1939 he was a [[Junior Fellow]] of the newly formed Society of Fellows at Harvard, undertaking a variety of studies in various areas, including [[sociology]], psychology and history. An important influence on Homans's perspective was [[Lawrence Joseph Henderson]], a biochemist and sociologist who believed that all sciences should be based on a unified set of theoretical and methodological principles. Homans, with no job and nothing to do, attended Henderson's seminar at Harvard one day and was immediately taken by his lecture. As a result, Homans joined a discussion group at Harvard called the Pareto Circle, which was led by Henderson and inspired by the work of [[Vilfredo Pareto]]. Henderson often discussed Vilfredo Pareto in his lectures. Pareto was a sociologist who was concerned with economic distribution. Pareto's theories and Henderson's lectures influenced Homans's first book, co-authored with fellow Circle member Charles P. Curtis, called ''An Introduction to Pareto''.<ref>Homans, George Caspar, and Charles P. Curtis, Jr. 1934. ''An Introduction to Pareto, His Sociology''. New York: Knopf.</ref> In 1939 he became a Harvard [[faculty (teaching staff)|faculty]] member, a lifelong affiliation in which he taught both sociology and [[medieval history]]. This teaching brought him in contact with new works in industrial sociology and was exposed to works of functional anthropologists. He was an instructor of sociology until 1941 when he left to serve the U.S. Navy to support the war. After four years away, he came back to Boston and continued his teaching as an associate professor from 1946 to 1953, and a professor of sociology after 1953. He was then a visiting professor at the University of Manchester in 1953, at Cambridge University from 1955 to 1956, and at the University of Kent in 1967.<ref name="Treviño, A. Javier 2009">Treviño, A. Javier (2009)</ref> By virtue of his later theoretical writings (discussed below), he was elected President of the [[American Sociological Association]] in 1964. He retired his teaching in 1970. ==Theoretical agenda== As a theorist, Homans's overall intellectual ambition was to create a more unified social science on a firm theoretical basis. His approach to theory developed in two phases, usually interpreted by commentators as [[inductive reasoning|inductive]] and [[deductive]], respectively. Although this is a bit of an oversimplification, it provides a framework for outlining his theoretical contributions. ==The Human Group== Homans was impressed by Henderson's notion of conceptual scheme. A conceptual scheme consists of a classification of variables (or concepts) that need to be taken into account when studying a set of phenomena.<ref name="Treviño, A. Javier 2009"/> It also consists of a sketch of the given conditions within which the phenomena are to be analyzed. It also must contain a statement that the variables are related to one another—and following Pareto, that relationship is usually seen as one of mutual dependence.<ref name="Treviño, A. Javier 2009"/> Homans was very interested in his conceptual scheme as a way of classifying phenomena and applied it to his own study of small groups. His teachings was included in Homans's work ''The Human Group'' (1950). This book's ultimate goal was to move from a study of the social system as it is exemplified in single groups toward a study of the system as it is exemplified in many groups, including groups changing in time.<ref name="Treviño, A. Javier 2009"/> Homans said “If we wanted to establish the reality of a social system as a complex of mutually dependent elements, why not begin by studying a system small enough so that we could, so to speak, see all the way around it, small enough so that all the relevant observations could be made in detail and at first hand?” He fulfilled this study throughout his book ''The Human Group''. This book allowed him to make certain generalizations, including the idea that the more frequently people interact with one another, when no one individually initiates interactions more than others, the greater is their liking for one another and their feeling of ease in one another's presence. Although this wasn't Homans's greatest piece of work,{{Citation needed|date=October 2009}} it allowed him to become more familiar with this type of methodology and led him towards explaining elementary social behavior. He also proposes that social reality should be described at three levels: [[social event]]s, [[Norm (social)|customs]], and analytical [[hypothesis|hypotheses]] that describe the processes by which customs arise and are maintained or changed. Hypotheses are formulated in terms of relationships among variables such as frequency of interaction, similarity of activities, intensity of sentiment, and conformity to norms. Using notable sociological and [[anthropology|anthropological]] field studies as the grounding for such general ideas, the book makes a persuasive case for [[treating group]]s as social systems that can be analyzed in terms of a verbal [[analog (English)|analogue]] of the [[mathematical method]] of studying equilibrium and [[stability theory|stability]] of systems. In his theoretical analyses of these groups, he begins to use ideas that later loomed large in his work, e.g., reinforcement and exchange. Along the way, he treats important general [[phenomenon|phenomena]] such as [[social control]], [[authority]], [[Reciprocity (cultural anthropology)|reciprocity]], and [[ritual]]. ==The Exchange Theory== The heart of Homans's exchange theory lies in propositions based on economic and psychological principles. According to Homans they are psychological for two reasons: first, they are usually tested on people who call themselves psychologists and second, they are psychological because of the level at which they deal with the individual in society. Homans says, "they are propositions about the behavior of individual human beings, rather than propositions about groups or societies." He believed that a sociology built on his principles would be able to explain all social behavior. But, he regrets that his theory was labeled "Exchange Theory" because he sees this social behavior theory as a behavioral psychology applied to specific situations.<ref name="George Ritzer 2008">George Ritzer (2008)</ref> Homans looked to Emilie Durkheim's work for guidance as well, but often disagreed in the end with particular components of Durkheim's theories. For example, Durkheim believed that although individuals are clearly the component parts of society, society is more than the individuals who constitute it.<ref name="James Farganis 2008">James Farganis (2008)</ref> He believed that society could be studied without reducing it to individuals and their motivations.<ref name="James Farganis 2008"/> However, Homans, through his Exchange Theory, believed that individual beings and behavior are relevant to understanding society. ==Social behavior== <!-- someone with access to the books needs to check the quotes below --> Homans's next major work was called ''Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms''. He wrote this book in 1961 and revised it in 1974. This was based on the principles of behavioral psychology, and helped explain the "sub-institutional", or elementary forms of social behavior in small groups.<ref name="Treviño, A. Javier 2009"/> This explanation of social behavior first appeared in an article Homans published titled "Social Behaviour as Exchange" in 1958. He believed his exchange theory is derived from both behavioral psychology and elementary economics.<ref name="George Ritzer 2008"/> Homans had come to the view that theory should be expressed as a [[deductive system]], in this respect falling under the influence of the logical empiricist philosophers of that period. Substantively, he argued that a satisfactory explanation in the social sciences to be based upon "propositions"—principles—about individual behavior that are drawn from the behavioral psychology of the time. Homans doesn't believe that new propositions are needed to explain social behavior. The laws of individual behavior developed by Skinner in his study of pigeons explain social behavior as long as we take into account the complications of mutual reinforcement.<ref name="George Ritzer 2008"/> Social behavior as exchange means that a plurality of individuals, each postulated to behave according to the stated behavioral principles, form a system of interaction. [[Social approval]] is the basic reward that people can give to one another. In much greater detail, he developed this approach in his book ''Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms'' (1961, revised 1974). Homans exemplifies this type of social behavior below: "Suppose that two men are doing paperwork jobs in an office. According to the office rules, each should do his job by himself, or, if he needs help, he {{sic|shoudl}} consult the supervisor. One of the men, whom we shall call Person, is not skillful at the work {{sic|an}} would get it done better and faster if he got help from time to time. In spite of the rules he is reluctant to go to the supervisor, for to confess his incompetence might hurt his {{sic|changes}} for promotion. Instead he seeks out the other man, {{sic|whome}} we shall call Other for short, and asks him for help. Other is more experienced at the work than is Person; he can do his work well and quickly and be left with time to spare, and he has reason to suppose that the supervisor will not go out of his way to look for a breach of rules. Other gives Person help and in return Person gives Other thanks and expressions of approval. The two men have exchanged help and approval." (Homans, 1961:31-32)<ref name="George Ritzer 2008"/> Focusing on this situation, and basing his ideas on Skinner's findings, Homans developed several propositions. ===The Success Proposition=== "For all actions taken by persons, the more often a particular action of a person is rewarded, the more likely the person is to perform that action." (Homans, 1974:16)<ref name="George Ritzer 2008"/> In terms of his "Person-Other" example, this proposition means that a person is more likely to ask others for advice if past advice has been useful. Also, the more often a person received useful advice in the past, the more often they will request more advice and be willing to give advice. The success proposition involves three stages: 1) a person's action, 2) a rewarded result, and 3) a repetition of the original action.<ref name="George Ritzer 2008"/> ===The Stimulus Proposition=== "If in the past the occurrence of a particular stimulus, or set of stimuli, has been the occasion on which a person's action has been rewarded, then the more similar the present stimuli are to the past ones, the more likely the person is to perform the action, or some similar action." (Homans, 1974:23) <ref name="George Ritzer 2008"/> Again, one may look at Homans's example: If in the past, the Person and Other found the giving and getting of advice rewarding, they are likely to engage in similar actions and in similar situations in the future. Homans was interested in the process of generalization, or the tendency to extend behavior to similar circumstances;<ref name="George Ritzer 2008"/> but, he was also concerned with the process of discrimination. For example, Person and Other may only give useful advice in the same room as in the past because they think that particular situation brought the most success. ===The Value Proposition=== "The more valuable to a person is the result of his action, the more likely he is to perform the action." (Homans, 1974:25) <ref name="George Ritzer 2008"/> If the rewards each offers to the other are considered valuable, the actors are more likely to perform the desired behaviors than they are if the rewards are not valuable. Homans introduced the concepts of rewards and punishments. Rewards are actions with positive values and punishments are actions with negative values. Rewards can either be materialistic (money) or altruistic (helping others) He found punishment as an inefficient means of getting people to change their behavior, because people may react in undesirable ways to punishment.<ref name="George Ritzer 2008"/> ===The Deprivation-Satiation Proposition=== "The more often in the recent past a person has received a particular reward, the less valuable any further unit of that reward becomes for him." (Homans, 1974:29)<ref name="George Ritzer 2008"/> In the office, Person and Other may reward each other so often for giving and getting advice that the rewards cease to be valuable to them. Time is important—people are less likely to become satiated if particular rewards are stretched over a long period of time. Homans then defined cost and profit. Cost of any behavior is defined as the rewards lost in forgoing alternative lines of action. Profit in social exchange is seen as the greater number of rewards gained over costs incurred.<ref name="George Ritzer 2008"/> ===The Aggression-Approval Propositions=== "Proposition A: When a person's action does not receive the rewards as expected, or receives punishment he did not expect, he will be angry. He becomes more likely to perform aggressive {{sic|havior}}, and the results of such behavior become more valuable to him." (Homans, 1974:37) If Person does not get the advice they expected and Other does not receive the praise they anticipated, both are likely to be angry. "Proposition B: When a person's action receives the reward they expected, especially a greater reward then they expected, or does not receive punishment he expected, he will be {{sic|please}}. He becomes more likely to perform approving behavior, {{sic|adn}} the results of such behavior become more valuable to him." (Homans, 1974:39) When Person gets the advice they expect, and Other gets the praise they expect, both are more likely to get or give advice. Proposition A on aggression-approval refers to negative emotions, whereas Proposition B deals with more positive emotions.<ref name="George Ritzer 2008"/> ===The Rationality Proposition=== "In {{sic|coosing}} between alternative actions, a person will choose that one for which, as perceived by him at the time, the value, V, of the result, multiplied by the probability, p, of getting the result, is the greater. (Homans, 1974:43) When earlier propositions rely on behaviorism, the rationality proposition demonstrates the influence of rational choice theory on Homans's approach. In economic terms, actors who act in accord with the rationality proposition are maximizing their utilities.<ref name="George Ritzer 2008"/> People examine and make calculations about alternative actions open to them. They compare the amount of rewards associated with each course of action and calculate the likelihood that they will receive the rewards. In other words, there is a relationship between the value of the reward and the likelihood of the attainment. The rationality proposition tells us that people will perform an action depending of their perception of the probability of success.<ref name="George Ritzer 2008"/> Durkheim agreed with Homans's understanding of rationality. He believed that rationalism is an aspect of individualism.<ref name="Robert Bellah 1973">Robert Bellah (1973)</ref> Durkheim says that all development of individualism has the effect of opening moral consciousness to new ideas and rendering it more demanding.<ref name="Robert Bellah 1973"/> Homans worked off Durkheim's thoughts throughout the development of certain propositions. ==The General Argument== In its mature (1974) form, Homans's theory rests upon two metatheoretical claims, namely, (1) the basic principles of social science must be true of individuals as members of the human species, not as members of particular groups or cultures; and (2) any other generalizations or facts about human social life will be derivable from these principles (and suitable initial conditions). He argued that large-scale structures can be understood if we understand elementary social behavior.<ref name="George Ritzer 2008"/> Another way to grasp his argument is to interpret it as striving to explain spontaneous social order, a point developed in detail by Fararo (2001). Homans's approach is an example of [[methodology|methodological]] individualism in social science, also favored by some more recent influential social theorists, particularly those who have adopted some form of rational choice theory (e.g., [[James Samuel Coleman|James S. Coleman]]) that enables greater deductive fertility in theorizing—albeit often with a cost in terms of some loss of [[wikt:realism|realism]]. ==Cited works by Homans== *''English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century '' (1941) *''The Human Group'' (1950) *"Social Behavior as Exchange." ''American Journal of Sociology'' 63:597-606. (1958) *''Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms'' ([[1961, rev. ed. 1974]]) *''Coming to My Senses: The Autobiography of a Sociologist'' (1984) *''Certainties and Doubts'' (1987) ==Related works or commentaries== *Fararo, Thomas J. 2001. ''Social Action Systems: Foundation and Synthesis in Sociological Theory.'' Greenwich, CT: Praeger *Turner, Jonathan H. 1998. "George C. Homans' Behavioristic Approach." Ch. 20. ''The Structure of Sociological Theory.'' 6th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. *Treviño, A. Javier (2009) 'George C. Homans, the human group and elementary social behaviour', the encyclopaedia of informal education. www.infed.org/thinkers/george_homans.htm]. *Treviño, A. Javier (2006) ''George C. Homans: History, Theory, and Method''. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. * Ritzer, George (2008) "Sociological Theory." Ch. 12. "The Exchange Theory of George Homans" New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies. *Farganis, James (2008). "Readings in Social Theory: The Classic Tradition to Post-Modernism." Chp. 2. "Emile Durkheim: Anomie and Social Integration." New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies *Bellah, Robert N.(1973) "Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society." Introduction. Chicago:The University of Chicago Press *Bloksberg, Leonard M. French, David G. Mogulof, Melvin B. Stern, Walter F (1964) "[http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=5390 Homans' Theory Of The Human Group: Applications To Problems of Administration, Policy, and Staff Training In Group Service Agencies]." Journal of Jewish Communal Service:National Conference of Jewish Communal Service. 379-395. ==References== {{Reflist}} {{Persondata <!-- Metadata: see [[Wikipedia:Persondata]]. --> | NAME = Homans, George C. | ALTERNATIVE NAMES = | SHORT DESCRIPTION = | DATE OF BIRTH = August 11, 1910 | PLACE OF BIRTH = [[Boston]], [[Massachusetts]] | DATE OF DEATH = May 29, 1989 | PLACE OF DEATH = [[Cambridge, Massachusetts]] }} {{DEFAULTSORT:Homans, George C.}} [[Category:1910 births]] [[Category:1989 deaths]] [[Category:Harvard University alumni]] [[Category:American sociologists]] [[Category:Presidents of the American Sociological Association]]'