Emerson says to Homans, Rational Choice, Exchange and Behaviorists: "You need emotion!! And feeling!!"

If Emerson wanted feelings incorporated into a rational choice model, what would it account for?

Situations where people's feelings change the formulas they use?

He also said we need to improve on Homans' value proposition and be able to know ahead of time what's valued and what's not. As it stood with Homans', things took on more or less value because they were rewarding, but why were they rewarding? what were the rewards? or what are they likely to be for me, here, or you, sitting there?

Actually, my first professional scholarly publication in 1993 was a successful attempt at doing that, but I'll leave it for later.

For now though, the main currency Homans said any social network has is approval. I think I can go one better than that. Can you see where I'm going with that? It's more than approval that draws us to one another and that lets us value what we are together over what we would be apart. It's the ability of a group to celebrate it's members, and in doing so celebrate themselves. The main currency social networks have to work with is love, I think, at least in an abstract way. In a platonic healing love, where you understand and honestly accept another person, and have seen their ability to be trusted, to share, to care.
o.k., getting mushy...

But the point is, it's not cold calculation at all driving the "rational choice" or "cost-benefit analysis" or "exchange". Emotions are involved in so many of our irrational, high cost, bad exchange value decisions.

Er, anyone got any fights they can talk about? Granted it might not seem sociological, but imagine talking about fights within groups, organizations, communities, neighborhoods, etc., and how the groups can do some irrational things in the heat of the moment. Like when city planners give up the best property to big retail and political contributors to their campaign fund.

Basic Principles of How the Social Landscape Affects Our Choice of Social Behaviors

Homan's propositions are now accepted by exchange theorists and rational choice theorists. That all talk about how anything “good” makes certain social behaviors “good,” in the sense that they're “more likely to be repeated,” and good to do. (Notice, though, what starts the process of how good is determined in the first place is left open. He'd probably that's a job for psychologists and biologists, not social psychologyists and sociologists. Hmmm.)

1. Success – the frequency that a category of behavior brings good outcomes increases it's value.

2. Stimulus – the relationships of that category with other categories, increases the value of those other categories. the more the others will be repeated.

3. Value – the intensity of the goodness, the more it will be repeated.

4. Deprivation-Satiation – have a lot, don't want; have little to none, want a lot; supply and demand matters, in other words.

5. Aggression-Approval – same as #1, the success proposition, but the inverse for avoiding bad outcomes, or acting against violations of expectations of good outcomes.

O.K., lets apply these to war. Can you rattle off some manifestations of each principle?

Why explain everything from the individual's perspecitve?

What's the appeal of reductionism?

It may just the desire to see things in terms of a reality we're more familiar with and certain about, and that's why we tend to bring things down to the familiar terrain of the individual. After all, it is the more natural perspective of all of us, one would think.

But a psychologically reductionistic perspective would miss out on the inimmitable reality of the macro. This is where Durkheim's vision of macro-level phenomena being irreducable to, and distinct from individuals. One of his most radical conceptions of that is the “collective conscious” existing “sui generis” from the collectivity, where the whole can't be reduced to the sum of its parts, individuals.

Isn't any collective enterprise that?

To reduce, or not to reduce...

Homans said functionalist sociologists have tended to reject psychological explanations as reductionistic, but that means it can't provide explanations like a psychological theory can.

But two can play that game. Are there kinds of functionalist macro-level explanations that are more scientifically "parsimonious" (i.e., efficient in their explanations) than any micro-level social psychological theory can be because they DON'T go to that level where things make less sense?

That's a heavy question, but try to answer it.