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.
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2 comments:
Lily
Relating these terms to war....Ok, here I go, to the best of my ability:
Success could be the money made from war for "war vendors". Having a war(a category of behavior) usually makes money for "war vendors"(good outcome)who create weapons, etc.
Stimulus could be that soldiers in a war are often associated with positive terms like "freedom protectors" and "patriotic duties". This causes war, and the soldiers who fight in it to be of greater value simply by being associated with those valuable American terms, making war more likely to be repeated.
Value could be the amount of money the "war vendors" make from war(intensity of good outcome), making war more likely to be repeated.
Deprivation-Satiation could be the supply and demand of oil in Iraq. The supply of oil is running low, so we, the U.S. want alot of it, enough to cause a war over controlling the resource.
Aggression-Approval could be like the "war on terrorism". The U.S. fighting in a war (a category of behavior)is supposed to prevent another terrorist attack on innocent lives(bad outcomes trying to avoid).
I've got this to say about Lily/"Jeffrey's" comment: well, like, uh YEAH! i.e., well-done!
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