George C. Homans

George Caspar Homans, (* August 11, 1910 Boston, Massachusetts, USA, † May 29 1989 Cambridge ( Massachusetts)) was an American sociologist. He was 54th president of the American Sociological Association.

Homans founded in the United States, a strictly deductive working theory of social behavior and contributed much to the sociological exchange theory with. In particular, he emerged as a group analyst. He is considered the founder of Rational Choice Theory.

His deductive theory builds on the results of inductive methods: First, is closed due to observations on relationships between phenomena. ( Discovery ) The investigation leads to a hypothesis that in a generalized assumption about the regularities of a phenomenon. Then the question arises of "how " and " why ", so the behavior of the individual variables to each other and why they do that? (Explanation ) The theory is a deductive system, in which in a hierarchy, the assumptions (hypotheses) and the above theorems ( derivable logically links the hypotheses ) are noted below.

Small group research

Homans busied himself with such standards, activity, emotion, and interaction affect small groups. Next he distinguishes between the " inner system " and the " outer system ". Hypotheses by him are:

• Processes of standard education be enhanced through interaction and activity.
• Emotion and activities (if standardized) develop into expectations (norms), from which develop hierarchies.
• The lower the frequency of interaction, the less clear are the standards.
• Feelings of related interacting actors are similar to each other the more likely of the more frequently this takes place.

Criticism

Homans ' work is not without controversy. So he was accused, his theory of elementary social behavior is by their uncritical acceptance of Skinner's behaviorism empirically almost inane.

Selected Publications

• Theory of the social group, 6th edition, West German publisher, Opladen 1972