Bio: (1910-1989) American sociologist. George Homans studied at Harvard University, where he spent his entire professional career. He primarily dealt with the development of theoretical and epistemological aspects of sociology, and he called the approach he developed the "social exchange theory ".

                     The Human Group

The first part of his career is dedicated to the study of social structures and processes in small groups. The most important from this period of his work is the book The Human Group (1950). In it, Homans builds an inductive strategy for deriving abstract theoretical generalizations. The basis for these generalizations are descriptions of the behavior of different groups. He thoroughly analyzed five case studies (done by other researchers) that looked at very different groups: a group of factory workers, a juvenile gang from Chicago, a tribal family group from the island of Tikopia, and a community of immigrants in New England.

Homans opposed the view of the "cultural uniqueness" of each society and believed that there were some general principles that united all these groups. To analyze the behavior of people in these five groups, he used four categories: activities - what people do in certain situations; interactions - how one person's activity affects another's behavior; sentiments - activities that reflect the inner psychological states of people who participate in activities and interactions; and norms - values ​​that guided behavior. These four categories make up the internal system of that group and change in one leads to changes in the other categories. After applying these categories to these five case studies, Homans singled out several general rules that describe the empirical regularities of these groups. Each conclusion and generalization, obtained by studying one case (one of the five groups), was extended by analyzing the next case.

The end result of these successive generalizations (or, as he called them, "analytical hypotheses"), based on induction, was the final set of a large number of generalizations that could be applied to all groups studied and then used for further abstract theoretical generalizations. Some of the regularities achieved by this analytical process are: the frequency of interaction between people reinforces their sentiments of mutual liking; the more similar social statuses individuals have, the more frequent their interactions will be. Although the content of the behavior itself varies from case to case, the regularity of the relationship between the variables is constant in all cases studied.

                                    Social Exchange Theory

The second period of Homans' work begins with the publication of the article "Social Behavior as Exchange" (1958) and the book Social Behavior (1961). In these two works, he presents a somewhat modified theoretical approach he called the social exchange theory. New Homans' theoretical approach is more guided by deductive logic. The social exchange theory derives from the critique that Homans developed toward the then-most dominant theoretical direction in America - functionalism. The theory of social exchange is based on several basic principles: the emphasis is on explaining the nature of relationships, rather than simply categorizing them; derivation of lower-ranking hypotheses must be obtained by deductive logic from abstract axioms of a higher level of generality; and the use of the principles of behavioral psychology as a general axiom. Advocating the view that psychological, and not social principles, are the ones that should represent the axioms that are the basis for creating hypotheses about the nature of social interaction and social institutions, led Homans to methodological individualism. He argued that it is impossible to understand social facts by using other social facts, but only through individual behavior. Social phenomena are always the result of the aggregation of individual behaviors. Since social phenomena arise and are maintained through individual behavior, the highest-order principles in sociology must be those relating to individual behavior.

Homans' theory of social exchange views social behavior as "an exchange of activity, tangible or intangible, and more or less rewarding or costly, between at least two persons" (Homans, 1961, 13). The process of exchange is not reserved only for the economy but takes place in all aspects of social life because all interactions between individuals include seeking a reward and avoiding negative consequences. Rewards can be social or psychological, such as: recognition, support, status, satisfaction, etc. It is this desire for personal gain that drives the motivation for social exchange, not collective or symbolic forces. Homans mostly focuses on exchange interactions between two people or within small groups and does not deal with general forms of exchange, at a wider level of society.

Based on the exchange at the micro level, Homans explains more complicated phenomena such as: power, justice, and conformism. He wants to establish empirical hypotheses based on a small number of general principles, that are based on behavioral psychology. He introduces the categories he used in the book Social Group - Activities, Interactions, Sentiments, and Norms - into a new theoretical framework and combines them with the concepts of behavioral psychology. People in social exchange interactions tend to benefit and avoid harm, but they also have certain expectations about the consequences of exchange, so if their expectations are met, they feel satisfaction, and if they are not, they feel dissatisfaction and anger. Homans, on the other hand, recognizes that sometimes people do not make decisions, and often do not make long-term rational calculations, which would maximize their success in interactions.

                                       Sociological Theory

Homans introduces six propositions (hypotheses) that could be used as axioms in sociological theory: 1) Success Proposition - people tend to perform those activities that have more often brought them greater rewards in the past; 2) Stimulus Proposition - people will more often repeat those actions that were rewarded in the past in the presence of a stimulus that in the past was associated with the reward; 3) Value Proposition - people will more often perform those activities that bring more valuable rewards; 4) Deprivation-Satiation Proposition - the more often a reward is received in recent past, the more its value decreases; 5) Aggression-Approval Proposition - rewards that are greater than expected and punishments that are less than expected, produce satisfaction and encourage the activities from which they arose; 6) Rationality Proposition - the choice between alternative activities is decided by the relative value of the consequences of the action, multiplied by the chance that the consequence (reward) will be realized. Homans further uses these assumptions to explain the most important group processes: power, authority, cooperation, competition, status, justice, leadership, conformism, and the processes that take place in institutions. More complex forms of social organization (macrostructure) are also built through these basic exchange processes.

Main works

English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century (1941);

The Human Group (1950);

„Social Behavior as Exchange”, in American Journal of Sociology (1958);

Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms (1961);

Sentiments & Activities: Essays in Social Science (1962);

„Bringing Men Back In”, in American Sociological Review (1964);

The Nature of Social Science (1967);

Certainties and Doubts (1987).