George C. Homans

• “Institutions are human behavior, and they are, therefore, to be explained by the characteristics of that behavior.”
• “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?”
• “To consider social behavior as an exchange of goods may clarify the relations among four bodies of theory: behavioral psychology, economics, propositions about the dynamics of influence, and propositions about the structure of small groups.”
• “Social behavior is an exchange of goods, material goods but also non-material ones, such as the symbols of approval or prestige. Persons that give much to others try to get much from them, and persons that get much from others are under pressure to give much to them. This process of influence tends to work out at equilibrium to a balance in the exchanges”
• “In choosing 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.”
• “It is really intolerable that we can say only one thing at a time; for social behavior displays many features at the same time, and so in taking them up one by one we necessarily do outrage to its rich, dark, organic unity.”

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

via Wikidata sitelinks · CC0