George C. Homans

George C. Homans (1910–1989) was an American sociologist who developed a behavioral account of social exchange and studied interaction in small groups.

Social exchange theory: A family of theories explaining social relationships through exchanges of benefits, costs, and obligations. Homans’s account became a foundational behavioral version of this broader approach.
Reinforcement: A consequence that increases the likelihood of a behavior recurring. Homans used reinforcement to explain why rewarded social actions are repeated.
The Human Group: George C. Homans’s 1950 book developing a theory of small groups from comparative case studies. This book set out his account of group structure, activity, and interaction.
W. Lloyd Warner: An American anthropologist and sociologist known for community studies and research on social class. Warner’s field research shaped Homans’s early comparative studies of groups.
Peter Blau: An Austrian-born American sociologist who developed a theory of social exchange and analyzed power and organization. Blau expanded exchange theory toward power, institutions, and large-scale social structure.
Behaviorism: A psychological approach that explains behavior through observable actions and their environmental conditions. Homans adapted its account of reinforcement to explain social interaction.
Reward: An outcome valued by an individual that can encourage a behavior or exchange. The value of an outcome helps explain which interactions people pursue.
Bank Wiring Observation Room: A group of male workers observed in the Hawthorne studies at Western Electric’s Chicago plant. Homans drew on this case to show how informal group norms shaped work behavior.
Talcott Parsons: An American sociologist who developed a structural-functionalist theory of social systems and action. Homans challenged Parsons’s abstract system theory with behavioral explanations.
Richard Emerson: An American sociologist who developed exchange theory with particular attention to power and dependence. Emerson formalized exchange relations beyond Homans’s primarily behavioral propositions.

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