Read The Blackwell Companion to Sociology Online
Authors: Judith R Blau
interpersonal interactions: the exchange of smiles, favors, etc. When I do some-
thing helpful for you, I often do not obtain explicit agreement that you will
return the kindness at a later time (that would be negotiated exchange). Any
benefit that I receive results from the individual action of the other person, and the extent of that benefit (if any) is unknown at the time that I make my decision about whether to act to help the other. This doesn't mean, of course, that
reciprocal exchange is not contingent. Obviously, if no behavior resulting in
value to me occurs, I am unlikely to continue sending rewarding behaviors
indefinitely. For the first 15 or 20 years, the research on negotiated and reciprocal exchange proceeded in parallel. Molm (2000a) has recently reported experi-
ments in which negotiated and reciprocal exchange are compared directly. She
found that power use was lower in reciprocal exchange than in negotiated
exchange. She also found that powerful actors in reciprocal exchanges were
more likely to opt for patterns of exchange that produced predictable, steady
exchange with their disadvantaged partners, rather than adopting a strategy of
intermittent rewarding that would have maximized their outcomes in the long
run. In other words, reciprocal exchange tends to produce satisficing rather than maximizing patterns of interaction that produce more equality than does negotiated exchange.
Position in both negotiated and reciprocal exchange networks determines how
often an actor exchanges with various partners, how many valued goods an
actor accumulates, etc. Actors are more dependent when they are connected to
fewer potential exchange partners, especially if those partners have many other
good options for exchange. Dependent actors are excluded from exchange more
often, get smaller quantities of valued goods in negotiated exchanges, and
receive fewer benefits from their relationships. The important feature here is
that this result requires no particular conscious or strategic action on the part of actors in less dependent positions. To have power is to use it. Less dependent
(more powerful) actors will receive better offers (in negotiated exchange) or
receive more frequent rewards from others (in reciprocal exchange) simply by
virtue of their position.
Much controversy in social network research has centered on formal measures
of structural power ± the advantage that a position derives from the availability of alternative exchange relations, the limits on the availability of their relations'
alternatives, and so on throughout a network. (See the June 1992 issue of the
journal Social Networks for a set of papers highlighting this topic.) Some
approaches have used network concepts like centrality or reachability, while
others use more formal graph analytic approaches. Other scholars have
challenged the usefulness of these purely structural descriptions of power by
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combining the influence of the network's structure and the actor's behavior
pattern on exchange outcomes (Molm, 1990; Freidkin, 1992). Actors who create
strong, contingent reinforcement patterns for their interaction partners achieve better outcomes than those who use inconsistent patterns. The effects of these
patterns are especially important for those who occupy relatively disadvantaged
network positions.
Because of Emerson's influence, much exchange research in the past 20 years
has focused on the voluntary exchange of positively valued things. The more
traditional (and colloquial) sense of power as coercive, negative control of
another's behavior has received much less attention. Most theorists who did
treat both reward-based power dependence and coercive, punitive power expli-
citly dealt with the two types of power as entailing different processes. Molm
(1997), however, incorporated both rewards and punishments within the power
dependence framework. She argued that you can be dependent on someone else
both as a source of valued things and to avoid things that you don't want to
happen. In experiments, this punishment power often is operationalized as the
ability to take points (worth money) away from another actor. This format
allowed Molm to investigate how reward power and punishment power worked
together to create outcomes in an exchange network.
Molm showed that people don't use punishment power very often, because it
is risky and people are generally risk-averse. They experience losses more sharply than gains. If you punish someone who has something that you want, that
person will often retaliate by withholding rewards or punishing you back, rather than doing what you want him or her to. So the only actors who use punishment
strategies very often are the people who don't have much to lose: coercion is the tool of people who are disadvantaged on reward power and who are imbedded
in highly imbalanced relationships (Molm, 1997, pp. 270±1). They have less to
lose and more to gain by using punishment. Punishment can be very effective,
however, if used with an effective behavioral strategy. As Molm (1997, p. 268)
puts it, ``successful coercion requires diligence in monitoring another's behavior, skill in applying punishment contingently, and the willingness to accept short-term losses (including normative censure) in return for uncertain long-term
gains.''
In addition to the new work by Molm comparing negotiated and reciprocal
exchange, new threads in the exchange literature highlight the structure itself as a dependent variable. More studies on coalition formation, network expansion,
and other forms of network transformation are making the relationship even
more central to this area. Some of this research explores how affective response as a social exchange outcome can promote cohesion and commitment in
exchange relationships; this work is reviewed below in an examination of the
convergence of instrumental and affective research interests. Other new research questions shift the focus from negatively connected, competitive exchanges to
positively connected networks in which resources gained through exchange with
one actor actually make exchange with another partner more likely. Since most
production systems have this character ± supplies need to be obtained from
multiple sources before a good can be produced ± these positively connected
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networks are very important for our understanding of social systems. There is
also a lively literature on how rational, goal-oriented actors can solve social
dilemmas ± situations where cooperation is mutually advantageous, but the
highest-payoff individual strategy is not to cooperate (see review in chapter 12
of Cook et al., 1995).
Expectation States Theory
The other major research tradition spawned by the early exchange theorists has
ventured much farther from its roots. Influenced by Homans's early exchange
theory and by Bales's (1950) observations of behavior in small task groups,
Joseph Berger and his colleagues (Berger et al., 1974) tried to explain why a
large number of group behaviors, like talking, being spoken to, evaluating the
ideas of others, receiving positive evaluations from others, tended to occur
together in what they called a power and prestige order. They proposed an
expectation states theory of how these observable status hierarchies developed.
They argued that under certain conditions ± a collective task orientation where
all group members stand to gain from better performance on a group enterprise ±
inequalities in task-related behaviors develop out of group members' expecta-
tions about the value of their own and others' contributions to the group
task. Effectively, deference is granted to group members in exchange for the
recipient engaging in behaviors that produce rewards for the other group
members.
Performance expectations are the central concept in the theory. Group mem-
bers form performance expectations, then give or take action opportunities to
produce the best group outcome, given their beliefs about group members'
relative abilities to contribute. Despite the fact that expectations are formed by individuals, however, the interactional encounter is the unit of analysis in the theory. In expectation states theory, it is the comparison of expectations for two group members that allows the prediction of the behavior that they will engage
in vis-aÁ-vis one another. Like power, status is a relational concept rather than an individual characteristic.
Performance expectations can form from several sources. In a group of highly
similar people, behavioral cues early in the interaction can be crucial. People
who engage in positive task behaviors, seizing early action opportunities, gen-
erate high performance expectations. But much of the expectation states
research focused on how status characteristics that were valued in outside
society were used to differentiate group members. When group members differed
on some evaluated characteristic, Berger argued that this characteristic became
salient in forming performance expectations. Unless there was evidence to the
contrary, the group member with the more valued state of the status character-
istic would be presumed by group members to have higher competence at the
group task than someone with the less valued status.
Berger and his colleagues adopted the strategy of isolating status processes
from other things that could go on in small groups (like emotional dynamics or
identity processes). They used a standardized experimental setting in which a
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subject interacted with a simulated actor. Both the subject and the simulated
actor made judgments about an ambiguous stimulus, under conditions where
they were motivated to make accurate judgments. After the individual judgments
were reported back to the subject, he or she was given a chance to change his or her individual decision if the two disagreed. The proportion of ``stay'' responses
± sticking with one's own opinion in the face of disagreement from the simulated other ± was the key dependent variable. Independent variables typically were
characteristics like gender, race, ethnicity, personal attractiveness, or education, that are evaluated in our society and that were assigned to the simulated actor in order to produce status advantage or disadvantage for the subject. The important thing about this research tradition is that these status characteristics (for example, being male as opposed to female) are not seen as directly determining
task behavior. Instead, the theory predicts that gender will determine the power and prestige order only when it is salient (because it differentiates group members) and when it is linked to expectations about the task in particular ways. For example, men are generally presumed in our society to be more competent than
women, but this is an indirect link to a non-gendered task. If the task is male-
stereotypic, the link could be stronger; if it is female-stereotypic, the link could be reversed in direction (with women receiving higher performance expectations).
Later work explored how demeanor, rewards from other tasks, and formal
positions could influence expectations (and therefore group behavior). After the basic structure of the theory was well supported, researchers devoted many
studies to exploring how different types of information combined to form
performance expectations (see review in chapter 11 of Cook et al., 1995). A
related thread of research investigated how status structures became legitimated, and how this legitimacy helped to stabilize the inequalities that result.
Expectation states theory has been very successful in applied research as well.
A number of experiments demonstrate how initial status differences, imported
from the external societal structure, can be reduced or eliminated by employing
interventions that shape group members' expectations. Elizabeth Cohen (1982),
for example, showed how group tasks and strategic interventions could help
racial minorities to become more active in school settings. Others have demon-
strated how gender inequalities can be reduced or reversed (see Wagner et al.,
1986, for an example and summary of this work).
Recent research has moved back from the rigorously controlled standardized
experiment to the analysis of small group interaction. For example, Cathy
Johnson (1993) has explored how being assigned to a managerial or worker
role in a simulated work environment influenced conversational behaviors like
interruption or suggesting ideas. As a consequence of this move to the study of
open interaction, researchers are beginning to investigate how status-organizing processes interact with other dynamics in groups (see discussion below of status and emotion). Another major focus of recent research is a new attention to the
dynamics of group interaction. Skvoretz and Fararo (1986), for example,
attempted to specify how information imported from outside status structures
combined with information that unfolds as the group interacts to form a
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cumulating status structure. New event history methods that allow the analysis
of behavior as it unfolds over time have allowed researchers to examine these
dynamics empirically.
Another important development in this tradition, also based partially on