Structural Balance, Mechanical Solidarity, and Interpersonal Relations

Balance theory, a theoretical system developed by Cartwright and Harary to formalize concepts set forth by Heider, is used with slight modifications to restate fifty-six sociological and social-psychological propositions from the writings of Berelson, Lazarsfeld, and McPhee; Coleman; Davis; Durkheim; Festinger; Fiedler; Homans; Katz and Lazarsfeld; Lazarsfeld and Merton; Lipset, Trow, and Coleman; Merton and Kitt; and Stouffer et al. The propositions are grouped under (a) Person, Other, and X, (b) group structure, (c) changes in attitudes and opinions, and (d) values. Almost seventy-five years ago Durkheim wrote: "Social life comes from a double source, the likenesses of consciences and the division of social labor" (5, p. 226). Less than a year ago, George Caspar Homans wrote: The first and most obvious thing to be said (about confornity) is that if members of a group are to resemble one another in their behavior, some of them must find this similarity valuable or rewarding. Similarity is not always rewarding.... The division of labor means differences in labor, and it often pays off. But we are now dealing with the case in which similarities rather than differences are valuable [11, pp. 114-153. The powerful effects of similarity and difference between people as explanatory principles in analyzing human behavior have not, of course, gone unnoticed in the interim. Of the two, however, similarity has received more attention, and it is the burden of this paper that the point has been reached where it is possible to spell out a theory of similarity (what Durkheim would call mechanical solidarity) that organizes a number of principles and hypotheses in recent research. In particular, the ideas presented here are culled from five clusters of authors and studies: (a) a group of social psychologists mostly influenced by Gestalt thinking in general and Kurt Lewin in particular (2, 6-9); (b) George Homalis' two theoretical books (10, 11); (c) a series of studies by sociologists associated with Columbia University and the Bureau of Applied Social Research (1, 3, 12, 13, 15); (d) the theory of relative deprivation (4, 16, 17); and (e) Durkheim (5). In order to avoid the appearance of acute megalomania it must be made clear what this essay is and what it is not. On one hand, the author makes no claim of originality or profundity, his belief being that almost all the conclusions either can be found in the works cited or are familiar principles of human behavior. On the other hand, there is no claim that the proposed theory subsumes, integrates, or codifies any or all of these works. Running through the writings mentioned above are a number of concepts and propositions that can be restated (with some inevitable distortion) in a common language and in terms of a small number of postulates. Some of these concepts and propositions are: structural balance (2, 9), magnitude of dissonance (6), abilities and opinions (7), liking and cognitive unit formation (2, 9), sentiments (10, 11), constraint versus warm friendly relations (10), pressures toward uniformity (6), social comparisons (7), distributive justice (11), subgroup formation (4), relative deprivation (4, 16, 17), choice of reference group (16), assumed similarity (8), cross-pressures (1), polarization of social opinions (3), attachments (10), the effects of shop size on social relations (15). friendshiD