Expectations, Theory, and Group Processes

Abstract

I am very pleased and honored to receive the 1991 Cooley-Mead Award. There are many reasons for this. First, this award is a source of pleasure that I can share with my family, particularly with my wife, Theory. Theory has been there through all the steps and stages of my work for the last 25 years, and her support and confidence in that work have been of enormous importance to me as an individual and as a sociologist. I am also pleased because I take this as an evaluation not only of my work but also of the work of a very large number of colleagues and co-workers. It is not possible for me to list the work of all those who have played active roles in expectation states research. I do want to mention, however, my three Stanford colleagues-Morris Zelditch Jr., Bernard P. Cohen, and Elizabeth G. Cohenwho have been involved in the expectation states program from its earliest phases. Finally, I am pleased by this award when I remember some of the others who have received the Cooley-Mead Award, such as Muzafer Sherif and Robert Freed Bales. These two social psychologists have strongly influenced my own work, and I am pleased to share such an honor with them. I developed my interest in sociology at a very early age-certainly long before I appreciated the diversity that exists on so many different levels in this discipline. Also very early in my career, I became interested in the study of interpersonal or group processes. I especially became intrigued with the idea of constructing theories of social behavior, particularly theories that evolved, that developed, that grew. These two interests-understanding interpersonal or group processes and constructing theories of social behavior that evolve-have been with me my