Toward a theory of social relations: The regression analog

Abstract

A conceptual approach is developed in this paper using the logic and concepts of requisite variety and regression to analyze social relations phenomena such as: attraction, power, conflict, stability, competition, and cooperation. A social relationship between two social systems is conceptualized as a perceptual phenomenon by one member of the social dyad (target system) and is determined by psychological contiguity between perceived benefits and costs. The attraction felt by the target system toward the other system is conceptualized as the slope of the regression line, power in the intercept of the regression line, stability in the coefficient of determination, and conflict in the standard error of the estimate. Furthermore, competition is conceptualized in terms of proportion of variance in benefits accounted for by the target system relative to other competitor systems. Finally, cooperation is viewed as a special case in which the effort of multiple target systems is greater than the sum of the proportion of variance accounted for by each target system separately.