Introduction to Brian Powell, 2024 Recipient of the Cooley Mead Award

This address is in the form of five confessions that speak to (1) my relationship with social psychology (“For years, I did not I identify as or feel like a social psychologist), (2) others’ relationship with social psychology (“I am not alone in feeling this way”), (3) social psychology’s relationship with sociology (“I believe that social psychology is undervalued in sociology”), (4) sociology’s relationship with other academic disciplines and the public sphere (“I believe that sociology is undervalued elsewhere”), and (5) strategies from the social psychological toolbox that we can use to reenvision the portrayal of social psychology (“I believe that we can do better”). This address not only speaks to the challenges faced by social psychology but also hints at the promise of social psychology as a vibrant and fundamental area within sociology and as an exemplar for sociology.

Introduction of Karen A. Hegtvedt, Winner of the 2023 Cooley-Mead Award

Introduction of Jane McLeod, 2022 Recipient of the Cooley Mead Award

Introduction of Neil J. MacKinnon, 2021 Cooley-Mead Award Recipient

I discuss how social psychologists can think about identity change as a nested phenomenon. Identity change occurs at the micro level, but it is embedded in meso and macro levels of social reality. I use changes in the religious identity in the United States as an example of how we can conceptualize identity change in this way. This approach enables us to broaden the scope of social psychological work to be more inclusive of the various social forces at all levels of social reality that impact the human processes we study.

Introduction of William A. Corsaro, 2019 Recipient of the Cooley-Mead Award

On the occasion of Douglas Maynard’s selection as recipient of the 2018 Cooley-Mead Award, this essay provides a brief overview of his scholarly career. His diverse and expansive contributions to social psychological theory and research and his tireless mentorship of students and colleagues are both reviewed.

Cooley-Mead Award 2009

Introduction of Jane Allyn Piliavin: Recipient of the 2008 Cooley-Mead Award

Introduction of James S. House: Recipient of the 2007 Cooley-Mead Award

Introduction of Lynn Smith-Lovin: Recipient of the 2006 Cooley-Mead Award

The Cooley-Mead Award for career con tributions to social psychology is the highest award given by the social psychological com munity of the American Sociological Association. It is a great privilege and honor to be a part of this award session and to intro duce the 2005 recipient of this award, Professor Cecilia Ridgeway. Cecilia is cur rently the Lucy Stern Professor of Sociology at Stanford University. In this introduction I review the development of her research career and include a few personal observa tions because we have worked together in a variety of ways over the years. Cecilia began her academic life as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. She enrolled in the University of Michigan at age 16 and received her BA in sociology in 1967, graduating with honors. Michigan, as a center for interdisciplinary research on social psychology, was a major intellectual influ ence. Of particular import to Cecilia's deci sion to major in sociology was an introductory honors course on social psy chology, taught jointly by a psychologist and a sociologist. In that course they reenacted classic studies of conformity and norm for mation by Solomon Asch and Muzafer Sherif. Outside the classroom, Cecilia was among the early wave of those who joined the Students for a Democratic Society, the organization in the vanguard of the student movement of the 1960s. From Michigan, Cecilia went to Cornell to pursue graduate work, and received her MA and PhD in sociology in 1969 and 1972 respectively. A major influence at Cornell was William Lambert (the psychologist); with him she continued to develop her interests in social psychology. At Cornell she developed an interest in the sociological analysis of music, subscribing to the Weberian view that the structure of music reflects the structure of

Networks of trust relations often emerge under conditions of uncertainty or risk to facilitate social exchange. Under some conditions, such networks represent a form of social capital that can be mobilized in support of general social cooperation in the society. Under other conditions, however, such networks may have negative effects on the degree of social cooperation in the society. To examine these conditions I draw on experimental work on cooperation and trust, as well as recent work on social exchange under conditions of uncertainty and risk. After an introduction, in which I acknowledge those who have been influential in my career, I comment on the implications of this work for recent research on social capital.

Introduction of Karen S. Cook: Recipient of the 2004 Cooley-Mead Award

Introduction of Peter J. Burke, Recipient of the 2003 Cooley-Mead Award

The present paper examines existing links between identities and the social structure in the context of identity control theory. I point out that, whether social structure is conceived as positions (roles and group memberships) to which identities are tied, or as the human organization of resource flows and transfers that are controlled by the identity verification process, identities and social structure are two sides of the same coin. Building on this theme, I develop hypotheses that explore some of the implications of this identity—social structure link. Some hypotheses suggest contexts in which identity change is likely; others explore the various consequences of identity verification, which depend on the different ways in which identities are tied to the social structure.

I am highly honored to receive the 2002 Cooley-Mead Award, and I want to thank my collaborators, both colleagues and students, who made this possible. I don't have enough time to acknowledge all the people from whom I learned so much and who stimulated the social psychological work that I have done. I would be remiss, however, if I did not mention the people most significant to my work and my development. I owe my colleagues at Stanford-Joe Berger, Sandy Dornbusch, Henry Walker, Buzz Zelditch, and especially Liz Cohen-an immeasurable debt not only for the research in which we were involved but for the hundreds of hours spent discussing issues of theory construction, methodology, and social psychology in general. Creating, testing, and applying social psychology theory takes team efforts, and I was part of a very exciting team. There is a small irony involved in receiving the Cooley-Mead Award since the one question on my PhD written exams that I answered inadequately was the question about Cooley and Mead. That, too, was predictive in a sense because it started me on the path of questioning the prevailing conceptions of theory in sociology. When I came into the field, there was not much of what I would call theory. Today there are many examples. I disagree with my friend Henry Walker (Walker 2000) about the state of theory development, but I understand the basis of our difference. I am looking at theory development relative to where we were when I started in social psychology; he is critiquing theory development relative to where we want to be. I agree with him that we have a long way to go, but the four branches of the expectation states program (Berger, Cohen, and Zelditch 1966; Berger and Conner 1974; Berger et al. 1972; Webster and Sobieszick 1974)-power-dependency theory (Emerson 1972a, 1972b), network exchange theory (Markovsky, Willer, and Patton 1988; Willer and Anderson 1981; Yamagishi, Gilmore, and Cook 1988), identity theory (Stryker and Burke 2000), and affect-control theory (Heise 1999) to cite a few examplestestify to the growth over the last 45 years. I would like to believe immodestly that I, along with my Stanford colleagues, contributed to this growth. I was interested in the theory enterprise even before my first year in graduate school. In fact, I took an MA in psychology from the University of Minnesota because I was attracted by Leon Festinger's (1950) theory of informal social communication. At Minnesota I discovered that I did not look at things the way most psychologists do, so I returned to Harvard for my PhD in sociology, but I was very much a product of the Social Relations Department. Jerome Bruner told me after I had switched to sociology that the boundary areas between fields like psychology and sociology generated the most creative work. I took this seriously, and much of my research was close to this boundary. What no one told me was that working in these boundary areas creates problems of legitimacy. Because I constructed a probability model for the Asch (1951) conformity experiment (B. Cohen 1958,1963; Cohen and Lee 1975), sociologists tended to treat me as a psychologist even though my model was based on the very unpsychological assumption that there were no individual differences among the experimental subjects. I had a hard time convincing people that it is not the phenomenon one studies but the theoretical approach one takes that determines whether one is a sociological social psychologist. The theory enterprise has grown and matured over the last 50 years. Almost everyone now speaks favorably about theory. I am reminded of George Homans' complaint 5 * Direct correspondence to author at cohenb@stanford.edu

The Cooley-Mead Award is a great honor, and I am greatly honored to receive it. But I am also a little embarrassed because so much of the work it honors has been collaborative. The award in my case is for a collective, not an individual, accomplishment. I have spent half my life studying status and rewards, most of it in collaboration with Joseph Berger, Bernard P Cohen, Elizabeth Cohen, and the many others-most of whom are probably here today-who have been involved in the growth of the expectation states program. I have spent another quarter of my life studying power and authority, most of it in collaboration with Sanford M. Dornbusch, William Evan, W. Richard Scott, George Thomas, Henry Walker, and the many others-also probably here-who have been involved in the growth of the legitimacy program. The expectation states program was the subject of Berger's Cooley-Mead address in 1991 (Berger 1992). (Also see Wagner and Berger 2000). What I want to talk about today is recent developments and new directions in the study of legitimacy.

Trustworthiness