Social Process Model Research Articles

Symbols of Collective Memory: The Social Process of Memorializing May 4, 1970, at Kent State University

Monument and memorial building is one of the more dramatic forms of symbolic expression. This form of symbolic expression represents aspects of a community's collective history; and its existence thereby serves to crystallize consensus and solidarity. The building of the memorial is a dialectic of symbolic interaction explicated through use of a social process model. This article will first describe the theoretical issues involved with collective representation and memory. The theoretical base when applied to the activity of memorial building generates a social process model. The model is described by application to the building of various memorials, but particular interest will be focused upon the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D. C. The model suggests how creation of this type of symbolic work involves a complicated organization of social norms or conventions. Part of this organization involves merging norms from a specialized genre of the art world with norms of collective representation residing in the non‐professional community. Administrative bureaucracies and political institutions play important roles as well. After the authors explicate the social process model, they apply it to the experience of memorializing students killed and wounded at Kent State University on May 4, 1970. Erection of this memorial involves a process of constructing collective memory in such a way as to create moral unity within the community.

Egyptian International Labor Migration and Social Processes: Toward Regional Integration

This article reviews evidence that contemporary Egyptian international labor migration to oil-rich Arab countries has followed a classic social process which starts with a homo economicus phase, advances into a goal reorientation phase, and ends with the establishment of diaspora communities in destination societies. The history of Egyptian migration, current estimates of migration, the role of Egyptians in selected Arab countries, and emergent processes all were found to support the predictions of the social process model. Particularly important support comes from the finding that all social classes participated in this migration. Conclusions suggest the likelihood that Egyptian migration processes will promote economic and perhaps social integration in the region.

Personality in Society: Social Psychology's Contribution to Sociology

A model of socialization process beginning and ending with society is proposed, featuring individual personalities as intervening variables in the maintenance, disruption, and modification of culture and social structure. Four integrative approaches to socialization are compared and assessed in relation to the model. Dominant values or themes, basic personality structure, generalization from interpersonal experience, and structure functionalist approaches all assume some pattern of integration in society and in personality, and all specify relationships between the two. However none is clear about all stages in the cycle from societal influence on socializing situations to personality and to the eventual return influence of personality on society. A modified functionalism emphasizing mutual accommodation rather than functional integration is proposed, incorporating the generalization from interpersonal experience approach to describe part of the socialization cycle.

Perspectives on Social Support and Research on Stress Moderating Processes

This article provides a guide to current approaches in research on social support processes in stress moderation. It describes three major models of social support processes and emphasizes the importance of making explicit the particular model of stress buffering that is being investigated. The article underscores the importance of designing a study that leads to statements about the effects of specific supports in specific types of situations. This can be achieved through study of more ongoing stress in particular life roles. The relationship between social support and personality moderators is discussed as well as the debate on objectivity and subjectivity in measurement.

On Becoming Acquainted: A Longitudinal Study of Social Judgement Processes

This article reports the findings of a longitudinal study of social judgements made during the acquainting process. A repeated measures design was employed to observe changes in four variables: affective reactions, uncertainty, trust and attraction. Results showed that all four variables and the relationships among these variables changed over time. Results also indicated few unsystematic differences across acquainting dyads; thus the changes over time could best be represented as a uniphasic process. Based upon the findings of this study, a four-stage model of social judgement processes during acquainting was proposed including: (1) uncertainty, (2) exploratory affect, (3) interpersonal growth, and (4) interpersonal stability.

A Longitudinal Examination of an Integrated Social Process Model of Deviant Behavior

A social process model of deviant behavior incorporating constructs derived from both social bonding and differential association theories is used to explain adolescent cigarette smoking. The model hypothesizes that the bonding constructs explain the variance in associating with adolescents who smoke andlor have favorable attitudes toward smoking. Both the bonding and differential association constructs are expected to have direct effects on adolescent cigarette smoking. Using a structural equation approach to analyze three years of panel data on 1,065 seventh to twelfth graders, support is found for the predicted interrelationships of the bonding and differential association constructs and the effects of those constructs on adolescent smoking in the third year of the study. The social control theory of Travis Hirschi and Edwin Sutherland's theory of differential association (Sutherland and Cressey 1978) are the two dominant social psychological perspectives on deviant behavior found in contemporary sociological literature. Although differential association theory was initially formulated many years prior to Hirschi's social control perspective, the latter's emergence on the theoretical landscape was immediately perceived as a significant alternative conceptualization of social deviance to that offered by differential association theory. More recently, however, researchers have suggested that a more complete theoretical

A Longitudinal Examination of an Integrated Social Process Model of Deviant Behavior

A social process model of deviant behavior incorporating constructs derived from both social bonding and differential association theories is used to explain adolescent cigarette smoking. The model hypothesizes that the bonding constructs explain the variance in associating with adolescents who smoke and/or have favorable attitudes toward smoking. Both the bonding and differential association constructs are expected to have direct effects on adolescent cigarette smoking. Using a structural equation approach to analyze three years of panel data on 1,065 seventh to twelfth graders, support is found for the predicted interrelationships of the bonding and differential association constructs and the effects of those con- structs on adolescent smoking in the third year of the study.

Stochastic Modelling of Social Processes.

Stochastic Modelling of Social Processes.

Book Reviews

Book Reviews

Stochastic Models for Social Processes.

Stochastic Models for Social Processes.

Computing as an Occasion for Social Control

This paper examines three models of social control processes in computerized work settings. Two models, the management control model and the professional negotiations model, are derived from other analysts' conceptions. The third model, the institutional control model, is new. The models differ in their conception of the flexibility of norms, the proximity of social control agents to other participants, and the patterns of information flow in a system. We examine the explanatory value of these models in light of an intensive study of one complex organization. A set of episodes concerning one recurrent dilemma reported by information system users, the maintenance of accurate data, illustrates the usefulness of the institutional negotiations model. Control is exercised by many actors in a complex social fabric rather than simply through vertical management control or through lateral work relationships. Participation in a larger, institutionalized world of computer use defines work activities, and it subjects users, regardless of their position in the hierarchy, to tighter social controls than is suggested by the other models.

On Colby's Review of Time and the Highland Maya

social scientists are generally ignorant of research carried out by Latin American professionals and seldom have an in-depth understanding of societies they write about. Consequently, they are apt to apply models of social process in a spirit of simplistic reductionism and in the blissful illusion that their findings can remove from history all its ambiguities, conjectures, and surprises (Cardoso 1977:21). In my experience, Latin American intellectuals overwhelmingly believe that work of North American anthropologists is of major value to anthropologists themselves, and to their departments and institutions. All of us can benefit from such criticism:

Recent developments in nonlinear stochastic modelling of social processes

AbstractAfter a brief review of social applications of Markov chains, the paper discusses nonlinear (“interactive”) Markov models in discrete and continuous time. The rather subtle relationship between the deterministic and stochastic versions of such models is explored by means of examples. It is shown that the behaviour of nonlinear systems over time periods of practical interest depends critically on the total size as well as on the system parameters. Particular attention is paid to strong and weak forms of quasi‐stationarity exhibited by stochastic systems.

Model of social inference processes.

This article presents a new model of inference processes in the social perceiver, along with the basis of the model in prior experimental results and in the ACT* cognitive theory. The two stages of the model involve different types of processing: interpretive versus procedural. In the first stage, an inference is performed by general, domain-independent processes guided by a learned inference rule that is selected from long-term memory. In the second, procedural stage, after much experience with a particular inferential domain, an inference process is selected without explicit search, based on a pattern match to the current goal and knowledge state. The inference becomes automatic. Existing experimental evidence supports predictions of the model in both the attribution and attitude domains. Insights and findings of current approaches to inference, including information integration and judgmental heuristics, can be encompassed within the new model in a natural way. Directions for future research applying the model are discussed. Social inferences—those involving attributions, other beliefs, and attitudes—are intrinsic components of many processes of interest to social and cognitive psychologists, including person perception, social judgment, causal attribution, language comprehension, and attitude formation and change (cf. Nisbett & Ross, 1980; Schank & Abelson, 1977; Wyer & Carlston, 1979). This article presents a new model of social inference processes, based on a general theory of cognitive structure and processes and on recent results in social psychology. Existing theoretical approaches to social inference fall into three general categories (Hastie, 1983): Information Integration Theory (N. H. Anderson, 1981), judgmental heuristics (Nisbett & Ross, 1980; Tversky & Kahneman, 1973), and information-processing models (Wyer & Srull, 1980). The relationship of the new model to these current approaches is discussed later in the article. However, current

Model of social inference processes.

Model of social inference processes.

Book reviews

Book reviewed in this article:Comparative Statistical Inference, 2nd ed. By Vic Barnett.The Mismeasure of Man. By Stephen J. Gould.Statistics in Britain 1865–1930: The Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge. By Donald A. MacKenzieStochastic Models for Social Processes, 3rd ed. By David J. Bartholomew.Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. By Douglas R. Hofstadter.The Hut 6 Story. By Gordon Welchman

Introduction to a modeling of social decision processes

Introduction to a modeling of social decision processes

A Spatial Autocorrelation Model of the Effects of Population Density on Fertility

The relationship between fertility and population density that has been demonstrated with aggregate data is discussed and reexamined here. We argue that models which exclude considerations of spatial processes are incomplete and that therefore parameter estimates for such models are misleading. We then develop a model which incorporates spatial autocorrelation and reanalyze data from one well-known study of the effects of density on fertility using our model. The results show that with one exception the effects of density on fertility are trivial a finding that is quite different from previous research. We conclude that spatial mechanisms are an important consideration in the modeling of social processes that involve geographically defined units. (excerpt)

Dominance and reproductive success in primates

AbstractTheoretical models of the relationship between competition and differential reproduction in primates share the premise that agonistic dominance hierarchies determine differential access to those limited resources which are essential to reproduction. In particular, the priority‐of‐access‐to‐estrous‐female model is based on the postulate that high rank in males enhances reproductive success. Tests for a correlation between rank and reproductive success in males have produced mixed results. Problems in measuring male reproductive success and in conceptualizing dominance systems are implicated in the diversity of conclusions reached. Other attributes which affect reproductive success have been proposed, and alternative models of mating systems, based on the concepts of reproductive strategies, social skills, and life histories have also been developed.Studies of differential reproduction in female primates are fewer, but have the advantage over male studies of directly measuring infant production and offspring survival. Research on the relationship between rank and reproductive success in females has shown that under conditions of low resource availability, subordinate females sometimes suffer reduced fecundity and infant survival as a result of restricted access to food and water. Under conditions of social stress, low‐ranking females may suffer from disruption of their reproductive cycles, resulting in lowered fecundity. Dominant females may also incur reproductive costs as well as benefits for their social position.Better insights into the relationship between dominance and reproduction are potentially offered by improved genetic paternity measures, new models of social and demographic processes, and the recent availability of life history data from field studies.

Stochastic Models for Social Processes.

Stochastic Models for Social Processes.