Abstract
Robert K. Merton (1910–2003) gained renown as a distinguished sociologist, especially in connection with the paradigm of “structural-functionalism” and he publicly self-identified as a “structuralist.” This paper calls attention to an emphasis in Merton’s work that sociologists have often overlooked, namely, his social psychology. I argue that, throughout his long career, Merton consistently pursued social psychological issues, including how non-logical action, appeals to shared sentiments and collective definitions of situations affect life in organized groups. I shall characterize his earlier analyses as “Harvard style,” and his later social psychological works as “Chicago style,” as a heuristic means of calling attention to interesting variations in framing. Merton’s formulations have impacted numerous subfields of sociology, and some (e.g., “self-fulfilling prophecies,” “the Matthew Effect”) remain influential even today. Examining Merton’s social psychology will contribute both to a fuller appreciation of his career and also to a more complete history of social science in the United States.
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Notes
Parsons eventually superseded Sorokin at Harvard, becoming the chair of Sociology in 1944, and then chairing the new Department of Social Relations for a full decade (1946–1956). In 1949 he was president of the American Sociological Society. In 1951 he published two highly influential works that largely defined the functionalist approach of that era. Parsons was honored by a number of academic associations, and he remained a very prestigious figure until the late 1960s. At that point, however, with the resurgence of the conflict perspective, especially in Marxist and feminist forms, Parsons came under attack and much of his work was repudiated, especially by younger generations. The lowest point occurred after Parsons’s 1979 death, during the early 1990s, when Parsons was accused of attempting to bring former Nazis to Harvard shortly after World War II. Reactions to Parsons since that time have been mixed but more moderate, and efforts have been made to restore him to a place of honor in U.S. sociology. Meanwhile, his work has remained influential elsewhere, especially in the former Soviet Union and in post-Soviet Russia.
Many have found Henderson a rather fascinating figure who occupied a unique place at Harvard with strong connections to the undergraduate college, the medical school and the business school. Presidents A. Lawrence Lowell and James B. Conant had great confidence in Henderson and often consulted him on matters of policy. Lowell appointed Henderson the first director of Harvard’s Society of Fellows, whose graduate student members included B. F. Skinner and George C. Homans. Conant was Henderson’s nephew by marriage. Both Lowell and Conant dined weekly with the Society of Fellows. Meanwhile, a great deal of social scientific work was done through the Graduate School of Business Administration, much of it with Rockefeller Foundation money. Henderson received support for his Fatigue Laboratory, and foundation money also enabled the Western Electric research headed by Elton Mayo and the “Yankee City” social anthropology directed by W. Lloyd Warner. Henderson and Sorokin had an outwardly polite, but tense relationship. Sorokin approved Henderson’s proposed seminar on Pareto but challenged his cherished notion of “equilibrium.” Henderson, meanwhile, became an early supporter of Parsons, and his backing was important to Parsons’s rise at Harvard. Other than Pareto’s work, Henderson knew virtually no sociology, and he had a generally negative view of the field.
Clearly, Pareto was not alone in examining phenomena in terms of manifest and latent, or external and internal elements, or surfaces and depths. Karl Marx famously asserted that the cultural superstructure rested upon an economic substructure. Similarly, Sigmund Freud and his followers explained outward behavior in terms of factors in the unconscious. Meanwhile, instinct theorists such as William McDougall applied a similar logic. But Merton had a more intensive exposure to Pareto than to these others, and he clearly incorporated portions of that approach.
Henderson’s concept of system was based on the idea of the mutual dependence of variables, an approach he based largely on the work of Willard Gibbs at Yale. Sorokin was also a major systems theorist, but he deviated from mainstream sociology by advocating the notion of “sociocultural” systems and “supersystems.” From his perspective, organized social groups were simultaneously meaningful, causal and functional systems. Such systems approaches, including also the one Parsons would develop, somehow “suited” the context of Harvard, whereas the approach was rather alien in Chicago where there was a longstanding commitment to a more fluid, “process” view of reality and society. I have argued elsewhere that such organizational cultures and “local understandings of science” deserve greater scholarly attention.
Thomas was also known for his formulation of “the four wishes” that allegedly underlay human behavior in all societies and cultures. These included wishes for new experience, for security, for recognition and for response. This approach generally accords with Pareto’s theory of universal “residues” that drive behavior. For a fuller discussion of Thomas’s approach, its initial influence and later decline, see Corey J. Colyer, “W. I. Thomas and the Forgotten Four Wishes: A Case Study in the Sociology of Ideas,” The American Sociologist 46, 2 (June 2015): 247–268.
Merton has recounted the difficulties he experienced due to the fact that his dissertation adviser, Sorokin, did not accept the Weberian “Protestant ethic” explanation of the rise of science. In Sorokin’s view, science, along with capitalism, representational art, and contractual social relations, was a component in a much larger entity that he called a Sensate Supersystem of culture. Nevertheless, Sorokin gave Merton a grade of “A-“for his initial paper. See Merton, “The Sorokin-Merton Correspondence on Puritanism, Pietism and Science,” in J. B. Ford, M. P. Richard and P. C. Talbutt (eds.), Sorokin and civilization: A centennial assessment (pp. 21–28).. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
Had the article been written two years later, Merton might well have cited C. Wright Mills, “Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motive,” American Sociological Review 5, 6 (December 1940). This article appeared while Mills was doing research on pragmatism, and it is now less remembered than his later writings on politics and power.
Merton also discussed the ideas of “manifest and latent functions” in his teaching during the late 1930s, a full decade before the ideas appeared in print, calling this an “oral publication” (Merton 1994). Merton’s recollection is confirmed via an examination question in a course he taught in spring 1939 (Nichols 2010).
In this connection, it is interesting that Merton had an ambivalent personal relationship with Sorokin, which, in a personal communication to the author, Merton described as difficult but ultimately satisfying. In 1957 Merton received from Sorokin a copy of the newly published one-volume edition of his major work, Social and Cultural Dynamics, with the inscription, “To Robert, my darned enemy and dearest friend.” See Merton (1996), “The Sorokin-Merton Correspondence,” p. 27.
Adding to the complexity of the situation is the fact that Dorothy Swaine Thomas was both a birth name and a married name. W. I. and Dorothy, moreover, did not marry until some 7 years after the publication of their book, The Child in America.
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Nichols, L.T. The Enduring Social Psychology of Robert K. Merton: Motivating Sentiments, Reference Groups and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies. Am Soc 47, 356–381 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-016-9313-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-016-9313-1