6 - Self and Other
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2009
Summary
Abstract. A measure of structural centrality is the second pillar of my approach to the social-influence process. In this process, actors weigh the opinions of others against their own opinion, and I assume that an actor's self-weight is a function of his or her structural centrality. In the present chapter, I support the stipulated linkage between an actor's self-weight and centrality, and I carry forward the structural operationalization of the theory with the definition of a type of centrality – the indegree of an actor in the network of interpersonal attachments – in terms of which the self-weight of an actor is formulated.
He had in him all the attitudes of others, calling for a certain response; that was the “me” of that situation, and his response is the “I.”
– George Herbert Mead (1956)In classical theory, the collective other refers to the fixed consensus of opinion of other actors (a normative opinion) with respect to a particular issue. Social influence reduces to the special case of individuals who are confronted with a fixed consensus and who, therefore, are either deviants or conformists. For deviants, there is only one likely outcome – greater conformity to the normative opinion that will be more or less pronounced depending on the balance between the self and the other in the deviant actor.
The situation of a deviant in the midst of a fixed consensus is a special case of the present social influence theory.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Structural Theory of Social Influence , pp. 86 - 99Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998