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Sociologists use negative feedback loop systems to explain identity processes, interpersonal behavior, crowd behavior, organizational behavior, social relationships, and the behavior of political systems. Control system models help us to understand how actors enact social roles with enough stability to preserve institutional arrangements, while still demonstrating remarkable creativity in unusual circumstances. These theories take us away from an oversocialized view of the actor, without relegating us to exclusive reliance on grounded theory. They provide a foundation for several generative theories of adaptive, goal-seeking behavior on the part of social actors and institutions. This chapter begins by tracing the history of control theorizing in sociology, then describes several contemporary theories that rely on control imagery, reviews the empirical support for these theories, describes some of their significant points of overlap and departure, and examines some of the key tested and untested implications of a control system approach in sociology.

As a reference that contains original and innovative research on the sociology of emotion, this book will not only appeal to sociologists but also to scholars of psychology, psychiatry, anthropology, history, social work, and business/management. With contributions from experts in the field, this text examines the role and influence of emotion in everyday social circumstances. It poses clear questions and presents the contemporary theoretical developments and empirical research linking social structure and emotion.Comparable books are narrowly focused and less comprehensive, the breadth and

AbstractDavid Gibson's (2008) examination of research on conversational interaction highlighted methodological and theoretical gaps in current understanding – particularly around the localized construction of interaction and the reproduction of social structures. This paper extends extant formal models used by group process researchers to explain how exogenous status structures shape local interaction by incorporating insights from qualitative work examining the local production of conversational interaction. Relational events serve as a bridge between conversation analytic understandings of the deep structure of conversation and expectation states formal models of permeation. We propose a theoretical integration of the status organizing process (permeation) and local turn-taking rules (deep structure) as a more complete model of conversational behavior in task groups. We test a formalized construction of this preliminary theory by examining turn-taking using data from 55 task groups whose members vary in gender, authority, and legitimacy of that authority. This integrated model offers substantial improvements in prediction accuracy over using status information alone. We then propose ways to expand the integrated theoretical framework to advance current understandings of action and events in conversation. Finally, we offer suggestions for insights from group processes theories that could be incorporated into network models of interaction outside of this theoretical framework.

We review three traditions in research on identity. The first two traditions, which stress (a) the internalization of social positions and their meanings as part of the self structure and (b) the impact of cultural meanings and social situations on actors' identities, are closely intertwined. The third, the burgeoning literature on collective identity, has developed quite independently of the first two and focuses more on group-level processes. Unlike previous reviews of identity, which have focused on the sources of internalized identity (e.g., role relationship, group membership, or category descriptor), we focus here on the theoretical mechanisms underlying theories of identity. We organize our review by highlighting whether those mechanisms are located in the individual's self-structure, in the situation, or in the larger sociopolitical context. We especially attempt to draw connections between the social psychological literature on identity processes and the distinct, relatively independent literature on collective identity.

AbstractThis study examined the extent to which social standing based on reputation (i.e., popularity), affective regard (i.e., peer acceptance and peer rejection), and affiliation‐network centrality (i.e., degree, betweenness, and closeness centrality), in addition to gender and grade in school, predicted children's accuracy in detecting affiliation patterns within peer networks. Third through fifth‐grade students (n = 400) were from three semi‐rural elementary schools and clustered in eight grade‐level units. The relationship between a child's perception of the affiliation (i.e., "hanging‐out") network and the collective perception of the affiliation network served as the indicator of network perception accuracy. In general, girls, older children, and more popular and well‐connected children had more accurate perceptions of the social environment. In particular, girls, popular children, children with high degrees centrality, and fifth graders, were more likely to report ties that existed in the collectively perceived network (made fewer false‐negative reports). Fifth graders' specific patterns of accuracy/inaccuracy suggested a more developed cognitive model of social network structures. Children experiencing peer rejection made more false negative errors (failed to report existing ties). Interestingly, net of the other network variables in the model, closeness centrality was related to a decrease in falsely reporting ties (improving accuracy) but an increase in failing to report ties that existed (worsening accuracy). These relationships between children's social standing and grade level on their accuracy of network perception has conceptual and methodological implications for studies of children's social functioning within their school‐based peer networks.

This text presents the most important and influential social psychological theories and research programs in contemporary sociology. Original chapters by the scholars who initiated and developed these theoretical perspectives provide full descriptions of each theory, its background, development, and future. The first four chapters cover general approaches, organized around fundamental principles and issues—symbolic interaction, social exchange, distributive justice, and rational choice. The following chapters focus on specific research programs and theories, examining identity, affect, comparison processes, power and dependence, social exchange, status construction, and legitimacy. A concluding chapter provides an analysis of and commentary on the state of the theoretical programs in sociological social psychology. Contributors: Peter J. Burke, Joseph Berger, Coye Cheshire, Karen S. Cook, Pamela Emanuelson, Alexandra Gerbasi, Karen A. Hegtvedt, Michael A. Hogg, Guillermina Jasso, Edward J. Lawler, Michael W. Macy, George J. McCall, Linda D. Molm, Cecilia L. Ridgeway, Dawn T. Robinson, Lynn Smith-Lovin, Jan E. Stets, Jonathan H. Turner, Murray Webster Jr., David Willer, and Morris Zelditch, Jr