Emotional Ties
Why are people willing to do more for some groups than for others?
Why do some groups have more success at mobilizing members around collective goals?
Why are people often more committed to their local groups than to their larger communities or organizations?
These kinds of questions are addressed in a new book by Professor Edward J. Lawler.
Social Commitments in a Depersonalized World, published this month by the Russell Sage Foundation, was written by Lawler with coauthors Shane Thye, Department of Sociology, University of South Carolina and Jeongkoo Yoon, School of Business, Ewha University in South Korea.
The book proposes a new theory of social commitments that shows how people form group ties in a world where they increasingly have transactional associations based, not on collective interests, but on what provides the greatest personal advantage.
The book indicates that recurring interactions, whether virtual or face to face, and group projects that make people feel good promote affective attachments to groups – such as work teams, companies, unions, volunteer associations, local communities and even nations.
The central theme is that people experience emotions or feelings as they interact with each other and they associate those feelings with groups, especially when they engage in joint tasks that give them a strong sense of shared responsibility.
Lawler said: "What people do with their feelings from tasks achieved and how they interpret them bears on their affective feelings or sentiments about group affiliations. If people associate positive feelings and experiences with certain groups, they will view those group affiliations as ends in themselves, intrinsically satisfying, and an expression of who they are or want to be."
An individualized, market-oriented world tends to unsettle and make fragile the ties people have to groups. This book shows how people nevertheless create their own groups and communities due to everyday emotional experiences in working with others. The book is based on 20 years of research by the authors.
Jonathan Turner, Distinguished Professor Sociology at the University of California, Riverside, said: "This is one of the most important theory books written in sociology in my forty-five years as a sociologist … What makes this work special is that it is not yet another speculative treatise, but a very careful, micro-based analysis … "
When asked about practical advice, Professor Lawler said: "If you want people to attach to your group, give them joint tasks that create a sense of shared, collective responsibility; get them to collaborate repeatedly on such tasks, and don't miss occasions for them to pause and express positive feelings about the collective endeavor."