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Social Interaction as a Stochastic Learning Process

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Kullervo Rainio
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Extract

At the same time as the arsenal of tools—for example, highly developed statistical methods—has tremendously increased, research in sociology and social psychology has become more and more fragmented, detailed works bearing hardly any relation to each other, and the lack of a coherent theory that is general but exact enough to be taken seriously in empirical work has been felt more acutely than ever. Is this a paradox?

Type
Simulation in Sociology
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , May 1965 , pp. 68 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1965

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References

(1) Lewin, K., “The Conceptual Representation and the Measurement of Psychological Forces”, Contributions to Psychological Theory I, n° 4 (Durham, Duke University Press, 1938), p. 85, formula 19.Google Scholar

(2) Bush, R. R. and Mosteller, F., Stochastics Models for Learning (New York, Wiley, 1955), pp. 129–131Google Scholar, and Karlsson, G., Social Mechanisms: Studies in Sociological Theory (Uppsala, Almqvist and Wiksell, 1958).Google Scholar

(3) Rainio, K., “A Stochastic Model of Social Interaction”, Transactions of the Westermarck Society, VII (Copenhagen, Munksgaard, 1961)Google Scholar; “Stochastic Process of Social Contacts”, Scand. J. Psychol., II (1961), 113–128Google Scholar; “A Stochastic Theory of Social Contacts”, Transactions of the Westermarck Society, VIII (Copenhagen, Munksgaard, 1962)Google Scholar; “A Study on Sociometric Group Structure” will be published in Berger, , Zelditch, and Anderson, , eds., Sociological Theories in Progress (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1965)Google Scholar; “Simulation of the Stochastic Learning Process in Group Problem Solving” will be published in Reports from IBM Symposium “Uses of Computors in Psychology”.

(4) Bush, and Mosteller, , op. cit. pp. 710Google Scholar; see also, by the same authors, “A comparison of Eight Models”, in Bush, R. R. and Estes, W. K., eds., Studies in Mathematical Learning Theory, Stanford Mathematical Studies in the Social Science III (Stanford, Stanford U.P., 1959), p. 294.Google Scholar In the latter work, α1 corresponds to our i-α and α2 to our i-ß

(5) Homans, G. C., The Human Group (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1950)Google Scholar; Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms (New York, Harcourt, 1961).Google Scholar

(6) Rainio, K., “A Study on Sociometric Group Structure”, op. cit.Google Scholar

(7) For more detailed discussion, see K. Rainio, ibid.

(8) Rainio, K., “Simulation on the Stochastic Learning Process in Group Problem Solving”, op. cit.Google Scholar