Four Kinds of Social Relations: Alan Page Fiske

[lpetrich]

Atlas Shrugged: The Social Atom is part of Adam Lee's series of reviews of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (now complete and he is in the middle of The Fountainhead). He mentioned anthropologist Alan Page Fiske's four kinds of social relations, as described in Fiske – Social Relations Theory « Politics is Moral Psychology. I looked further, and I found (a lot of detail about how the various types may be used and how societies differ) (a lot of detail about how the various types may be used and how societies differ).

Relational Models Theory & Research has a summary:

• Communal Sharing (CS) is a relationship in which people treat some dyad or group as equivalent and undifferentiated with respect to the social domain in question.
• In Authority Ranking (AR), people have asymmetric positions in a linear hierarchy in which subordinates defer, respect, and (perhaps) obey, while superiors take precedence and take pastoral responsibility for subordinates.
• In Equality Matching (EM), relationships people keep track of the balance or difference among participants and know what would be required to restore balance.
• Market Pricing (MP) relationships are oriented to socially meaningful ratios or rates such as prices, wages, interest, rents, tithes, or cost-benefit analyses.

There are predecessors of CS and AR in other species, but EM is doubtful and MP is absent.

Adam Lee on Ayn Rand's capitalist utopia in Atlas Shrugged:

As we'll see, Galt's Gulch is a place where nearly every human interaction is governed by money and payment. As the social scientist Alan Fiske would put it, it's a place where three of the four models of social relations (Communal Sharing, Equality Matching and Authority Ranking) are diminished almost to the point of nonexistence, whereas the fourth, Market Pricing, swells to gigantic proportions.

What implications does this have for the Gulcher society? The field of social psychology has done extensive research into this very question, and while Rand wouldn't have been troubled by what they've found, the rest of us might feel some uneasy rumblings of conscience. Study after study finds that wealth has an isolating effect, making people less compassionate, less likely to help someone in need, and more likely to break the rules and seize whatever advantage they can get, whether by fair means or foul.

It must be conceded that CS and EM do not scale very well, meaning that larger social groups tend to be dominated by AR and MP.

 

[BH]

It isn't scientific but I have noticed locally that the rich often are paranoid about their own kids. I've been around a lot of rich folks and they are often not even trusting of their own families which I find sad. I know a case where some wealthy people gained their wealth by less than moral means and at least one kid in the family grew up to be the unethical chip off the old block and as soon as mom or pop got old enough to show signs of faltering junior or juniorette got a lawyer to put them in a home and they seize control of their stuff.

 

[rousseau]

Does wealth make people less compassionate, or are the people who are good at accumulating wealth more cunning, cold, and calculating? I've known some people who were extremely compassionate, but to the detriment of their own material well being, not a great life strategy.

The people who produce the most kids will make up the majority of the gene pool, and those who can afford to raise the most kids are usually wealthy. This means that self interest is usually selected for. Compassion and giving do not lead to better life outcomes for the individual.

I'd think what this means is that being calculating is the default mental state for people. One way or another, regardless of social system, we want to take. Being compassionate anyway is probably a result of attaining a high level of ethics.

 

[WAB]

Atlas Shrugged: The Social Atom is part of Adam Lee's series of reviews of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (now complete and he is in the middle of The Fountainhead). He mentioned anthropologist Alan Page Fiske's four kinds of social relations, as described in Fiske – Social Relations Theory « Politics is Moral Psychology. I looked further, and I found (a lot of detail about how the various types may be used and how societies differ) (a lot of detail about how the various types may be used and how societies differ).

Relational Models Theory & Research has a summary:

• Communal Sharing (CS) is a relationship in which people treat some dyad or group as equivalent and undifferentiated with respect to the social domain in question.
• In Authority Ranking (AR), people have asymmetric positions in a linear hierarchy in which subordinates defer, respect, and (perhaps) obey, while superiors take precedence and take pastoral responsibility for subordinates.
• In Equality Matching (EM), relationships people keep track of the balance or difference among participants and know what would be required to restore balance.
• Market Pricing (MP) relationships are oriented to socially meaningful ratios or rates such as prices, wages, interest, rents, tithes, or cost-benefit analyses.

There are predecessors of CS and AR in other species, but EM is doubtful and MP is absent.

Adam Lee on Ayn Rand's capitalist utopia in Atlas Shrugged:

As we'll see, Galt's Gulch is a place where nearly every human interaction is governed by money and payment. As the social scientist Alan Fiske would put it, it's a place where three of the four models of social relations (Communal Sharing, Equality Matching and Authority Ranking) are diminished almost to the point of nonexistence, whereas the fourth, Market Pricing, swells to gigantic proportions.

What implications does this have for the Gulcher society? The field of social psychology has done extensive research into this very question, and while Rand wouldn't have been troubled by what they've found, the rest of us might feel some uneasy rumblings of conscience. Study after study finds that wealth has an isolating effect, making people less compassionate, less likely to help someone in need, and more likely to break the rules and seize whatever advantage they can get, whether by fair means or foul.

Not to mention it'd be a regular swinger's paradise. Dagny sleeps with at least three of the major male characters in that novel. And it is a well-known fact that Rand made a (probably willing) cuckold of her husband with one of her disciples, Nathaniel Branden.

 

[Politesse]

Atlas Shrugged: The Social Atom is part of Adam Lee's series of reviews of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (now complete and he is in the middle of The Fountainhead). He mentioned anthropologist Alan Page Fiske's four kinds of social relations, as described in Fiske – Social Relations Theory « Politics is Moral Psychology. I looked further, and I found (a lot of detail about how the various types may be used and how societies differ) (a lot of detail about how the various types may be used and how societies differ).

Relational Models Theory & Research has a summary:

• Communal Sharing (CS) is a relationship in which people treat some dyad or group as equivalent and undifferentiated with respect to the social domain in question.
• In Authority Ranking (AR), people have asymmetric positions in a linear hierarchy in which subordinates defer, respect, and (perhaps) obey, while superiors take precedence and take pastoral responsibility for subordinates.
• In Equality Matching (EM), relationships people keep track of the balance or difference among participants and know what would be required to restore balance.
• Market Pricing (MP) relationships are oriented to socially meaningful ratios or rates such as prices, wages, interest, rents, tithes, or cost-benefit analyses.

There are predecessors of CS and AR in other species, but EM is doubtful and MP is absent.

Adam Lee on Ayn Rand's capitalist utopia in Atlas Shrugged:

As we'll see, Galt's Gulch is a place where nearly every human interaction is governed by money and payment. As the social scientist Alan Fiske would put it, it's a place where three of the four models of social relations (Communal Sharing, Equality Matching and Authority Ranking) are diminished almost to the point of nonexistence, whereas the fourth, Market Pricing, swells to gigantic proportions.

What implications does this have for the Gulcher society? The field of social psychology has done extensive research into this very question, and while Rand wouldn't have been troubled by what they've found, the rest of us might feel some uneasy rumblings of conscience. Study after study finds that wealth has an isolating effect, making people less compassionate, less likely to help someone in need, and more likely to break the rules and seize whatever advantage they can get, whether by fair means or foul.

It must be conceded that CS and EM do not scale very well, meaning that larger social groups tend to be dominated by AR and MP.

Fiske himself would point out that societies are not monoliths. In the United States, for instance, EM describes stock-holding elites very poorly, but most poor urban family networks quite well, as Carol Stack (another well-known urban anthropologist) famously demonstrated. I don't think it's a question of people scale that undoes it (such networks can be enormous in scope) as concentration of capital. It's something I noticed in my own early fieldwork; the system only works when it lacks monetary capital, and indeed it is very efficient at dismantling sudden booms when they occur. But an individual who comes into money has the choice of letting this windfall disappear or exiting the social system entirely, and about a tenth or fifteenth of them will choose the latter course.