Interdependence and Psychological Orientation
Social-emotional
Task-oriented
Informal
Formal
Informal
Formal
Cooperative
Equal
1
5
9
13
Intimate
Fraternal
Problem-solving
Organized cooperation
Lovers
Club members
Colleagues
Task force members
Love-making
Social party
Staff meeting
Working together with differentiated responsibilities to solve problems
Unequal
2
6
10
14
Caring
Protecting
Educational
Hierarchical organization
Mother-child
Police officer-child
Professor-graduate student
Supervisor-employee
Nursing
Helping
Working together informally on research project under professor’s direction
Supervisor assigning employee to do certain task
Competitive
Equal
3
7
11
15
Antagonistic
Rivalrous
Competitive
Regulated competition
Personal enemies
Divorced couple
Contestants in informal game
Business rivals
Fighting
Custody suit
Trying to score points against the other
Bidding against one another for a contract
Unequal
4
8
12
16
Sadomasochistic
Dominating
Power struggle
Regulated power struggle
Bully-victim
Expert-novice
Authority-rebel
Guard-prisoner
Tormenting
Intimidating
Guerilla warfare
Ordering prisoner to keep in step
Thus, social-emotional relations or activities are more likely to be informal than the task-oriented ones, especially if there are relatively more people involved in the task-oriented ones. Also, there appears to be a positive linkage between the informality of the relation or activity and its equality, so that it is more difficult to find unequal, informal relations and activities than equal, informal ones. Moreover, there is evidently a positive association between the cooperativeness and informality of a relation or activity. Similarly, there appears to be a positive connection between the equality of an activity or relation and its cooperativeness. Additionally, there is likely to be a positive association between the social-emotional nature of a relation or activity and its cooperativeness. Further, one can expect that social-emotional relations and activities will more frequently be intense than task-oriented ones. Also, interpersonal relations or activities that are extremely cooperative or competitive, rather than moderately so, will be more intense.
The foregoing hypothesized correlations among the dimensions suggest which regions of the interpersonal space will be heavily populated and which will not be.4 (See Wish/Kaplan 1977, for some support for the hypothesized correlations.) Thus, one would expect more interpersonal relations and activities (particularly, if they are stable and enduring) to be clustered in the cooperative, equal, informal, and social-emotional region (Cell 1 in Table 1.1), which I shall label the intimacy region, than in the competitive, equal, informal, and social-emotional region (Cell 3), which I shall label the antagonistic region. Intense competitive relations or activities are more likely to be stable and enduring if they are regulated or formal rather than unregulated. Thus, one would expect Cell 7 (‘rivalry’) to be more populated than Cell 3 (‘antagonism’); similarly, Cell 8 (“sado-masochism”) and for Cells 15 (“regulated competition”) and 16 (“regulated power struggle”) would be more populated compared to their respective unregulated cells.
Intense, cooperative, task-oriented relations or activities are more apt to be equal and informal than otherwise, unless there are clear status differences among the people involved (i.e., to be located in Cell 9 rather than in Cell 10, 13, or 14). However, the demands of large-scale cooperative tasks involving more than small numbers of people are apt to require a formal, hierarchical (i.e., unequal) organization for the tasks to be worked on effectively and efficiently. Thus, one could expect many hierarchically organized cooperative relations and activities to be found in Cell 14 (“hierarchical organization”). Yet the nature of such unequal relations as superordinate-subordinate ones in organizations, especially when they are not strongly legitimated for those in the subordinate position, is such as to produce conflict over the power differences. Hence, this type of relation is rarely free of strong competitive elements. It follows, then, that some superordinate-subordinate relations in hierarchically organized systems will have the character of power struggles, and these would be more appropriately classified as belonging to Cell 16.
5.3 Psychological Orientations
In writing an earlier draft of this chapter, I entitled this section “Modes of Thought.” This earlier title did not seem to be a sufficiently inclusive label. It appeared to me evident that cognitive processes differ in different types of social relations, and I wanted to sketch out the nature of some of these differences. However, I also thought that the psychological differences among the different types of social relations were not confined to the cognitive processes. Different motivational and moral predispositions were also involved. It has been customary to consider these latter predispositions as more enduring characteristics of the individual and to label them “personality traits” or “character orientations.” Since my emphasis is on the situationally induced nature and, hence, temporariness of such predispositions, such labels also did not seem fitting for the material in this section. I have used the term psychological orientation to capture the basic theme of this section: People orient themselves differently to different types of social relations, and different orientations reflect and are reflected in different cognitive processes, motivational tendencies, and moral dispositions.
5.3.1 The Cyclical Relation Between Psychological Orientations and Social Relations
Figure 5.1 depicts in schematic form my view of this association between psychological orientations and social relationships, as well as some other factors influencing both of them. It was stimulated by Neisser’s (1976) conception of the perceptual cycle but is a radical modification of it. My emphasis, like Neisser’s, is on the cyclical and active process involved in the connection among the elements. In characterizing this cyclical, active process, one can start at any point in the cycle. In practice, where one starts will usually be determined by what one manipulates as one’s independent variable. The non-manipulated variables will be considered to be the dependent ones.
Fig. 5.1
The circular relation between an individual’s psychological orientation and the type of social relationship in which he or she is involved
Let us suppose, for example, that as an experimenter, I lead a subject to have the psychological orientation typical of a mutually promotive, interdependent relationship toward another. This, in turn, will lead the subject to have some characteristic interactions with the other and these, in turn, will have some effects upon both the subject and the other that will provide evidence as to the type of relationship that exists between them. Finally, this will validate as appropriate, or invalidate as inappropriate, the subject’s psychological orientation and require its modification. Here the cycle is A–Or, I might begin at a different point, C, inducing the subject to believe that he was in a mutually promotive, interdependent relationship. This would, in turn, lead the subject to have a psychological orientation toward the relationship that has specifiable characteristics and this, in turn, would lead to certain interactions with the other, etc. Here the cycle is C−^A—>B−H>C. Or, I might commence by leading the subject to interact with the other in specified ways that, in turn, would produce certain consequences that, in turn, would produce evidence as to what kind of relationship the subject was in, etc. Here the starting point is B and the cycle goes on to C, etc.
Several other features of Fig. 5.1 merit comment. I assume that the two parts of each triangle can affect one another:
1.
One’s psychological orientation to one’s present social relationship can be affected by and can also affect one’s desires with regard to that relationship. Thus, if one has a desire for a cooperative relationship but a contrient orientation to the other, one may change either one’s desire or one’s orientation, depending on which is less strongly rooted.
2.
One’s present social relations with another can influence or be influenced by the potential one sees for the development of the relationship. If I experience the present relationship as a destructive one, I might not see it as having a future; on the other hand, if I see the potential of developing a warm, loving relationship, I might be more positive toward an initially difficult relationship than I might otherwise be.
3.
The nature of one’s actions and reactions in a relationship can affect as well as be affected by the normative definitions that exist regarding interactions in a given social relationship. Although culturally determined normative definitions often govern the meanings of social interactions early in a relationship, relations tend to build up their own idiosyncratic normative definitions as a result of repeated interactions that may be peculiar to the particular relationship.
There is, of course, a tendency for the two parts of each triangle to be consistent with one another. When they are not, one can expect a more complex psychological structure than the one depicted in Fig. 5.1. For example, if the present and future characteristics of the social relationship are perceived to be inconsistent with one another, the time perspective dimension of the relationship will be very prominent. If there is an inconsistency between the desired social relationship and the present psychological orientation, the reality dimension will be very prominent. It is beyond the scope of the present paper to consider these important psychological aspects of social relations; Lewin (1951) makes suggestive remarks about these dimensions of the life space in his writings.
Surrounding the triangles of Fig. 5.1 is the ‘objective’ world of the participants; this includes the characteristics of the individual participants, their immediate situations, and the environment within which their relationship is embedded. I have characterized this objective world as sending causal arrows to all of the elements involved in the psychological orientation-social relations cycle and also as receiving causal arrows from these elements. The nature of the participants and their immediate situations, as well as their environment, affect their social relations, their psychological orientation, and their interactions, and these phenomena, in turn, affect the participants and the realities confronting them. In this larger cycle, it is the variables that one considers independent that one manipulates.
5.3.2 The Nature of Psychological Orientations
5.3.2.1 Cognitive Orientations
In recent years, scholars in a number of different disciplines—cognitive psychology, social psychology, sociology, linguistics, anthropology, and artificial intelligence—have utilized such terms as schema, script, and frame to refer to the structures of expectations that help orient the individual cognitively to the situation confronting him. I shall employ the term cognitive orientation as being essentially the same as these terms. In the view being presented here, the person’s cognitive orientation to his situation is only one aspect of his psychological orientation to a social relationship. Other aspects include his motivational orientation and his moral orientation.
The term schema goes back to Bartlett (1932) who, much influenced by the work of the neurologist Head (1920), emphasized the constructive and organized features of memory as opposed to the notion of memory as passive storage. The term script derives from the work of Abelson (1975, 1976) and Schanck/Abelson (1977), who also stress that people have organized knowledge of a stereotypic form about most recurrent situations they encounter. Abelson (1975) defines a script as a “coherent sequence of events expected by the individual, involving him either as a participant or as an observer [p. 33].” He goes on to postulate that “cognitively mediated social behavior depends on the joint occurrence of two processes: (a) the selection of a particular script to represent the given social situation and (b) the taking of a participant role within that script [pp. 42–43].” The term frame was introduced by Bateson (1955) to explain how individuals exchange signals that allow them to agree on the level of abstraction at which any message is intended; for example, whether the message is intended as serious or playful. Goffman (1974) has generalized Bateson’s discussion of frames in an extended analysis of how individuals, as they attend to any current situation, face the question, “What is it that’s going on here?”
Underlying the concepts of schema, script, and frame is the shared view that people approach their social world actively, with structured expectations about themselves and their social environments that reflect their organized beliefs about different social situations and different people. Our structured expectations make it possible for us to interpret and respond quickly to what is going on in specific situations. If our expectations lead us to in-appropriate interpretations and responses, then they are likely to be revised on the basis of our experiences in the situation. Or, if the circumstance confronting us is sufficiently malleable, our interpretations and responses to it may help to shape its form.
Schemas, scripts, or frames may be very concrete and specific—for example, how to work together with a particular person on a given task—or they may be rather abstract and general—for example, what is involved in a competitive as compared to a cooperative relation. In any society that provides a variety of situations in which different areas in the multidimensional space of social relations (the space being composed from the dimensions that were described in the first major section of this chapter) are well-represented, it is likely that rather abstract schemas or scripts will develop to characterize the types of relations depicted in Table 1.1. Such scripts, or cognitive orientations, are a central component of what I am here terming psychological orientations.
It is important for the participants in a particular social relationship to know “what’s going on here”—to know the actors, the roles they are to perform, the relations among the different roles, the props and settings, the scenes, and the themes of the social interaction. However, everyday social relations are rarely as completely specified by well-articulated scripts as is social interaction in a play in the traditional theatre; ordinary social interactions have more the qualities of improvisational theatre, in which only the nature of the characters involved in the situation is well-specified and the characters are largely free to develop the details of the skeletonized script as they interact with one another.
The improvisational nature of most social relations—the fact that given types of social relations occur in widely different contexts and with many different kinds of actors—makes it likely that relatively abstract or generalized cognitive orientations, schemas, or scripts will develop for the different types of social relations. I assume that people are implicit social psychological theorists and, as a result of their experience, have developed cognitive schemas of the different types of social relations that, though usually not articulated, are similar to those articulated by theorists in social psychology and the other social sciences. Undoubtedly, at this early stage of the development of social science theory, the unarticulated conceptions of the average person are apt to be more sophisticated than the articulated ones of the social scientists.
5.3.2.2 Motivational Orientations
Just as different cognitive orientations are associated with the different types of social relations, so also are different motivational orientations. A motivational orientation toward a given social relationship orients one to the possibilities of gratification or frustration of certain types of needs in the given relationship. To the cognitive characterization of the relationship, the motivational orientation adds the personal, subjective features arising from one’s situationally relevant motives or need-dispositions.
The motivational orientation gives rise to the cathexis of certain regions of the cognitive landscape, making them positively or negatively valent, and highlights the pathways to and from valent regions. It gives the cognitive map a dynamic character. It predisposes one to certain kinds of fantasies (or nightmares) and to certain kinds of emotions. It orients one to such questions as “What is to be valued in this relationship?” and “What do I want here and how do I get it?”
It is evident that different types of social relations offer different possibilities of need gratification. It would be unreasonable, for example, to expect one’s need for affection to be gratified in a business transaction and inappropriate to expect one’s financial needs to be fulfilled in an intimate relationship. In the third section of the chapter I shall attempt to characterize briefly the motivational orientations associated with the polar ends of the different dimensions of interpersonal relations.
5.3.2.3 Moral Orientations
A moral orientation toward a given social relationship orients one to the mutual obligations, rights, and entitlements of the people involved in the given relationship. It adds an “ought to,” ‘should,’ or obligatory quality to a psychological orientation. The moral orientation implies that one experiences one’s relationship not only from a personal perspective, but also from a social perspective that includes the perspective of the others in the relationship. A moral orientation makes the experience of injustice more than a personal experience. Not only is one personally affected, but so are the other participants in the relationship, because its value underpinnings are being undermined. The various participants in a relationship have the mutual obligation to respect and protect the framework of social norms that define what is to be considered as fair or unfair in the interactions and outcomes of the participants. One can expect that the moral orientation, and hence what is considered fair, will differ in the different types of social relations.
5.4 The Relationship Between Types of Interdependence and Psychological Orientations
In this section, I shall characterize the psychological orientations that are associated with the dimensions of cooperation-competition, power, task-oriented versus social-emotional, and formal versus informal. For each of the four dimensions depicted in Table 1.1, I shall describe the cognitive, motivational, and moral orientations that typify the dimension.