COMMON FATE, SIMILARITY, AND OTHER INDEXES OF THE STATUS OF AGGREGATES OF PERSONS AS SOCIAL ENTITIES
COMMON FATE, SIMILARITY, AND OTHER INDEXES OF THE STATUS OF AGGREGATES OF PERSONS AS SOCIAL ENTITIES
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DOI：
10.1002/bs.3830030103
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发表时间：
1958-01-01
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
CAMPBELL, DT
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作者：
CAMPBELL, DT
在考察一个社会集合体作为有机系统的地位之前，必须对它作为实体的地位进行评价。共同命运指数、相似性指数和邻近性指数可能适用于这项任务。作为实体的社会群体并不具有与石头和老鼠等中等大小的实体不同的认识论地位，但倾向于更模糊，更少离散，更少多重确认，在这个意义上更少真实的。社会学在与心理学分离的分析层面上的实体性程度和可能性，是一个经验决定而不是先验决定的问题。共同命运，相似性，以及作为社会实体的人的集合体的地位的其他指数1由唐纳德7 '。坎贝尔心理学系，西北大学这里是目前相当大的兴趣在努力应用概念约在社会群体的水平。但是，要使这种应用有意义，我们应该能够在特定的实例中检验这个假设，即一个人的集合表现为一个系统。我们应该能够找到系统假设被证实的实例，以及系统假设未被证实的实例，或者系统性程度较低的实例。或或的概念经常被公理化，失去了它们作为可检验假设的地位。这些概念经常被用来在特别的解释中提供无限的灵活性，从而失去了使它们可检验的基本刚性。然而，系统的假设在某些情况下显然是可以检验的。一磅汉堡包显然比一磅活的白色老鼠更不成系统，有许多可能的测量方法可以证明这种差异。如果生物学家很少提供这些标准的清单，这并不是因为差异是无法证明的，I这篇论文的完成是由于作者参加了1957年夏天在新墨西哥州大学举行的行为科学会议，根据项目AF 49（638）-33，由行为科学部，空军科学研究办公室，ARDC，我是艾尔·AF·沃尔特教授首席研究员而是因为它是如此明显地不可证明，以至于浪费了实验室的努力来验证。那些有兴趣把社会和政治组织当作系统来对待的人，最常被当作系统的一个例子。这一点在近代的自然科学运动中的概念化和现代社会科学创立时的概念化中都是正确的。对于那些对社会组织的功能理论感兴趣的人，赫伯特·斯宾塞的《社会学原理，第二部分，社会学的归纳》（20）仍然值得推荐。行为科学家会发现它在许多小细节上是不可接受的，但在精神上也是深刻的现代，并出色地暗示了尚未经过测试的研究线索。斯宾塞也摆脱了使许多人与有机体类比疏远的毫无根据的伦理结论，即社会不仅是有机体，而且对它们来说变得更好。作为一名激进的反民族主义者和和平主义者，他抵制住了认同维多利亚女王不断扩张的帝国的荣耀的诱惑，他将这个类比用作有关过程和功能的概念的来源，而不是作为一种道德的伪科学支柱。在这里，让我们再次明确地断言，作为政治社会实体的集合体的地位和一个活生生的身体之间不存在任何类比，除了那些必须的部分之间的相互依赖。不过，在...
Before a social aggregate can be examined for its status as an organic system its status as entity must be evaluated. Indices of common-fate, simi-larity, and proximity may be appropriate to this task. Social groups as entities do not have an epistemological status different from such middle-sized entities as stones and rats, but are apt to be fuzzier, less discrete, less multiply confirmed, and in this sense less real. The degree of entitativity and the possibility of a sociology at a level of analysis separate from psychology is a matter for empirical determination rather than a priori decision. COMMON FATE, SIMILARITY, AND OTHER INDICES OF THE STATUS OF AGGREGATES OF PERSONS AS SOCIAL ENTITIES1 by Donald 7'. Campbell Department of Psychology, Northwestern University HERE iS currently considerable interest in efforts to apply concepts about at the level of social groupings. But for such applications to be meaningful, we should be able to test the hypothesis in specific instanices that an aggregate of per-sons behaves as a system. We should be able to find instances in which the hypothe-sis of system is confirmed, and instances in which it is not, or in which the systemicity is of lesser degree. Too frequently concepts of or or are made axiomatic and lose their status as testable hypotheses. Too frequently such concepts are used in a way which provides an infinite flexibility in ad hoc explanations, and thus lose that essen-tial rigidity which might make them testable. Yet the hypothesis of system is clearly testable in some instances. A pound of ham-burger is clearly less of a system than a one-pound living white rat, and there are many measurements possible which would docu-ment this difference. If biologists have seldom provided lists of such criteria, it is not because the difference is undemonstrable, I The completion of this paper was made possi-ble by the author's participation in the Behavioral Science Conference held at the University of New Mexico, Summer, 1957, under Project AF 49 (638)-33 sponsored by the Behavioral Science Division, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, ARDC, Professor I'aul AF Walter, principal investiga-tor. but rather because it is so obviously de-monstrable as to be a waste of laboratory effort to verify. Those interested in treating social and political organizations as systems are most frequently offered the biological organism as an example of a system. This is true both of recent conceptualizations in the behav-ioral science movement and of those avail-able at the founding of modern social sci-ence. For those interested in a functional theory of social organization, Herbert Spencer's Principles of Sociology, Part II, The Inductions of Sociology (20), can still be recommended. The behavioral scientist will find it unacceptable in many minor details, but also profoundly modern in spirit and brilliantly suggestive of still untested re-search leads. Spencer is also free from the unwarranted ethical conclusion which has alienated so many from the organismic analogy, to wit, that not only are societies organism-like, but that it is good for them to become more so. As a militant anti-nationalist and pacifist, resisting the temp-tation to identify with the glories of Queen Victoria's expanding empire, he used the analogy as a source of concepts about proc-ess and function, rather than as a pseudo-scientific prop for an ethic. To quote from his closing chapter: Here let it once more be distinctly asserted that there exist no analogies between the body 14 15 STATUS OF AGGREGATES AS SOCIAL ENTITIES politic and a living body, save those necessitate (d bv that mutual dependence of parts which thev display in common. Though, in …