Doctoral Dissertation Research: Legitimation Networks in Fringe and Normal Sciences

个人或群体的合法性对于确定其在任何政治、社会或经济制度中的资源份额都很重要。 个人或群体的合法性越高，他们在社会资源中的潜在份额就越大。 以往的研究集中在合法性对不同类型的社会单位和结果的影响。 本项目研究的是群体获得和维持合法性的机制。 我们的理论认为，合法性提高到这样的程度，即既有基于集团内部联系的高度团结，又有集团从外部获得的大量“认可联系”。 我们将使用社会计量学的数据来测试这一理论，这些数据是通过对两个学术领域的成员进行访谈和问卷调查收集的，这两个学术领域是超心理学和人类认知和感知心理学。 我们已经从几乎所有领先的超心理学家那里收集了数据。 在这个项目中，我们将从人类认知和感知的领先心理学家那里收集可比数据，并将使用这两个数据集来测试我们的理论。

The legitimacy of persons or groups is important in determining their share of resources in any political, social or economic system. The more legitimate the person or group, the greater their potential share of society's resources. Previous research has focused on the consequences of legitimacy for different sorts of social units and outcomes. This project instead examines the mechanisms by which groups attain and maintain legitimacy. Our theory proposes that legitimacy is heightened to the degree that there is both high solidarity, based on intra-group ties, and a high incidence of `endorsement ties` received by the group from outside. We will test this theory using sociometric data gathered through interviews and questionnaires administered to members of two academic fields, parapsychology and the psychology of human cognition and perception. We have already collected data from nearly all of the leading parapsychologists. In this project we will gather comparable data from leading psychologists of human cognition and perception and will use the two data sets to test our theory.