Social interactions, their classification and types. Concept of social relations

Social interaction is a system of interdependent social. actions, in which the actions of one subject are simultaneously the cause and consequence of the response actions of others. It occurs when people mutually, relatively deeply, sustainably and regularly influence each other’s behavior, resulting in not only renewal, but usually also change in social behavior. relationships.
Social relationships are one of the forms of social manifestation. interactions, which is distinguished by the duration, stability and systematicity of social. interactions, their self-renewal, the breadth of social content. connections.
Social connection is the first and most important condition for the existence of social life. The term “social connection” refers to the entire set of factors that determine the joint activities of people in specific conditions of place and time in order to achieve specific goals. Social connections are the connections of individuals with each other, as well as their connections with phenomena and processes in the surrounding world. The starting point for the emergence of a social connection is the interaction of individuals or groups of individuals to satisfy certain needs.
Social interaction is any behavior of an individual or group of individuals that has meaning for other individuals and groups of individuals or society as a whole. The category “interaction” expresses the nature and content of relations between people and social groups as permanent carriers of qualitatively different types of activities and differing in social positions (statuses) and roles (functions). Regardless of what sphere of life of society (ecological, economic, spiritual, political, etc.) interaction takes place, it is always of a social nature, as it expresses connections between individuals and groups of individuals.
Social interaction has objective and subjective sides. The objective side of interaction is connections that are independent of individuals, but mediate and control the content and nature of their interaction. The subjective side of interaction is the conscious attitude of individuals towards each other, based on mutual expectations (expectations) of appropriate behavior. These are interpersonal (or more broadly, socio-psychological) relationships, which represent direct connections and relationships between individuals that develop under specific conditions of place and time.
The mechanism of social interaction” includes: individuals performing certain actions; changes in the external world caused by these actions; the impact of these changes on other individuals and, finally, the reverse reaction of the individuals who were affected. The most important thing in social interaction is the content side, which is revealed through the nature and method of social interaction. They are also determined by the individual properties and qualities of the interacting parties. They mainly depend on the value orientations of people existing social norms and everyday experience.
Social relations. Social interaction leads to the establishment of social relationships. Social relations are relatively stable connections between individuals (as a result of which they are institutionalized into social groups) and social groups as permanent carriers of qualitatively different types of activities, differing in social status and roles in social structures. Social relationships are relatively independent, specific type social relations, expressing activity social subjects regarding their unequal position in society and role in public life. Social relations always express the position of people and their communities in society, because they are always relations of equality - inequality, justice - injustice, domination - subordination.
- social groups: belonging to historically established territorial associations (city, village, town);
- degree of limitation of functioning social groups in a strictly defined system of social norms and values, the belonging of the studied group of interacting individuals to one or another social institution (family, education, science, etc.).

Essence, types, types of social interactions

In order for a social system to exist, at least two people are needed, connected to each other through various social interactions. The simplest case of social interaction is the relationship between two people.

We can decompose the entire social life and all complex communities of people. Whichever social process we take no account, be it a legal battle, communication between a teacher and a student, a battle between two armies - all these forms social activities can be presented as special cases general phenomenon interactions. Modern sociology defines social interaction as a process in which people act and are influenced by other individuals.

Agreeing that the social system is the result of the interaction of people, sociologists of different directions explain the patterns of social interaction in different ways.

The idea of social interactions in various sociological theories Theory Author Main idea Exchange theory J. Homans People interact with each other based on their experiences, weighing possible rewards and costs. Symbolic interactionism J. Mead
G. Bloomer The behavior of people in relation to each other and the objects of the surrounding world is determined by the meanings that they attach to them. Impression management I. Goffman Social situations resemble dramatic performances in which actors strive to create and maintain favorable impressions Psychoanalytic theory S. Freud On interpersonal interaction deep influence render concepts learned in early childhood, and the conflicts experienced during this period.

Classification of types of social interaction is carried out on various grounds.

Depending on the number of participants:

interaction between two people;
interaction of one and many;
interaction of many, many.

Depending on the similarities and differences in the qualities of the participants in the interaction:

same or different genders;
same or different nationalities;
similar or different in level of wealth, etc.

Depending on the nature of the acts of interaction:

one-sided and two-sided;

Clarification

solidary or antagonistic (cooperation, competition, conflict);
template or non-template;
intellectual, sensual or volitional.

Depending on duration:

short-term or long-term,
having short-term and simultaneous consequences.

Depending on the frequency of repetition and stability in sociology, the following types of social interaction are distinguished: social contacts, social relationships and social institutions.

Social contact is usually understood as a type of short-term, easily interrupted social interaction caused by the contact of people in physical and social space.

Social contacts can be divided on different grounds. The types of social contacts were most clearly identified by S. Frolov, who structured them in the following order:

spatial contacts;

Clarification

contact of interest;

Clarification

exchange contacts.

Clarification

A more stable form of social interaction is “social relationships” - sequences, “chains” of repeated social interactions, correlated in meaning with each other and characterized by stable norms and patterns of behavior. Social relations are relatively stable connections between individuals and social groups.

Clarification

A specific feature of social systems, and therefore relationships, in contrast to other systems, is that even being in a state of deep internal conflict, they retain their integrity, since their disintegration can lead individuals to self-preservation. Here the laws of biopsychological self-preservation begin to operate.

Thus, social interactions are systematic, regular social actions of partners, directed at each other, with the goal of causing a very specific response on the part of the partner, and the response generates a new reaction of the influencer. And in this regard, the following mechanisms for the implementation of social interactions are distinguished:

transfer of information;
receiving the information;
reaction to the information received;
processed information;
receiving processed information;
reaction to this information.

Self-test questions (p. 13)

Basic terms and concepts (p. 12-13).

Topic (module) 3. Social interactions and social relationships.

1. Social interaction (p. 1-9):

a) the social mechanism of interaction, its main elements (pp. 1-3);

b) typology of social interactions (p. 3-4);

c) social communication and its models; typology of communication interactions (p.4-7);

d) mass communication and its main functions (pp. 7-9).

2. Structure of social relations (9-12):

a) the concept of social relations (p. 9-10);

b) level typology of social relations (p. 10-11);

c) official and unofficial relations, the main differences between them (p. 11-12).

A)social mechanism of interaction, its main elements.

When communicating with peers, acquaintances, relatives, co-workers, or just random fellow travelers, each person carries out various interactions. In any of these interactions, he simultaneously manifests his individual identity in two interrelated directions. On the one hand, he acts as a performer of certain role functions: husband or wife, boss or subordinate, father or son, etc. On the other hand, in any of the roles he performs, he simultaneously interacts with other people as a unique, unrepeatable personality.

When an individual performs a certain role, he acts as a specific unit of a well-defined social structure - plant director, shop manager, foreman, worker, department head, teacher, curator, student, etc. In society, in each of its structures - be it a family, a school, an enterprise - there is a certain agreement, often documented (internal regulations, charter, code of officer honor, etc.), regarding the contribution that should be made to the common cause, therefore, in the process of interaction with others, each performer of such a role. In such cases, the fulfillment of certain roles does not necessarily have to be accompanied by any feelings, although the manifestation of the latter is by no means excluded.

But in interactions between people there is a much larger and more diverse class interpersonal relationships, in which there are specific, emotionally very intense roles (friend, father, rival, etc.), inextricably linked with feelings of sympathy or antipathy, friendship or hostility, respect or contempt.

Individual mutual reactions of people to each other in such interactions can vary dramatically over a very wide range: from love at first sight to sudden dislike of the other person. In the process of such interaction, as a rule, not only perception each other's people, but also mutual evaluation each other, inevitably including not only cognitive, but also emotional components.

What has been said is enough to define the social process under consideration. Social interaction – it is an exchange of actions between two or more individuals. It can occur at the micro level - between people, small groups, and at the macro level - between social groups, classes, nations, social movements. This is a system of socially conditioned individual and/or group actions, when the behavior of one of the participants is both a stimulus and a reaction to the behavior of the others and acts as the reason for subsequent actions.

In the process of interaction, there is a division and cooperation of functions, and, consequently, mutual coordination of joint actions. Let's say in football, the coordination of the actions of the goalkeeper, defenders and attackers; at the plant - director, chief engineer, shop manager, foreman, worker, etc.

There are four main features social interaction:

1. Objectivity– the presence of a goal external to the interacting individuals or groups, the implementation of which presupposes the need to combine efforts, be it football or the work of any workshop of the Minsk Automobile Plant.

2. Situational– a fairly strict regulation by specific conditions of the situation in which the interaction process takes place: if we are in the theater, we react to what is happening completely differently than when we are at a football match or a country picnic.

3. Explication– accessibility for an outside observer of the external expression of the interaction process, be it a game, dancing or working in a factory.

4. Reflexive ambiguity– the opportunity for interaction to be a manifestation of both special subjective intentions and an unconscious or conscious consequence of the joint participation of people in various activities (game, work, for example).

The interaction process has two sides - objective and subjective. Objective side interactions are connections that do not depend on individuals or groups, but mediate and regulate the content and nature of their interaction (for example, the content of joint work in an enterprise). Subjective side- this is a conscious, often emotionally charged attitude of individuals towards each other, based on mutual expectations of appropriate behavior.

Social mechanism interactions are quite complex. In the simplest case, it includes the following components: 1) individuals (or groups of them) performing certain actions in relation to each other; 2) changes in the external world caused by these actions;

3) changes in inner world individuals participating in the interaction (in their thoughts, feelings, assessments, etc.); 4) the impact of these changes on other individuals; 5) the latter’s backlash to such influence.

b) typology of social interactions.

A specific feature of interaction is the exchange of actions. Its structure is quite simple:

- exchange agents– two or more people;

- exchange process– actions performed according to certain rules;

- exchange rules– oral or written instructions, assumptions and prohibitions;

- item of exchange– goods, services, gifts, etc.;

- place of exchange– a predetermined or spontaneously arisen meeting place.

Actions are divided into four types:

1) physical action, slap, handing over a book, writing on paper;

2) verbal action, insult, greeting;

3) gestures, handshake;

4) mental action, inner speech.

Social interaction includes the first three, and does not include the fourth type of action. As a result we get first typology social interaction (by type):

1) physical;

2) verbal;

3) gestural.

Second typology social action (by spheres, as status systems):

1) economic sphere, where individuals act as owners and employees, entrepreneurs, rentiers, and the unemployed;

2) professional sphere, where individuals participate as drivers, builders, miners, doctors;

3) family and kinship sphere, where people act as fathers, mothers, children, relatives;

4) demographic sphere, are members of political parties, social movements, judges, police officers, diplomats;

5) religious sphere implies contacts between representatives of different religions, one religion, believers and non-believers;

6) territorial-settlement sphere- clashes, cooperation, competition between locals and newcomers, urban and rural, etc.;

It is customary to distinguish three main forms of interaction(by ways of coordinating your goals, means of achieving them and results):

1. Cooperation– cooperation of different individuals (groups) to solve a common problem.

2. Competition– individual or group struggle (competition) for the possession of scarce values (benefits).

3. Conflict- a hidden or open clash between competing parties.

It can arise in both cooperation and competition.

In general, social interaction is a complex system of exchanges determined by ways of balancing rewards and costs. If the expected costs are higher than the expected rewards, people are unlikely to interact unless forced to do so.

Ideally, the exchange of actions should occur on an equivalent basis, but in reality there are constant deviations from this. This creates a very complex pattern of human interaction: deception, personal gain, selflessness, fair reward, etc.

c) Social communication and its models. Typology of communication interactions.

Play a huge role in social interactions different kinds communications (from Latin communicatio – message, transmission), i.e. communication between people and their communities, without which there can be no groups, no social organizations and institutions, no society as a whole.

Communication – is the transfer of information from one social system to another, exchange of information between various systems through symbols, signs, images. Communication between by individuals, their groups, organizations, states, cultures - is carried out in the process of communication as an exchange of special sign formations (messages) that reflect thoughts, ideas, knowledge, experience, skills, value orientations, and activity programs of the communicating parties.

The communication process is a necessary prerequisite for the formation, development and functioning of all social systems, because it is it that ensures the connection between people and their communities, makes possible connection between generations, accumulation and transmission of social experience, organization of joint activities, transmission of culture. It is through communication that control is carried out, therefore it also represents the social mechanism through which power arises and is realized in society.

In the process of studying communication processes, various models of social communication have been developed.

1. Who? (transmits message) – communicator.

2. What? (transmitted) - message.

3. How? (transfer in progress) – channel.

4. To whom? (message sent) – audience.

5. With what effect? - efficiency.

The disadvantage of the model is that the emphasis is on the activity of the communicator, and the recipient (audience) turns out to be only the object of communication influence.

Interactionist model ( author T. Newcombe).It is based on the fact that the subjects of communication - the communicator and the recipient - have equal rights, connected by both mutual expectations and a common interest in the subject of communication. Communication itself acts as a means of realizing such interest. The effect of communication influence is to bring closer or further away the points of view of the communicator and the recipient on a common subject.

This approach to communication highlights the achievement of agreement between communication partners.

He believes that development communication means defines how general character culture and the change of historical eras. In the primitive era, human communication was limited to oral speech and mythological thinking.

With the advent of writing, the type of communication also changed. Writing began to serve as a reliable preservation of past experience, meanings, knowledge, ideas, and also made it possible to supplement the previous text with new elements or interpret it. As a result, society received powerful weapon introducing new meanings and images into circulation, which ensured intensive development fiction and science.

The third stage of complication of communication interactions began with the invention of printing, which led to the triumph of visual perception, the formation of national languages and states, and the spread of rationalism.

A new stage in communication processes has become the widespread use of modern audiovisual means of communication. Television and other means have radically transformed the environment in which modern humanity lives and communicates, dramatically expanding the scale and intensity of its communication connections.

The basis of communication interactions are powerful flows of information encrypted in complex computer programs.

These programs create a new “infosphere”, lead to the emergence of a new “clip culture”, which simultaneously leads to the massification of communication interactions and their demassification and individualization. Each of the recipients can selectively tune in to one of many telecommunication processes or choose a communication option according to their own order. This is a new communication situation, characterized by an ever-changing variety of new cultures and the emergence of many different communicative interactions.

According to Luhmann, it is through communication that society self-organizes and self-refers itself, i.e. comes to self-understanding, to distinguish between oneself and environment, and also self-replicates, that is, it is an autopoietic system. This means that the concept of communication becomes decisive for defining the concept of “society”. “Only with the help of the concept of communication,” Luhmann emphasizes, “can a social system be thought of as an autopoietic system, which consists of elements, namely, of communications that produce and reproduce themselves through a network of communications.”

The typology of communication interactions is important.

It can be done for several reasons. Depending on the content These processes are divided into:

1) informative, aimed at transferring information from the communicator to the recipient;

2) managerial transmission oriented control system instructions to the managed subsystem in order to carry out management decisions;

3) acoustic, designed for the recipient’s auditory perception of information flows coming from the communicator ( sound speech, radio signals, audio recordings) and to receive auditory reactions to sound signals;

4) optical oriented towards visual perception of information coming from the communicator to the recipient and the corresponding response of the latter;

5) tactile, including the transmission and perception of information by influencing the tactile sensitivity of individuals (touch, pressure, vibration, etc.);

6) emotive associated with the emergence in subjects participating in communications of emotional experiences of joy, fear, admiration, etc., which can be embodied in various shapes activity.

By forms and means expressions communication interactions can be divided into:

1) verbal, embodied in written and oral speech;

2) symbolically-sign and subject-sign, expressed in works visual arts, in sculpture, architecture;

3) paralinguistic, transmitted through gestures, facial expressions, pantomimes;

4) hypnosuggestive– processes of influence – the influence of the communicator on mental sphere recipient (hypnosis, coding);

In accordance with level, scale And context Communication is divided into the following types:

1. Traditional communication carried out mainly in the local rural environment: communication is constant

2. Functional-role communication, developing in an urban environment, in conditions of significant differentiation of activities and lifestyles.

3. Interpersonal communication– this type of communication interaction in which individuals act as both the sender and the recipient of the message. There are personal and role-based interindividual communication. The content and form of personal communication are not related strict rules, but have an individualized informal character. The role-based variety of interpersonal communication is more formalized, and the process of transmitting information is focused on achieving a certain result, for example, completing a task assigned by a manager to a subordinate or a teacher to a student.

4. Group communication is a type of communication interaction in which communication occurs between two or big amount members of a certain group (territorial, professional, religious, etc.) in order to organize interdependent actions. Forms the basis of communication interactions in social organizations.

5. Intergroup communication- this is a type of communication interaction during which flows of information circulate between two or more social groups in order to carry out joint activities or counteract each other.

Such communication can perform an informational or educational function (a group of teachers performs in front of a group of students), an entertaining or educational function (a theater group performs in front of people in an auditorium), a mobilization and organizing function (a propaganda group speaks in front of a group of people), an inciting function (in front of a crowd a group of demagogues speaks out).

6. Mass communication – (see next question).

d) mass communication and its main functions.

Mass communication- this is a type of communication processes that, based on the use technical means replication and transmission of messages cover large masses of people, and the media (mass media) act as communicators - the press, book publishing houses, press agencies, radio, television. This is the systematic dissemination of messages among numerically large, dispersed audiences with the aim of informing and exerting ideological, political, economic influence on people's assessments, opinions and behavior.

main feature mass communication is to connect institutionally organized production information with its dispersion, mass distribution and consumption.

(Information- a message about an event; intelligence,

a collection of any data. The term "information" translated from

Latin means “exposition”, “explanation”.

In everyday life, this word refers to information transmitted

people orally, in writing or otherwise. Scientific disciplines

use this term, putting their own content into it.

In mathematical information theory, information does not mean

any information, but only those that remove completely or reduce

uncertainty existing before their receipt. That is, information -

this is uncertainty removed. Modern philosophers define

information as reflected diversity.

What does having information give a person? Orientation in what is happening, determining the direction of one’s own activities, the ability to make the right decisions.

Mass information– printed, audiovisual and others

messages and materials publicly disseminated through the media;

social and political resource).

The material prerequisite for the emergence of mass communications is an invention at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. telegraph, cinema, radio, sound recording technology. Based on these inventions, MASS MEDIA.

The media has become last years one of the most effective ways formation of public opinion and organization of control over mass consciousness and behavior ( mass consciousness- class consciousness

social groups; includes ideas, views, myths widespread in society; formed both purposefully (media) and spontaneously).

The main functions that mass communication performs in society are: 1) informing about current events; 2) transfer of knowledge about society from one generation to another through socialization and training; 3) targeted influence on the formation of certain stereotypes of people’s behavior; 4) helping society in understanding and solving current problems; 5) entertainment.

So, the media have a powerful, targeted influence on people, their preferences and life positions. However, conducted by sociologists different countries Research has shown that the impact of mass communication on individuals and social groups is mediated by certain intermediate social variables. The most important of them include: the position of the group to which the recipient belongs; selectivity, i.e. a person’s ability and desire to select information that is consistent with his values, opinions and positions. Therefore, in the process of mass communication, many recipients act not as a passive recipient of information, but as an active filter. They carry out the selection certain types media messages to satisfy certain needs.

One cannot leave aside another acute problem related to the functioning of mass communication: the problem of its negative impact on certain groups of people. Excessively concentrated impact of mass communication can negatively affect the content and quality of interpersonal communication of both adults and (especially!) children; reduce interest in active forms assimilation of cultural values, to lead a person away from problems and difficulties real life, aggravate his loneliness, disadaptation to changing living conditions and the surrounding social environment.

Of course, mass communication also has a positive impact on people. It helps to increase curiosity, awareness, erudition, the growth of political culture, and compliance with social norms and rules.

Everyday interaction between people is the very field of real actions on which socialization unfolds and seeds sprout human personality. Every now and then we perform many elementary acts social interaction, without even knowing it. When we meet, we shake hands and say hello; When entering the bus, we let women, children and elderly people go ahead. All this - acts of social interaction, consisting of individual social action. However, not everything we do in connection with other people is social interaction. If a car hits a passerby, then this is a normal traffic accident. But it also becomes a social interaction, when the driver and pedestrian, analyzing the incident, each defend their interests as representatives of two large social groups.

The driver insists that the roads are built for cars and the pedestrian does not have the right to cross wherever he pleases. The pedestrian, on the contrary, is convinced that the main person in the city is he, not the driver, and cities are created for people, not for cars. In this case, the driver and pedestrian represent different social statuses. Each of them has their own range of rights and responsibilities. Carrying out role driver and pedestrian, two men do not sort out personal relationships based on sympathy or antipathy, but enter into social relations, behave as holders of social statuses that are defined by society. Role conflict described in sociology using status-role theory. When communicating with each other, the driver and pedestrian do not talk about family matters, the weather or the prospects for the harvest. Contents their conversations stand out social symbols and meanings: the purpose of such a territorial settlement as a city, standards for crossing the roadway, priorities of people and cars, etc. Concepts in italics constitute attributes of social interaction. It, like social action, is found everywhere, but this does not mean that it replaces all other types of human interaction.

So, social interaction consists of individual acts called social actions, and includes statuses(range of rights and responsibilities), roles, social relationships, symbols And meanings.

Behavior- a set of movements, acts and actions of a person that can be observed by other people, namely those in whose presence these actions are performed. It can be individual and collective (mass). Main elements social behavior speakers: needs, motivation, expectations.

Comparing activity And behavior, it's not hard to notice the difference.

The unit of behavior is an action. Although it is considered conscious, it has no purpose or intention. Thus, the action of an honest person is natural and therefore arbitrary. He simply could not do otherwise. At the same time, the person does not set a goal to demonstrate to others the qualities of an honest person, and in this sense, the act has no purpose. An action, as a rule, is focused on two goals at once: compliance with one’s moral principles and positive reaction other people evaluating the action from the outside.

To save a drowning man, risking his life, is an act oriented towards both goals. Going against the general opinion, defending your own point of view, is an act focused only on the first goal.

Actions, deeds, movements and acts - construction bricks behavior and activity. In turn, activity and behavior are two sides of one phenomenon, namely human activity. Action is possible only if there is freedom of action. If your parents oblige you to tell them the whole truth, even if it is unpleasant for you, then this is not yet an act. An action is only those actions that you perform voluntarily.

When we talk about an action, we unwittingly mean an action focused on other people. But an action emanating from an individual may or may not be directed towards another individual. Only an action that is directed at another person (and not at a physical object) and causes a backlash should be classified as social interaction.

If interaction is a bidirectional process of exchange of actions between two or more individuals, then action is just a unidirectional interaction.

Distinguish four types of action:

1) physical action(slap in the face, handing over a book, writing on paper, etc.);
2) verbal, or verbal, action(insult, greeting, etc.);
3) gestures as a type of action (smile, raised finger, handshake);
4) mental action, which is expressed only in inner speech.

Of the four types of action, the first three are external, and the fourth is internal. Examples to support each type of action correspond to social action criteria M. Weber: they are meaningful, motivated, and other-oriented. Social interaction includes the first three and does not include the fourth type of action (no one, except telepaths, interacted using direct thought transmission). As a result we get first typology social interaction (by type): physical; verbal; gestural. Systematization by spheres of society (or status systems) gives us second typology social interaction:

economic sphere, where individuals act as owners and employees, entrepreneurs, rentiers, capitalists, businessmen, the unemployed, housewives;
professional sphere, where individuals participate as drivers, bankers, professors, miners, cooks;
family and kinship sphere, where people act as fathers, mothers, sons, cousins, grandmothers, uncles, aunts, godfathers, brothers-in-arms, bachelors, widows, newlyweds;
demographic sphere, including contacts between representatives of different genders, ages, nationalities and races (nationality is also included in the concept of interethnic interaction);
political sphere, where people confront or cooperate as representatives of political parties, popular fronts, social movements, and also as subjects of state power - judges, police officers, jurors, diplomats, etc.;
religious sphere, implying contacts between representatives of different religions, the same religion, as well as believers and non-believers, if the content of their actions relates to the area of religion;
territorial-settlement sphere– clashes, cooperation, competition between locals and newcomers, urban and rural, temporary and permanent residents, emigrants, immigrants and migrants.

The first typology of social interaction is based on types of action, the second - on status systems.

In science it is customary to distinguish three main forms of interaction – cooperation, competition And conflict. In this case, interaction refers to the ways in which partners agree on their goals and means of achieving them, distributing scarce (rare) resources.

Cooperation- This cooperation several individuals (groups) to solve a common problem. The simplest example is carrying a heavy log. Cooperation arises where and when the advantage of joint efforts over individual ones becomes obvious. Cooperation implies division of labor.

Competition– is it individual or group struggle for the possession of scarce values (benefits). They can be money, property, popularity, prestige, power. They are scarce because, being limited, they cannot be divided equally among everyone. Competition is considered individual form of struggle not because only individuals participate in it, but because competing parties (groups, parties) strive to get as much as possible for themselves to the detriment of others. Competition intensifies when individuals realize that they can achieve more alone. It is a social interaction because people negotiate the rules of the game.

Conflict– hidden or open collision competing parties. It can arise in both cooperation and competition. Competition develops into a clash when competitors try to prevent or eliminate each other from the struggle for the possession of scarce goods. When equal rivals, for example industrial countries, compete for power, prestige, markets, resources peacefully, this is a manifestation of competition. Otherwise, an armed conflict arises—war.

Specific trait interaction, which distinguishes it from just action - exchange: every interaction is an exchange. You can exchange anything: signs of attention, words, gestures, symbols, material objects. There is probably nothing that could not serve as a medium of exchange. Thus, money, with which we usually associate the process of exchange, occupies far from the first place. Exchange understood so broadly – universal a process that can be found in any society and in any historical era. Exchange structure quite simple:

1) exchange agents – two or more people;
2) exchange process– actions performed according to certain rules;
3) exchange rules– instructions, assumptions and prohibitions established orally or in writing;
4) item of exchange– goods, services, gifts, courtesies, etc.;
5) place of exchange- a pre-arranged or spontaneously arisen meeting place.

According to social exchange theories, formulated by the American sociologist George Homans, a person’s current behavior is determined by whether and how his actions were rewarded in the past. Homane deduced the following principles of exchange.

1. The more often a given type of action is rewarded, the more likely it is that it will be repeated. If it regularly leads to success, then the motivation to repeat it increases, and vice versa, decreases in case of failure.
2. If the reward (success) for a certain type of action depends on certain conditions, then there is a high probability that a person will strive for them. It doesn't matter whether you make a profit from being legal and increasing productivity, or from circumventing the law and hiding it from tax office, – profit, like any other reward, will push you to repeat successful behavior.
3. If the reward is great, a person is ready to overcome any difficulties in order to receive it. A profit of 5% is unlikely to stimulate a businessman to achieve heroism, but, as K. Marx noted in his time, for the sake of a profit of 300%, a capitalist is ready to commit any crime.
4. When a person’s needs are close to saturation, he makes less and less effort to satisfy them. This means that if an employer pays high wages for several months in a row, the employee’s motivation to increase productivity decreases.

Homans' principles apply both to the actions of one person and to the interaction of several people, because each of them is guided in their relations with the other by the same considerations.

In general, social interaction is a complex system of exchanges determined by ways of balancing rewards and costs. When perceived costs are higher than expected rewards, people are unlikely to interact unless forced to do so. Homans' exchange theory explains social interaction based on free choice. In social exchange - as we can call the social interaction between rewards and costs - there is no directly proportional relationship. In other words, if the reward is tripled, the individual will not necessarily triple his effort in response. It often happened that workers' wages were doubled in the hope that they would increase productivity by the same amount, but there was no real return: the workers only pretended to try.

By nature, a person is inclined to economize his efforts, and he resorts to this in any situation, sometimes resorting to deception. The reason is that expenses And rewards– derived from different needs or biological impulses. Therefore, two factors - the desire to save effort and the desire to receive as much reward as possible - can act simultaneously, in different directions. This creates the most complex pattern of human interaction, where exchange and personal gain, selflessness and fair distribution of rewards, equality of results and inequality of effort are woven into a single whole.

Exchange– the universal basis of interaction. It has its own structure and principles. Ideally, the exchange takes place on an equivalent basis, but in reality there are constant deviations that create the most complex pattern of human interaction.

Accepted in sociology special term, denoting social interaction – interaction.

Social interaction

Social interaction- a system of interdependent social actions connected by cyclical dependence, in which the action of one subject is both the cause and consequence of the response actions of other subjects. It is related to the concept of “social action”, which is the starting point for the formation of social connections. Social interaction as a way of implementing social connections and relationships presupposes the presence of at least two subjects, the interaction process itself, as well as the conditions and factors for its implementation. In the course of interaction, the formation and development of the individual, the social system, their change in the social structure of society, etc. take place.

Social interaction includes the transfer of an action from one social actor to another, the receipt and reaction to it in the form of a response action, as well as the resumption of actions of social actors. It has social meaning for the participants and involves the exchange of their actions in the future due to the presence in it of a special causality - social relationship. Social relations are formed in the process of interaction between people and are the result of their past interactions, which have acquired a stable social form. Social interactions, by contrast, are not “frozen.” social forms, but “living” social practices of people, which are conditioned, directed, structured, regulated by social relations, but are capable of influencing these social forms and changing them.

Social interaction is determined by the social statuses and roles of the individual and social groups. It has objective and subjective sides:

Objective side- factors independent of interacting ones, but influencing them.
Subjective side- the conscious attitude of individuals towards each other in the process of interaction, based on mutual expectations.

Classification of social interaction

Primary, secondary (ideological, religious, moral)
By number of participants: interaction of two people; one person and group of people; between two groups
Multinational
Between people of different incomes, etc.

Social interactions, their classification and types. Concept of social relations

Classification of social interaction

Notes

see also

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