Emerson, Richard

Richard Marc Emerson (1926–1982) is best known as a sociological theorist of the twentieth century for his work on power. His primary contributions to social theory derive from his work on power-dependence relations and social exchange. In the 1960s, together with George C. Homans and Peter M. Blau, he developed a sociological version of exchange theory that became one of the dominant modes of theorizing about social relations and social structure in the social sciences. Emerson's most highly cited paper is his article on power-dependence relations published in the American Sociological Review (Emerson 1962). This article became a citation classic in 1981 just prior to his premature death.

Emerson completed his undergraduate degree with a major in sociology at the University of Utah, where he had grown up in the Mormon community, though he never accepted the religion as his own. His mother and her relatives raised him. If he had not studied sociology, he said he would have become a sculptor. His early interest in art was later revealed in his spectacular photographs of remote mountain villages in Pakistan and their inhabitants. Growing up in Utah near the mountains of Salt Lake City influenced his life in many ways. Not only did he serve in the elite 10th Mountain Army Division in World War II, but he also became an avid mountain climber. Emerson, like others who had participated in World War II, returned to head off to college, supported by the GI Bill. The war, however, had other major effects upon this cohort of scholars. Some, like Emerson, returned interested in exploring the social factors they had seen in action during the war. Social cohesion, normative pressures, performance under stress, small-group behavior, responses to authority and leadership, and conformity were all topics that became popular in social science circles after the war. Research was funded by the government to find out what made for effective performance under circumstances of war and how citizens could resist undue pressure for conformity on the part of charismatic leaders. These themes drew the attention of Emerson as a young [Page 247]theorist and continued to weave their way throughout his own theoretical and empirical work during his lifetime.

Emerson completed his MA in 1952 and his PhD in 1955, from the University of Minnesota. He turned down opportunities to do graduate work at Harvard and Berkeley after the war because Minnesota offered financial assistance. His master's thesis was titled “Deviation and Rejection: An Experimental Replication,” under the direction of Don Martindale, a theorist, and Stanley Schachter, a young faculty member in psychology. Schachter later became one of the most prominent social psychologists of his generation. From Schachter, Emerson learned the experimental method, which he used in his doctoral dissertation research. His PhD thesis was an extensive field and experimental study of the determinants of social influence in face-to-face groups. The field study included an investigation of Boy Scout troops in what was to be one of his few empirical examinations of social influence outside of the laboratory. Emerson's most famous field study was his investigation of communication feedback and performance in groups under stress on Mt. Everest, for which he was awarded a Hubbard Medal on behalf of the National Geographic Society, by John F. Kennedy, in 1963.

...