ABSTRACT
Newcomb et al. write in their well-known text: ‘Any textbook in social psychology nowadays must necessarily be selective, and our basis for inclusion and exclusion has been our conviction that most of the important notions can be organized around the phenomena of human interaction.’ The concept interaction is bandied around by nearly every type of theorist. Historically, the concept of interaction has had an important role in the development of social thought, although not necessarily in the narrow technical sense of modern social theory. The degree of freedom and choice between two people in face-to-face interaction is governed by a whole complex of rules and norms which enter into the way they mutually adapt to each other. To argue that the institutionalization of reciprocity is a prior condition for cohesive social behaviour is to misunderstand the operation of basic interactive processes.
