ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the market version of micro-economics is a sub-category of social exchange. The psychology of social exchange must develop so as to specify the manner in which these two processes—conditioning and decision making—operate together in some situations and are given salience, one over the other, in other situations. If one takes George Homans's essay on social behavior as exchange to be the starting point, then social exchange theory has been part of American social psychology for twenty years. Sociological critics too numerous to mention have been repelled by the psychological reductionism advocated and attempted by Homans. The suggestion that economics studies material or monetary benefits, whereas sociology, psychology, and anthropology study the exchange of more subtle psychological benefits, does an injustice to the power of theoretical concepts in each of those fields. The economic concepts refer to attributes of market situations whereas the three psychological concepts address a single actor’s relation to his environment.
