ABSTRACT
Presumably, given the approximation of Utopia and the good society, social scientists would be inclined to impute different motives to social actors amongst which sympathy, co-operation and altruism might rank higher than egoism and aggression. Sociological theory finds it very difficult to incorporate alternative models of man which run counter to the official halonic calculus. Although programmed drives have lost out to socially induced motives, most sociological accounts of motivation have substituted motives which are really no different from their biological counterparts. Is there any evidence for the alternative? How important are expressions of emotional identification and sympathy in social interaction? We are not here concerned with the postulation of inner tendency systems which energize altruistic interaction. Emotional interaction is so submerged under the weight of cognitive and cultural prescriptions that social scientists have almost legislated it out of existence because it does not meet the criteria of strict empirical documentation.
