Robert King Merton

Robert King Merton - American sociologist

He was born in Philadelphia in 1910 and died in New York in 2003. He wasn’t able to win a Nobel prize in sociology, but his son managed to win the Nobel prize in economics. His wife is a sociologist (still alive).

Contributions to sociology

He developed a special interest in studying social structures and theories and became one of the most influential sociologists of the modern era. He is a modern classic and coined many new terms and concepts such as:

• Serendipity: It’s a discovery made by accident. He wrote an entire book about it and discovered the concept of serendipity in a very 'serendipity' way.
• The Merton Thesis is an argument about the nature of early experimental science. Merton argued for a positive correlation between the rise of Protestant Pietism and early experimental science.
• Middle range theories: A new development which explained the whole society. The concept of a middle-range theory revolves around the notion that real-life case-based empirical study and high-level theory must be conciliated.
• Sociology of science: Before him, nobody approached science in a sociological way.
• SRM’s (strategic research material): Merton believed in the existence of data which are more revealing than others—it is not about exploring all phenomena but finding strategic research materials.
• Role-sets: In social life, a person covers not only one role but many different ones (professor, researcher, friend, fiancé).

Structural functionalism

His work revolved mostly around the school of structural functionalism, which defined the features and characteristics of social structures and their influence on the social conditions of human conduct. He believed that society must be viewed from both the micro and macro perspectives. Therefore, structural functionalism is a sociological approach that views society through a macro-level perspective, which implies a wide focus on the social structures that contribute to shaping society as a whole.

• Social structures are about constraints, values, and role-sets—people don’t live as they please.
• Social functions regard the broader range of effects which are produced by certain actions. Actions are structurally located and structurally consequential (consequential = have numerous consequences).
• [Crime is structurally located and structurally consequential]
• [Durkheim said that crime is good because it enounces a sense of social solidarity]

Structural functionalism is still going strong (systematic racism). Merton crafted a particular version of structural functionalism, he got rid of three important pillars of original structural functionalism:

• Universal functionalism: The idea that if an activity or a phenomenon is function for a group of people, it is functional for everyone.
• Functional unity: The idea that the whole society is tightly united—even a small change will affect the whole society.
• Functional indispensability: Everything that is stable is indispensable.

This new functionalism of Merton was defined as “one of the most liberal versions of functionalism”.

Thomas Theorem

“If man define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” - Merton discovered this theorem. In other words, the interpretation of a situation causes the action. This interpretation is not objective: actions are affected by subjective perceptions of situations. Men respond not only to the objective features of the situation but also to the meaning this situation has for them. The subjective and psychological becomes real and empirical.

“Whatever has consequences has to be somehow real”—if a thing is recognized as true in a community, then it does function as true in that community.

Goodhart's Law

“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”—any observed statistical regularity will be altered in its meaning once some pressure is placed on it.

The self-fulfilling prophecies

In 1948, Robert K. Merton coined the term self-fulfilling prophecy to describe “a false definition of a situation evoking a behavior which makes the originally false conception come true”. An initially inadequate definition of a situation becomes true because of the actions performed as a result of the acceptance of the prophecy. Public predictions of future social developments become a new element in the concrete situation, thus tending to change the initial course of developments.

In other words, in a self-fulfilling prophecy an individual’s expectations about another person or entity eventually result in the other person or entity acting in ways that confirm the expectations. The prophecy is originally inadequate: it takes place not because of actor’s conscious beliefs, but for different causes. Self-fulfillingness always rests on causal unintentionality. Self-fulfilling means that it would not come true if it were not for subject’s concrete behavior.

The Pygmalion Effect

“When we expect certain behaviors of others, we are likely to act in ways that make the expected behavior more likely to occur.” Ex. If the professor believes that his students are very good students, eventually he will make them very good students. The term Pygmalion Effect originated from a poem by the Greek poet Ovid entitled Metamorphoses. In it, Pygmalion was a sculptor who eventually fell in love with one of his own creations and begged the gods to deliver him a wife similar to the sculpture he became enamored with. As the story goes, the gods made his wish come true, and the sculpture came to life. Rosenthal and Jacobson became inspired by the story and subsequently named their findings after the sculptor.

Suicidal prophecy

A self-defeating prophecy is the complementary opposite of a self-fulfilling prophecy; a prediction that prevents what it predicts from happening. “The self-defeating prophecy is a true definition of the situation, evoking a new behavior which makes the originally true conception become false”. The prediction failure which occurs in this case is a consequence of the renewed intentions of the subjects, who modify certain aspects of their behavior in response to this new awareness. This self-destroying process presupposes that the social actors have understood the sociological prophecies.