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Reports on a project to create a new infrastructure for experimental economics and sociology by connecting cutting edge research to Web‐based software development. The project will build and maintain an active Web site of highly flexible modular architecture for theoretically‐driven experimentation. The Web site, itself a laboratory, fundamentally advances experimental study, automatically records and archives data, and maintains electronic journals. To increase the integrity and effectiveness of social science knowledge acquisition, the Web site will support replications while creating large and systematic databases. The Web‐lab’s goal is to change social science investigation by allowing experiments to be run using subjects from large and diverse populations. The Web‐lab will democratize experimental research; a local laboratory will need no more than a few computers with access to the Web. Using designs at the Web‐lab, extensive laboratory components will be developed for mainstream graduate and undergraduate social science courses.

This exposition explains how Elementary Theory works and how it has been developed over the last two-and-a-half decades. Both increased scope and heightened precision are covered.

Theoretic methodology is explained. Using that method formal models are constructed analogous to empirical events. Those models predict events, design experiments, and guide applications in the field.

There is a widely held belief in sociology that theory becomes more vague and imprecise as its scope broadens. Whereas broader generalizations are more vague than narrower ones, this exposition shows that abstract theory becomes more precise as its scope broadens.

Here implications and limitations are closely connected. Regarding implications, this exposition shows that scientific explanations and predictions are viable today in sociology but only when exact theory is employed. Regarding limitations, the theory and research included in this exposition make clear why the empiricist search for regularities that dominates sociological research is so very limited in its results.

This exposition demonstrates that theory is the method of all the sciences and in particular the science of sociology.

Drawing on Game Theory, Elementary Theory, and Status Characteristics Theory, this paper offers a theoretical model for a social group that is solidary and cohesive. The group has an economy, a social structure and a cultural structure. Applying Game Theory, economic conditions for solidarity are found. Within those conditions are groups that can be solidary if their social dilemma is resolved. Applying Elementary Theory shows how decentralized norm enforcement solves that social dilemma, but at the cost of second- and higher order free rider problems. Applying Status Characteristics Theory resolves higher order problems. Experiments and ethnographic examples support the analysis.

Classical and contemporary theorists are at odds over the structure of power relations in organizations and the relationship between power differences and the distribution of control and benefits. The classical arguments of Marx and Weber describe steep hierarchical structures in which those at the top exercise substantial control over subordinates and gain a disproportionate share of the organization's benefits. Contemporary theories are divided on two counts. Some imply that power is organized hierarchically—although not to the extent claimed by classical scholars—while others claim that power is diffuse. Similarly, the early exchange arguments separated benefit from control, and claimed that power is directly related to the distribution of control but inversely related to the distribution of benefits. Contemporary exchange theorists connect power to the distribution of control and benefit but most imply that power differences weaken, that is, power relations become less hierarchical, with power use.This paper offers the first simultaneous application of Elementary Theory, Status Characteristics Theory, and Legitimacy Theory to the study of organizational dynamics. Each theory describes the process through which differences on a single factor, e.g., power, influence, or organizations. We claim that most organizational analysts either focus on power processes to the exclusion of influence and legitimacy processes or conflate the three ideas and treat their confluence as power. In either case, the result is misspecification of the distribution of power in organizations and/or an underestimation of its effects on the distribution of control and benefit.We untangle the three ideas and use the three arguments to develop new understandings of the distribution of benefits and control in organizations. All three theories describe processes that connect behavior to structural conditions. Elementary Theory infers power differences from exchange structures that permit competitive mobility while Status Characteristic Theory infers influence from status orders. The three theories do not exhaust coverage of power, influence, and legitimacy processes under all conditions. However, when they are applied concurrently, the three describe greater concentrations of power than those implied by conventional organizational theories.Our joint application of Elementary Theory and Status Characteristics Theory offers a new explanation for the commonly described relationship between differences in expertise and the exercise of power. We also explain the relationship between uncertainty and the distribution of benefit and control. As uncertainty increases, the door is opened for subordinates to exercise greater and greater influence over superordinate actors. Our analysis also offers insights into the phenomena of power-at-a-distance and the relation between mobility in hierarchies and domination and obedience. Conditions that block mobility promote power decentralization. Finally, we show how legitimacy processes enhance and/or constrain power and influence processes. The complex interplay of power, influence, and legitimation processes can produce somewhat flatter distributions of benefit and control than separate analyses of the three processes might imply. We end with a cautionary note: some but not all of our applications of the three theories are supported by experimental studies. Especially in that regard, this work is quite preliminary. Our application of structural social psychological theories—and that of our predecessors—to the study of organizational dynamics leaves much work undone.

Weak organizational actors can overcome the consequences of their dependence by securing the control of valuable resources or by embedding dependence relationships into social networks. While these strategies may not eliminate the underlying dependence, they can curtail the ability or the willingness of the stronger party to use power. Embedding strategies, however, can also have unintended consequences. Because the network structures that confer power to the weak are inherently more stable, they can persist beyond the point of being beneficial, trapping weak actors into unsuitable network structures. The power of the weak can thus become the weakness of the strong.

David Altheide has provided a sociological story that may not resemble the fabled bed time stories of your youth, or even the moral parables that guide our commonsensical understanding of the everyday world. However, the story has some resemblance to Hans Christian Anderson's “The Emperor's Clothes,” especially with regard to his observation that we Americans have accepted and complied with policies, directives, and rationalizations that seemed problematic in the first place and downright odious in retrospect (see Cetola, Willer, & Macy, 2005, pp. 1010–1011). Just as Denzin (2007, pp. 449–451) noted with regard to the “one percent doctrine” (if something can happen once it will therefore happen again), Altheide points out the simple fact that our fears, lacking logical premise, have instead become dressed up in vivid colors on television screens. We as citizens seem mesmerized by an apparently inevitable concept that if we fear it, it will indeed come. A few years ago Glassner (2000) discussed how fear mongers create a false logic of inevitability. Currently, Altheide extends this argument to show how such logic has become clothed in the regalia of patriotism, news void of context, and incessant anger.

The comparison processes introduced by Thibaut and Kelly (1959) are fundamental to social exchange theories of power. However, research has focused almost exclusively on only one type of comparison – the comparison between alternative sources of valued rewards (CLalt) – which affects relationship commitment. Thibaut and Kelley also articulated a more general comparison level (CL) that determines relationship satisfaction. We propose that in exchange settings where relationships are not interdependent, the network structure can affect an actor's CL, with subsequent effects on power use. Results of a laboratory experiment offer initial support for this hypothesis and call for greater research on comparison processes within exchange networks.