The four elementary forms of sociality: Framework for a unified theory of social relations.

1992/01/01 by Alan Page Fiske · 1 citation
Psychology · Social Sciences · Mathematics · #Cultural Differences and Values #Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies #Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation #Sociality #Comprehension #Cognition #Psychology #Ranking (information retrieval) #Social psychology #Matching (statistics) #Field (mathematics) #Cognitive psychology #Computer science #Artificial intelligence #Mathematics

paper · doi:10.1037/0033-295x.99.4.689

openalex publication_date 1992/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

The motivation, planning, production, comprehension, coordination, and evaluation of human social life may be based largely on combinations of 4 psychological models. In communal sharing, people treat all members of a category as equivalent. In authority ranking, people attend to their positions in a linear ordering. In equality matching, people keep track of the imbalances among them. In market pricing, people orient to ratio values. Cultures use different rules to implement the 4 models. In addition to an array of inductive evidence from many cultures and approaches, the theory has been supported by ethnographic field work and 19 experimental studies using 7 different methods testing 6 different cognitive predictions on a wide range of subjects from 5 cultures.

Citations

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• Outline of relationships [wikipedia]