David R. Heise
Encyclopedia
David Reuben Jerome Heise (born March 15, 1937) is a social psychologist who originated the idea that affectual processes control interpersonal behavior. Additionally he contributes to both quantitative and qualitative methodology
in sociology
. He retired from undergraduate teaching in 2002, but continues research and graduate student consulting as Rudy Professor of Sociology Emeritus at Indiana University
.
. He attended Illinois Institute of Technology
from 1954 to 1956, and then transferred to the University of Missouri School of Journalism where he received a B.J. degree in 1958. Additionally he received an A.B. in Mathematics and the Physical Sciences from the University of Missouri
in 1959. Heise joined the Laboratories for Applied Sciences at the University of Chicago
, on the non-public top floor of the Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago)
, as a technical writer. His first publication was a by-lined full page report in the Chicago Sun-Times
concerning a 1960 high-temperature physics conference held by the Laboratories.
After beginning graduate courses related to communications studies in 1961, Heise's interests generalized to social psychology (sociology)
, and he became a fellow in a National Institute of Mental Health
(NIMH) training program directed by University of Chicago sociologist Fred Strodtbeck. While a graduate student in the University of Chicago Sociology Department (the Chicago School
), he studied with Elihu Katz
, James A. Davis
, Peter Blau
, Edward Shils
, Otis Dudley Duncan
, Peter Rossi, and Leo Goodman. He received his M.A. in 1962 and his Ph.D. in 1964.
From 1963 to 1969, Heise served as Instructor, post-doctoral fellow, and Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
. He worked for two years as an Associate Professor at Queens College, City University of New York
, where his colleague Patricia Kendall linked him to her husband Paul Lazarsfeld
. From 1971 to 1981 he was Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
, where he directed an NIMH training program in sociological methodology, and began his signature research on affect control theory
. After joining the sociology department at Indiana University
in 1981, he directed another NIMH training program in methodology from 1988 to 1993, and was awarded a James H. Rudy Endowed Professorship in 1990.
's semantic differential
for measuring affective associations of words (connotative meanings). His dissertation included semantic differential measurements for 1,000 frequent English words, and he and his students compiled four more lexicons in the United States since then, each containing affective measurements for 1,250 or more English words. Heise used the affective measurements to begin quantitative studies of impression formation while at the University of Wisconsin. The impression formation research seeks empirically based equations for predicting how various kinds of events influence individuals' feelings about people, behaviors, and settings. This research employs structural equation modeling
and path analysis (statistics), as discussed by Heise in his book Causal Analysis. In 1978 Heise reported research results regarding affective meanings and impression formation in Computer-Assisted Analysis of Social Action. An account of similar work over the prior century was provided in his 2010 book Surveying Cultures.
At the University of North Carolina, Heise began work on affect control theory
, a cybernetic approach to impression management
through interpersonal action. An oral presentation of the theory was given in 1972, an article on the theory was published in 1977, and a book, Understanding Events, appeared in 1979. NIMH research funding
during the late 1970s supported data collection for a variety of graduate student projects related to affect control theory. The results of these projects were reported in a book, Analyzing Social Interaction, edited by Heise and his student Lynn Smith-Lovin. After Heise moved to Indiana University, he and his students, and others, continued work on impression formation and on affect control theory. Heise expanded methods for measuring affective meanings to computer-assisted personal interviewing. He prepared programs in the Java programming language to collect data over the Internet
, and to publish his computer simulation
system for obtaining and examining predictions from affect control theory on the World Wide Web
. Heise summarized the multiple lines of research on affect control theory, delineated the theory's mathematical model, and provided a readable introduction to the theory in his 2007 book, Expressive Order. He has discussed how affect control theory's computational model of emotional facial expressions can facilitate the creation of emoting machines (affective computing
).
Affect control theory (ACT) has been acclaimed both by sociologists and psychologists. Thomas Fararo
discussed the theory as follows. "Heise employs a control system model. The basic idea is that momentary affective states are under the control of more enduring sentiments. His 'fundamental sentiments' are instantiations of operative ideals, whereas his momentary affective meaning states are the results of read inputs. These are compared with the fundamental sentiments from moment to moment in the affect control process. Behavior is the control of affect via the feedback loop. Undoubtedly this is the best developed empirically applicable cybernetic model in the history of theoretical sociology."
In an essay on the sociology of emotions, T. David Kemper wrote, "Indubitably, Heise has the most methodologically rigorous program of all sociologists, with the added attraction of its mathematical precision. ... Using the cultural meanings of its constituent terms, and combinations of terms, as the raw materials, ACT is, if nothing else, a simulation program par excellence. It can formulate both emotional outcomes of situations and situational outcomes of emotions in a manner that is more efficient than any other presently available in either sociology or psychology."
Psychologists Gerald Clore and Jesse Pappas discussed affect control theory as follows. "Ideas about settings, identities, actions, and emotions are part of the fabric of sociology and social psychology. Innumerable theories offer explanations for how subsets of these elements are related in particular contexts, but in lieu of such a piecemeal approach, Heise offers a general explanation for the entire set of relationships. His account, moreover, is formalized in equations and implemented in a computer program capable of making numerical predictions about ongoing human interactions. This is an astounding achievement. By comparison, the rest of us work on modest problems with blunt instruments."
rather than affect. Building on production system
s in cognitive science
, especially as applied by other sociologists, Heise developed a framework called Event Structure Analysis for analyzing reiterative social processes. The approach posits that later events are linked logically to earlier events in networks of prerequisite implications, and that narratives about incidents implicitly communicate this underlying logical structure. The analytic problem is to draw the implicit logical structure out of the narrative into an explicit model characterizing the incident and similar happenings. Heise proposed having culture experts accomplish this by judging which events in a given narrative were prerequisites for others. However, judging logical priority for all pairs of events in a lengthy narrative would be overwhelming, so Heise created a computer program to elicit answers, to process prior answers logically in order to minimize queries, and to draw a graphical representation of the logical network that implicitly underlies the analyzed narrative.
The computer program has been applied by sociological ethnographers, social historians, and organization researchers.
and John Wardwell, Heise published a quantitative analysis of sociocultural evolution
. With student Alex Durig, Heise developed the concept of macroaction for analyzing organization
al processes,. Student Steven Lerner and Heise demonstrated that international
interactions have a substantial affective basis. Heise and Neil MacKinnon developed empirical methods for analyzing semantic networks in order to identify major social institutions in a society and to catalog their constituent role
s.
(ASA) in 1990 and 1991, and he was Chair of the ASA's Mathematical Sociology Section in 2003 and 2004. He received the Microcomputing Section's Award for Outstanding Contributions to Computing in 1995. The ASA's Social Psychology Section gave him its Cooley-Mead Award in 1998, and the ASA's Sociology of Emotions Section gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002.
Methodology
Methodology is generally a guideline for solving a problem, with specificcomponents such as phases, tasks, methods, techniques and tools . It can be defined also as follows:...
in sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
. He retired from undergraduate teaching in 2002, but continues research and graduate student consulting as Rudy Professor of Sociology Emeritus at Indiana University
Indiana University
Indiana University is a multi-campus public university system in the state of Indiana, United States. Indiana University has a combined student body of more than 100,000 students, including approximately 42,000 students enrolled at the Indiana University Bloomington campus and approximately 37,000...
.
Education and career
Heise was born in Evanston, IllinoisEvanston, Illinois
Evanston is a suburban municipality in Cook County, Illinois 12 miles north of downtown Chicago, bordering Chicago to the south, Skokie to the west, and Wilmette to the north, with an estimated population of 74,360 as of 2003. It is one of the North Shore communities that adjoin Lake Michigan...
. He attended Illinois Institute of Technology
Illinois Institute of Technology
Illinois Institute of Technology, commonly called Illinois Tech or IIT, is a private Ph.D.-granting university located in Chicago, Illinois, with programs in engineering, science, psychology, architecture, business, communications, industrial technology, information technology, design, and law...
from 1954 to 1956, and then transferred to the University of Missouri School of Journalism where he received a B.J. degree in 1958. Additionally he received an A.B. in Mathematics and the Physical Sciences from the University of Missouri
University of Missouri
The University of Missouri System is a state university system providing centralized administration for four universities, a health care system, an extension program, five research and technology parks, and a publishing press. More than 64,000 students are currently enrolled at its four campuses...
in 1959. Heise joined the Laboratories for Applied Sciences at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
, on the non-public top floor of the Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago)
Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago)
The Museum of Science and Industry is located in Chicago, Illinois, USA in Jackson Park, in the Hyde Park neighborhood adjacent to Lake Michigan. It is housed in the former Palace of Fine Arts from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition...
, as a technical writer. His first publication was a by-lined full page report in the Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
concerning a 1960 high-temperature physics conference held by the Laboratories.
After beginning graduate courses related to communications studies in 1961, Heise's interests generalized to social psychology (sociology)
Social psychology (sociology)
Social psychology , known as sociological social psychology, and sometimes as psychological sociology, is an area of sociology that focuses on social actions and on interrelations of personality, values, and mind with social structure and culture...
, and he became a fellow in a National Institute of Mental Health
National Institute of Mental Health
The National Institute of Mental Health is one of 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health...
(NIMH) training program directed by University of Chicago sociologist Fred Strodtbeck. While a graduate student in the University of Chicago Sociology Department (the Chicago School
Chicago school
Chicago school may refer to:* Chicago school * Chicago school * Chicago school * Chicago school * Chicago school * Chicago School of Professional Psychology...
), he studied with Elihu Katz
Elihu Katz
Elihu Katz is an American and Israeli sociologist.-Biography:Katz has spent most of a lifetime in research on communication, his main focus being the interplay between media, conversation, opinion, and action in the public sphere...
, James A. Davis
James A. Davis
'James A. Davis' is a distinguished American sociologist who is best known as a pioneer in the application of quantitative statistical methods to social science research and teaching...
, Peter Blau
Peter Blau
Peter Michael Blau was an American sociologist and theorist. Born in Vienna, Austria, he immigrated to the United States in 1939. He received his PhD at Columbia University in 1952, and was an instructor at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan from 1949–1951, before moving on to teach...
, Edward Shils
Edward Shils
Edward Shils was a Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought and in Sociology at the University of Chicago and reputedly an influential sociologist. He was known for his research on the role of intellectuals and their relations to power and public policy...
, Otis Dudley Duncan
Otis Dudley Duncan
Otis Dudley Duncan was "the most important quantitative sociologist in the world in the latter half of the 20th century", according to sociologist Leo Goodman...
, Peter Rossi, and Leo Goodman. He received his M.A. in 1962 and his Ph.D. in 1964.
From 1963 to 1969, Heise served as Instructor, post-doctoral fellow, and Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
University of Wisconsin–Madison
The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...
. He worked for two years as an Associate Professor at Queens College, City University of New York
Queens College, City University of New York
Queens College, located in Flushing, Queens, New York City, is one of the senior colleges of the City University of New York. It is also the fifth oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning. The college's seventy seven acre campus is located in the heart of the...
, where his colleague Patricia Kendall linked him to her husband Paul Lazarsfeld
Paul Lazarsfeld
Paul Felix Lazarsfeld was one of the major figures in 20th-century American sociology. The founder of Columbia University's Bureau of Applied Social Research, he exerted a tremendous influence over the techniques and the organization of social research...
. From 1971 to 1981 he was Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...
, where he directed an NIMH training program in sociological methodology, and began his signature research on affect control theory
Affect control theory
In control theory affect control theory proposes that individuals maintain affective meanings through their actions and interpretations of events...
. After joining the sociology department at Indiana University
Indiana University
Indiana University is a multi-campus public university system in the state of Indiana, United States. Indiana University has a combined student body of more than 100,000 students, including approximately 42,000 students enrolled at the Indiana University Bloomington campus and approximately 37,000...
in 1981, he directed another NIMH training program in methodology from 1988 to 1993, and was awarded a James H. Rudy Endowed Professorship in 1990.
Impression Formation and Affect Control
Heise works extensively with Charles E. OsgoodCharles E. Osgood
Charles Egerton Osgood was a distinguished American psychologist who developed a technique for measuring the connotative meaning of concepts, known as the semantic differential.-Career:...
's semantic differential
Semantic differential
Semantic differential is a type of a rating scale designed to measure the connotative meaning of objects, events, and concepts. The connotations are used to derive the attitude towards the given object, event or concept.-Semantic differential:...
for measuring affective associations of words (connotative meanings). His dissertation included semantic differential measurements for 1,000 frequent English words, and he and his students compiled four more lexicons in the United States since then, each containing affective measurements for 1,250 or more English words. Heise used the affective measurements to begin quantitative studies of impression formation while at the University of Wisconsin. The impression formation research seeks empirically based equations for predicting how various kinds of events influence individuals' feelings about people, behaviors, and settings. This research employs structural equation modeling
Structural equation modeling
Structural equation modeling is a statistical technique for testing and estimating causal relations using a combination of statistical data and qualitative causal assumptions...
and path analysis (statistics), as discussed by Heise in his book Causal Analysis. In 1978 Heise reported research results regarding affective meanings and impression formation in Computer-Assisted Analysis of Social Action. An account of similar work over the prior century was provided in his 2010 book Surveying Cultures.
At the University of North Carolina, Heise began work on affect control theory
Affect control theory
In control theory affect control theory proposes that individuals maintain affective meanings through their actions and interpretations of events...
, a cybernetic approach to impression management
Impression management
In sociology and social psychology, impression management is a goal-directed conscious or unconscious process in which people attempt to influence the perceptions of other people about a person, object or event; they do so by regulating and controlling information in social interaction...
through interpersonal action. An oral presentation of the theory was given in 1972, an article on the theory was published in 1977, and a book, Understanding Events, appeared in 1979. NIMH research funding
Research funding
Research funding is a term generally covering any funding for scientific research, in the areas of both "hard" science and technology and social science. The term often connotes funding obtained through a competitive process, in which potential research projects are evaluated and only the most...
during the late 1970s supported data collection for a variety of graduate student projects related to affect control theory. The results of these projects were reported in a book, Analyzing Social Interaction, edited by Heise and his student Lynn Smith-Lovin. After Heise moved to Indiana University, he and his students, and others, continued work on impression formation and on affect control theory. Heise expanded methods for measuring affective meanings to computer-assisted personal interviewing. He prepared programs in the Java programming language to collect data over the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, and to publish his computer simulation
Computer simulation
A computer simulation, a computer model, or a computational model is a computer program, or network of computers, that attempts to simulate an abstract model of a particular system...
system for obtaining and examining predictions from affect control theory on the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
. Heise summarized the multiple lines of research on affect control theory, delineated the theory's mathematical model, and provided a readable introduction to the theory in his 2007 book, Expressive Order. He has discussed how affect control theory's computational model of emotional facial expressions can facilitate the creation of emoting machines (affective computing
Affective computing
Affective computing is the study and development of systems and devices that can recognize, interpret, process, and simulate human affects. It is an interdisciplinary field spanning computer sciences, psychology, and cognitive science...
).
Affect control theory (ACT) has been acclaimed both by sociologists and psychologists. Thomas Fararo
Thomas Fararo
Thomas J. Fararo is Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh. After earning a Ph.D. in sociology at Syracuse University in 1963, he received a three year postdoctoral fellowship for studies in pure and applied mathematics at Stanford University...
discussed the theory as follows. "Heise employs a control system model. The basic idea is that momentary affective states are under the control of more enduring sentiments. His 'fundamental sentiments' are instantiations of operative ideals, whereas his momentary affective meaning states are the results of read inputs. These are compared with the fundamental sentiments from moment to moment in the affect control process. Behavior is the control of affect via the feedback loop. Undoubtedly this is the best developed empirically applicable cybernetic model in the history of theoretical sociology."
In an essay on the sociology of emotions, T. David Kemper wrote, "Indubitably, Heise has the most methodologically rigorous program of all sociologists, with the added attraction of its mathematical precision. ... Using the cultural meanings of its constituent terms, and combinations of terms, as the raw materials, ACT is, if nothing else, a simulation program par excellence. It can formulate both emotional outcomes of situations and situational outcomes of emotions in a manner that is more efficient than any other presently available in either sociology or psychology."
Psychologists Gerald Clore and Jesse Pappas discussed affect control theory as follows. "Ideas about settings, identities, actions, and emotions are part of the fabric of sociology and social psychology. Innumerable theories offer explanations for how subsets of these elements are related in particular contexts, but in lieu of such a piecemeal approach, Heise offers a general explanation for the entire set of relationships. His account, moreover, is formalized in equations and implemented in a computer program capable of making numerical predictions about ongoing human interactions. This is an astounding achievement. By comparison, the rest of us work on modest problems with blunt instruments."
Event Structure Analysis
At Indiana University Heise began a second program of research on interpersonal action, this one emphasizing rationalityRationality
In philosophy, rationality is the exercise of reason. It is the manner in which people derive conclusions when considering things deliberately. It also refers to the conformity of one's beliefs with one's reasons for belief, or with one's actions with one's reasons for action...
rather than affect. Building on production system
Production system
A production system is a computer program typically used to provide some form of artificial intelligence, which consists primarily of a set of rules about behavior. These rules, termed productions, are a basic representation found useful in automated planning, expert systems and action selection...
s in cognitive science
Cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...
, especially as applied by other sociologists, Heise developed a framework called Event Structure Analysis for analyzing reiterative social processes. The approach posits that later events are linked logically to earlier events in networks of prerequisite implications, and that narratives about incidents implicitly communicate this underlying logical structure. The analytic problem is to draw the implicit logical structure out of the narrative into an explicit model characterizing the incident and similar happenings. Heise proposed having culture experts accomplish this by judging which events in a given narrative were prerequisites for others. However, judging logical priority for all pairs of events in a lengthy narrative would be overwhelming, so Heise created a computer program to elicit answers, to process prior answers logically in order to minimize queries, and to draw a graphical representation of the logical network that implicitly underlies the analyzed narrative.
The computer program has been applied by sociological ethnographers, social historians, and organization researchers.
Macrosociology contributions
With Gerhard LenskiGerhard Lenski
Gerhard Emmanuel Lenski is an American sociologist known for contributions to the sociology of religion, social inequality, and ecological-evolutionary social theory...
and John Wardwell, Heise published a quantitative analysis of sociocultural evolution
Sociocultural evolution
Sociocultural evolution is an umbrella term for theories of cultural evolution and social evolution, describing how cultures and societies have changed over time...
. With student Alex Durig, Heise developed the concept of macroaction for analyzing organization
Organization
An organization is a social group which distributes tasks for a collective goal. The word itself is derived from the Greek word organon, itself derived from the better-known word ergon - as we know `organ` - and it means a compartment for a particular job.There are a variety of legal types of...
al processes,. Student Steven Lerner and Heise demonstrated that international
International
----International mostly means something that involves more than one country. The term international as a word means involvement of, interaction between or encompassing more than one nation, or generally beyond national boundaries...
interactions have a substantial affective basis. Heise and Neil MacKinnon developed empirical methods for analyzing semantic networks in order to identify major social institutions in a society and to catalog their constituent role
Role
A role or a social role is a set of connected behaviours, rights and obligations as conceptualised by actors in a social situation. It is an expected or free or continuously changing behaviour and may have a given individual social status or social position...
s.
Honors and offices
Heise was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1977, and a Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science in 1990. He served as editor of Sociological Methodology from 1974 to 1976, and as editor of Sociological Methods & Research from 1980 to 1983. Heise was Chair of the Microcomputing Section of the American Sociological AssociationAmerican Sociological Association
The American Sociological Association , founded in 1905 as the American Sociological Society , is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the discipline and profession of sociology by serving sociologists in their work and promoting their contributions to serve society.The ASA holds its...
(ASA) in 1990 and 1991, and he was Chair of the ASA's Mathematical Sociology Section in 2003 and 2004. He received the Microcomputing Section's Award for Outstanding Contributions to Computing in 1995. The ASA's Social Psychology Section gave him its Cooley-Mead Award in 1998, and the ASA's Sociology of Emotions Section gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002.