Abstract
Bernard de Chartres, the twelfth-century Neoplatonist scholar, once described himself and his contemporaries as being able to see the world much more clearly because they benefitted from the wisdom of those who had gone before them. John of Salisbury once quoted Bernard: “And this is not at all because of the acuteness of our sight or the stature of our body, but because we are carried aloft and elevated by the magnitude of the giants.” Young expectation states theorists share this insight: we, too, stand on the shoulders of the giants and, with lucidity, see what others could not see and reach even higher. How fortunate I have been to be trained, nurtured, and encouraged by some of the giants of my field—and, of course, included in this group of giants is this year’s Cooley Mead Award winner, Dr. Murray Webster, Jr.
Murray was very much one of the founding scholars of the expectation states research tradition during the mid-1960s, when he was a talented PhD candidate at Stanford University. The fortuitous “linked lives” (Elder 1994) of the early expectation states theorists cannot be understated—Joseph Berger; Elizabeth and Bernard Cohen; Morris Zelditch, Jr.; Hamit Fişek; Martha Foschi; and Murray Webster—all came together not only to produce some of the greatest works about social structure but also to create one of the most successful traditions in sociology. However, continuing with a life-course framing, one might also note that the “historical times” shaped these persons and the reasons why they become sociological social psychologists. Murray is no exception: his life journey to Stanford University shows that it is no accident that he decided to study how larger social forces initiate and maintain social inequalities during group interactions.
Murray was born on December 10, 1941, within the small American and European expatriate community in the Philippines—three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. By May 6, 1942, the Philippines were the occupied territory of the empire of Japan. Murray and his family were now official enemies of the state and were forced to live in the Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila. So, if Murray tells you that he is the only Cooley Mead Award winner to ever have been in prison, know that this is a play on words: he was technically a prisoner of war during the first three years of his life.
The story of the Santo Tomas camp is told eloquently by Ken Burns in his video history of World War II titled The War. As one might have surmised, the conditions within the camp were deplorable, and toward the end of the war, even food rations were scarce. If you watch this video history to the end, you will catch a snippet of a soldier and a thankful young woman, which was filmed the day of the camp’s liberation on February 3, 1945. This young woman was Murray’s mother—she is gaunt but still so beautiful. Her expression says it all: how happy and relieved she was to know that her little family was going to make it! The Websters were very lucky—approximately 10 percent of the detainees perished during those hard years, and many of those unfortunate souls were young children. These kinds of traumatic historical situations can produce individuals who are either forever bitter about the lost years of their lives or who are forever grateful for another chance to do the right things in life. There is no question that Murray Webster developed the latter attitude, as his entire career has been about the rigorous study of social inequalities that wrongfully disadvantage those who, because of historical social circumstance, may not be able to break free from the prison that is hierarchical social structure.
After World War II, the Webster family moved to rural Illinois, a community Murray has described as sparsely populated, but stable, with a culture that promoted the old-fashioned midwestern values of self-reliance and individualism. Despite learning these norms, Murray knew that there had to be more to social reality than mere individuality. His curiosity about group-level dynamics was further piqued when he took a high school class in sociology. He decided to pursue this field as an undergraduate at Stanford University, a truly auspicious time and place to study sociological social psychology.
Murray’s first course at Stanford was Sandy Dornbusch’s Introduction to Sociology. His performance in that class prompted Sandy to choose him as one of four honors students who met weekly to discuss topics concerning theory and research. Although Murray also took psychology courses from eminent scholars, such as Leon Festinger, he always came back to sociology, as the development of general theory and its relation to the empirical world was more appealing to him. To further his intellectual quest, and to earn a little extra money, he accepted a job as an experimental confederate in Bernard Cohen’s early Asch-style studies. Murray was now hooked on experimental research—with a recommendation from Bernie, he began working with Joseph Berger, a professional and personal relationship that would define him and his work for the remainder of his career. Murray finished his undergraduate experience by helping Joe create machine-controlled disagreements (this was the pre-computer period) for the early expectation states experiments.
For graduate school, Murray first attended UCLA and worked with Oscar Grusky and Lindsay Churchill, who were conducting Bales-type discussion groups. However, he missed the experimental laboratory at Stanford, so he transferred back to Stanford to complete his MA and PhD. At Stanford, he was in on the “ground floor” of the expectation states tradition, and both learned from the expectation states theory “troika” of Berger, Cohen, and Zelditch and joined with their working group by starting his own important investigations.
Murray will do a much better job summarizing his academic work in the succeeding article, but I will point out some of the remarkable highlights. As my colleagues Will Kalkhoff and Jane Sell stated in their piece from our section’s newsletter, Murray is known for two key areas of impact on the field of sociological social psychology: (1) his contributions to expectation states theory and (2) his contributions to theory construction and experimental methodology (Sell and Kalkhoff 2015).
For example, during his first job at Johns Hopkins University, Murray wrote his first book (coauthored with his research partner Barbara Sobieszek), titled Sources of Self-Evaluation: A Formal Theory of Significant Others and Social Influence. This book introduced source theory, an integration of theories concerning others’ evaluations and their effects on one’s own expectations for performance. He also collaborated with Doris Entwisle during this period; they produced studies concerning expectations and scholastic performance. After his stint at Hopkins, he moved to the University of South Carolina and continued to provide us with important research in the expectation states tradition, the most well-known being his and James Driskell’s piece in The American Journal of Sociology titled “Beauty as Status.” After two illustrious terms as the National Science Foundation’s Sociology Program Officer, Murray now finds his home at the University of North Carolina–Charlotte with one of his favorite collaborators, Lisa Walker. After eight outstanding publications funded by four grant awards from the National Science Foundation, this dynamic duo is far from finished.
With his many coauthors, Murray has published in American Sociological Review, The American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Social Psychology Quarterly (even when it was Sociometry), Sociology of Education, Social Science Research, Advances in Group Processes, Sex Roles, Sociological Methodology, Sociological Theory, and many more superb journals. In these publications, there seems to be no societal axes of inequality that he has not considered for having properties that induce status generalization: race/ethnicity, military rank, physical attractiveness, gender, sexual orientation, level of education, and occupation—to name but a few. And, also included within these publications are many new theories for the expectation states agenda, including work on expectations and justice processes, status construction, second order expectations, and expectations and sentiments. In my opinion, these theoretical formulations are buttressed by another one of his astonishing talents—Murray is probably one of the best writers in sociological social psychology, so he not only develops great theories but also communicates their inner workings so clearly despite their intricacies.
What is also striking about this vast and distinguished publication record is not just its excellence but the fact that Murray has very few single authored articles. Murray prefers working with others because, as he will tell you, he likes to learn from smart people. However, I would add something else: Murray likes to help other people do good work. Make no mistake, Murray Webster is a brilliant man, but he is as generous as he is intelligent.
That brings us to one of Murray’s other famous partnerships, with Jane Sell—in my opinion, a future Cooley Mead Award winner. Murray has published numerous pieces on theory construction and experimental research, starting with his 1970 ASR article with David Willer titled “Theoretical Concepts and Observables.” He joined forces with Jane to produce everyone’s go-to book on theory and experiments, Laboratory Experiments in the Social Sciences, now in its second edition. His chapter, called “Writing Proposals” was, according to Jane, “singled out by a reviewer—who is an economist and former Division Director of Social and Economic Sciences at the National Science Foundation—as one of the most important pieces she has read on the topic, one that she recommends to all her students” (Sell and Kalkhoff 2015). Again, this demonstrates Murray’s rare gift: he can relate theory to empirical reality better than just about anyone and then write a chapter explaining how you can do it as well—and get some money to fund the project!
Many of Murray’s accomplishments will not be seen on his vitae, but they are noteworthy nonetheless. Murray has passed on his great training to so many young scholars. It was no accident that no less than six of them nominated Murray for this year’s Cooley Mead Award. I quote my own nomination letter: “Dr. Webster is an unsung hero when it comes to developing the talents of young scholars . . . if you were (and are) interested in group processes and structural social psychology, and you graduated between the years 1970 and 2012, Dr. Webster has personally helped you with at least one of your projects.” Murray won this award for his impeccable research record, but I cannot help but think that when you do so much good work helping those who need you, it comes back to you.
Murray Webster, Jr. is a unique person, one who has witnessed the best and the worst of human nature in the twentieth century and still fearlessly chose to study it for a living. That enthusiasm and spirit, combined with his generosity, has given us one of the finest academics of the twenty-first century—an erudite, engaged, and munificent teacher-scholar. Bernard de Chartres was right: we will stand on the shoulders of Murray’s greatness, but then we will climb down, only so we can continue to look up to him because he is our hero.