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CASE-146: Two friendships across a group line: in one, the friend becomes an exception and the person's view of the friend's group is unchanged; in the other, what happens with the friend changes how the person takes other members of the group, though the friendships are alike in warmth and in what each learns

2 min read

Properties6
StatusActive
Standingfictional
Kindthought-experiment
Tagssocial-science, moral-psychology
Linedistributed-agency
SupportsCLAIM-429 — Where interpretation decides the occasions for cooperation and cooperation's outcomes revise interpretation, an intervention can change the loop's state or its coupling: a favourable exception changes the state and leaves the rule that judges exceptions as it was, while a change in how far outcomes may revise the governing interpretation changes the coupling, and where the coupling does not depend on the state, only the second changes how later evidence is taken, CLAIM-430 — An interaction can make available a way of relating that its participants' operative perspectives did not hold, by giving each a role to enact in it, so that taking part can come before, and help produce, the reinterpretation it later seems to express; whether the change stays with the partner, generalizes to a category, or is reproduced beyond the encounter are further questions

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The case

Two people hold the same unfavourable view of a social group G. Each becomes friends with a member of G through sustained cooperation. The friendships are alike: equally warm, equally long, and each person learns the same favourable things about their friend.

  • The first comes to treat the friend as unlike the rest of G. Their response to the friend changes; their response to a stranger from G does not.
  • The second comes to take other members of G differently: ambiguous conduct by a stranger from G is read less harshly, and what members of G say carries more weight.

What it shows

  • The state and the coupling. CLAIM-429’s distinction in a person. The first friendship changes the state of the person’s interpretive organization (one favourable exception). The second changes how far outcomes with members of G may revise the interpretation that governs G. A5: “It is the difference between introducing a positive exception and changing how exceptions are allowed to revise the rule.”
  • Why contact sometimes does not generalize. A4 cited a meta-analysis finding that generalization from individuals to groups depends partly on typicality and number. The case holds those fixed, so any difference lies in the person’s organization, not in the friend.
  • A relational frame reading. A5: relational frame theory (THEORY-044) gives a mechanism for the second outcome, the transfer of a stimulus’s changed function through the relation of membership in G.

What it does not show

  • Which outcome is more common, or what makes the difference. It is stipulated.
  • That the second outcome is better in every respect. A change in how far outcomes may revise a category can also be exploited (CLAIM-404).

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