Shared focus and mutual mood in face-to-face encounters generate emotional energy and group symbols, and people gravitate to the encounters that pay best.
Collins's 2004 theory. Its predictive claim is that people go where the emotional energy is, so rituals that stop paying are abandoned regardless of stated commitment.
In practice
- A weekly team ritual that once generated energy becomes a status update, and attendance falls without any decision.
- A congregation, a pub quiz and a stand-up all persist exactly as long as people leave them feeling better than they arrived.
- Standing
- Extends Goffman and Durkheim into a general account of what holds groups together.
- Subject
- Sociology & Culture
- Essay
- How societies hold together, sort people, and change