New frontiers in demography and social psychology

Abstract

Summary The topics of demography are those of human fate: birth, illness, marriage, occupation, and death. The methods of demography therefore relate global rates to major events, submerging the individual decision. The social psychologist observes the regularities of people’s behavior in different social conditions and builds models from individual decisions. Since he looks at patterns independent of the event, the kind of event does not matter, and he tends to concentrate on trivial events which are amenable to research. To the degree that man has obtained control over his environment, he is able to look at demographic events as less than fate. Social conditions have also given more control to the individual over many events over which he had no control previously, such as choice of a marriage partner or an occupational career. Thus, the classical methods of demography are frequently insufficient to deal with demographic data, and abrupt changes may occur because of vagaries of individual decisions. The more the demographic trends can be affected by individual decisions, the more the methods of social psychology become useful in understanding changes in population composition. The possibilities of micro-demography, of building up demographic trends from individual decisions, become stronger as more individual control can be exerted over the events. Such disparate events as control of infectious disease, air pollution, birth control, civil rights, and changes in the educational system and occupational structure have given individuals more control over different demographic variables, made the study of individual decisions with demographic consequences important, and led to joint efforts by demographers and social psychologists.