Sociology Index

INTERACTION

Georg Simmel pictured society as a web of interactions between people. Georg Simmel argued that the powerful could not exercise their power without the complicity of their subordinates, and power is an interaction. Meredith Davis has argued that interaction is not the special province of computers alone. Meredith Davis points out that printed books invite interaction and that designers consider how readers will interact with books. Objects offer the possibility for interaction, and design activities can be viewed as design for interaction. Social Interaction refers to a relationship between two or more individuals. Social interactions are the basic object of analysis for social scientists and inquiries into the nature of social interactions are to be found in the work of the classical sociologists, as in Max Weber's theory of social action. Environmental sociology is defined as the sociological study of societal-environmental interactions.

The idea of a two-way effect is essential in the concept of interaction, as opposed to a one-way causal effect. Communication of any sort is interaction. Two or more people talking to each other, or communication among groups, organizations, nations or states can be termed interaction. Although commonly thought of in terms of causal relationships, the concept of an interaction can also describe non-causal associations. Interactions are often considered in the context of regression analyses or factorial experiments.

The notion of "interaction" is closely related to that of moderation that is common in social and health science research: the interaction between an explanatory variable and an environmental variable suggests that the effect of the explanatory variable has been moderated or modified by the environmental variable. - Dodge, Y. (2003). The Oxford Dictionary of Statistical Terms. Interaction is the occurrence in which two or more objects or events act upon one another to produce a new effect; interaction is the effect resulting from such a situation or occurrence.