1960s was arguably one of the most important decades for the USA. After experiencing victory in WWII and the postwar booms in both economy and birth in the 1950s, a lot of American believed that they were at a golden age at the beginning of the 1960s. Knowledge wise, this was the time where rational choice theory initially started from taking different assumptions from other theories, with social exchange theory included during the 1960s. Homans (1958) first proposed that when a person requires to make an exchange, he would usually seek equilibrium to a balance, where gives would be a cost, while what he gets would be a reward. It is a nature act for a person to maximise its profit, with it being the least behaviour change impacted by the exchange. …show more content…
Organisations such as activists like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party, countless of students groups and women groups also heavily influenced the cultural aspect, particularly with music. By the time when LBJ resigned in 1969, 1960s USA was in fact falling apart with riots breaking out in almost every major cities protesting against the war and civil rights. Social order in the 1960s was at its messiest, most confused and yet revolutionary moment for American people arguably. Using rational choice theory to understand such situation, some people have made a fine choice between following and listening to the government or starting to act from their own self-interest instead. This was very different from the previous world wars in 1910s and 1940s where majority of the Americans enlisted into the army themselves. The invention of television enabled people to witness first hand of the horror of war at home, and the idea of staying alive instead of dying in a foreign land seems to be a more rational choice for them. McLuhan (1975) stated that ‘Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America, not the battlefields of