[3] The concept of self-fulfilling prophecy, which is a central element in modern sociological, political, and economic theory, is one type of process through which a belief or expectation affects the outcome of a situation or the way a person or group will behave.

[9] Merton's family lived in strained financial circumstances after his father's uninsured dairy-product shop in South Philadelphia burned down.

He picked the given name "Robert" in honor of the 19th-century French magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, widely considered the father of modern-style conjuring.

In 1934 he began publishing articles of his own, including "Recent French Sociology", "The Course of Arabian Intellectual Development, 700–1300 A.D.", "Fluctuations in the Rate of Industrial Invention", and "Science and Military Technique".

[11] Merton's dissertation committee comprised Sorokin, Talcott Parsons, the historian George Sarton, and the biochemist Lawrence Joseph Henderson.

In recognition of his lasting contributions to scholarship and the university, Columbia established the Robert K. Merton Professorship in the Social Sciences in 1990.

[17] Upon moving to Columbia in 1941, Merton joined Paul Lazarsfeld, who was introducing quantitative methods into empirical research in sociology.

However, unlike Parsons, who emphasized the necessity for social science to establish a general foundation, Merton preferred more limited, middle-range theories.

"[11] Merton himself fashioned his theory very similarly to that of Emile Durkheim's Suicide (1897) or Max Weber's Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905).

Merton's extensive research highlighted a complementarity between puritanical Protestant beliefs and science, which developed rapidly in the seventeenth century.

[19] According to Merton, middle-range theory starts its theorizing with clearly defined aspects of social phenomena, rather than with broad, abstract entities such as society as a whole.

These theories must be constructed with observed data to create theoretical problems and to be incorporated in proposals that allow empirical testing.

In this way, the theory can be addressed for heuristic purposes and the empirical research results in the operative aspect of the analysis, where the sociologist is obliged to choose to represent always, not the universe of the variables in play, but a reduction of the field of scientific interest.

[22] Merton argued that deviance may result as a consequence of a blockage in an individual's life which does not allow them to achieve their goal, essentially leading to deviant behavior.

According to Merton’s strain theory, criminality is determined by acceptance or rejection of cultural ideals and/or institutionalized mechanisms of accomplishing those goals.

He believed that the way these early functionalists put emphasis on functions of one social structure or institution for another, created bias when focusing only on adaptation or adjustment because they would always have a positive consequence.

[24] Finally, Merton thinks that shared values are central in explaining how societies and institutions work; however, he disagrees with Parsons on some issues.

[24] According to Merton, paradigm refers to:[7] exemplars of codified basic and often tacit assumptions, problem sets, key concepts, logic of procedure, and selectively accumulated knowledge that guide [theoretical and empirical] inquiry in all scientific fields.In Merton's writing on dysfunctions, he highlights problems that tend to keep social systems from meeting all of their functional requirements.

This outlook maintains that various parts of social systems must show a high level of integration, but Merton argues that a generalization like this cannot be extended to larger, more complex societies.

Merton cites examples, such as civil wars, African-Americans in the 1950s, and South African blacks during the apartheid regime as instances where societies were not necessarily functional for all people.

[19] To help people determine whether positive functions outweigh dysfunctions, and vice versa, Merton developed the concept of net balance.

[24] In his 1936 essay, "The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action", Merton uncovered the wide field of human activity where things do not go as planned, and paradoxes and strange outcomes are seen.

[7] The distinction implied between manifest and latent functions was devised to preclude the unintentional confusion between conscious motivations for our social behavior and its objective consequences.

Manifest and latent functions were devised to prelude the inadvertent confusion between conscious motivations for social behavior and its objective consequences.

According to Merton, there are also two other types of unanticipated consequences:[24] Merton sees attention to latent functions as increasing the understanding of society: the distinction between manifest and latent forces the sociologist to go beyond the reasons individuals give for their actions or for the existence of customs and institutions; it makes them look for other social consequences that allow these practices' survival and illuminate the way society works.

Merton argued that deviance is most likely to occur when there is a discrepancy between culturally prescribed goals and the legitimate means of obtaining them.

[18] Merton defines culture as an "organized set of normative values governing behavior which is common to members of a designated society or group".

"[20] Anomie, the state of normlessness, arises when there is "an acute disjunction between the cultural norms and goals and the socially structured capacities of members of the group to act in accord with them.

[30] With his study of the Matthew effect, Merton showed how the social system of science sometimes deviated structurally from the ethos of science, in this case by violating the norm of universalism:[7] a few top scientists enjoying large chunks of awards, grants and jobs, and the spread and distribution of resources and recognition among scientists being highly skewed.

In OTSOG, he traces the history of Newton's famous comment "If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants"[32] back to centuries earlier, in the rambling style of Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.