Collins points out, even the existence of a small number of elite jobs acts in ways to shape the entire system of social mobility competition. In order to meet demand, education has expanded and increased degree production – and the business community has responded to the abundance of credentials by hiring applicants with the most prestigious degrees. This, in turn, has served to increase consumer demand. The resulting double-spiral is a credential spiral that is moving upward and ever expanding. As more degrees become available through increased production, they cannot all be absorbed by businesses, but demand for credentials promising access to salaried positions continues. Additional advanced degrees and professional certifications emerge to accelerate the expansion, undermining the value of American education, i.e., credential inflation. Research Collins is a social scientist who views theory as essential to understanding the world. He says "The essence of science is precisely theory...a generalized and coherent body of ideas, which explain the range of variations in the empirical world in terms of general principles". This is Collins' way of examining the social world, emphasizing the role and interaction of larger social structures. He has devoted much of his career and research to study society, how is it created and destroyed through emotional behaviors of human beings. Collins believes that the simplest explanation for radical behavior and actions is emotion. Emotional energy, Collins says, is the "amount of emotional power that flows through one's actions" and does not refer to one specific emotion. When Collins talks about emotion, he never talks about specific emotions like love, joy, hate, and so forth. The same is true with his interest in culture. In Collins hands, culture becomes symbolic goods that are used in exchange or sacred symbols that unite a group. Collins also emphasizes the significance of people coming together and the influence this has on behavior. Collins argues sex, smoking, and social stratification and much else in our social lives are driven by a common force: interaction rituals. His Interaction Ritual Chains is a major work of sociological theory that attempts to develop a "radical microsociology." It proposes that successful rituals create symbols of group membership and pump up individuals with emotional energy, while failed rituals drain emotional energy. Each person flows from situation to situation, drawn to those interactions where their cultural capital gives them the best emotional energy payoff. This theory of interaction ritual