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Action, Theories of Social
Action, Theories of Social Frank Kalter, University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This article is a revision of the previous edition article by R. Boudon, volume 1, pp. 54–58, Ó 2001, Elsevier Ltd.
Abstract Social action is a key concept in sociology, and the development of adequate theories that can explain it is a central task. The social sciences suggest very different models of individual behavior without agreeing on a best solution. To understand the controversies and to sketch fruitful pathways, it is helpful to examine the specific role of social action theories within the more general sociological enterprise in more detail and to derive central quality criteria. Against the background of these criteria, a review of influential, traditional ‘models of man’ reveals the relative advantages and disadvantages of each approach. Major questions are how to deal with this variety of models and how to progress on the front of social action theories.
Theories of Social Action and Their Role in Sociology Max Weber clearly defined the concept of ‘social action’ in his classical work ‘Economy and Society’: “We shall speak of ‘action’ insofar as the acting individual attaches a subjective meaning to his behavior – be it overt or covert, omission or acquiescence. Action is ‘social’ insofar as its subjective meaning takes account of the behavior of others and is thereby oriented in its course” (Weber, 1968, p. 4). This definition is commonly shared by sociologists, as is the fact that the concept is of key importance to sociology. Max Weber even regarded it as the constituent subject of the discipline, which is expressed by the sentence preceding the quotation above: “Sociology (.) is a science concerning itself with the interpretive understanding of social action and thereby with a causal explanation of its course and consequences” (Weber, 1968, p. 4). ‘Theories of social action,’ accordingly, aim at this understanding and explanation and try to answer why certain (types of) actors chose specific alternatives of action. Superficially, moving theories of social action into the center of sociological interest might seem somewhat questionable: The demarcation of sociology from other social sciences, for example psychology, is usually seen in the fact that it is basically interested in collective phenomena, rather than in the individual actor; in other words, the ‘analytical primacy’ for a sociologist lies at the macro level (i.e., the level of the society) (Wippler and Lindenberg, 1987). This view has been explicitly expressed by another prominent father of sociological thinking, Emile Durkheim. According to Durkheim, sociology is the science of ‘social facts,’ which he explicitly viewed as “existing outside the consciousness of the individual” (Durkheim, 1982, p. 51) and “not having the individual as their substratum” (Durkheim, 1982, p. 52). When it comes to explaining social phenomena, however, the strategy of staying only at the macro level faces at least two severe problems: On the one hand, relations between social phenomena can hardly be regarded as ‘sociological laws,’ as they are simply not stable enough but are heavily dependent on time- and space-specific conditions (Hedström, 2005). On the other hand, even under well-specified limited conditions, regularities that are stated at the macro level lack a deeper
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 1
understanding of the underlying mechanisms and leave a black box in any explanatory storyline (Hedström, 2005; Wippler and Lindenberg, 1987). It is here where theories of social action come in. Going down to the micro level and looking at the behavior of individuals can provide the necessary depth and possibly fill this black box. Regularities in social action seem to be more stable and general than those at the macro level, so social action theories can possibly build the ‘nomological core’ of a sociological explanation. In other words, while the analytical primacy of sociology is at the macro level of the society, there are good reasons to see the ‘theoretical primacy’ at the micro level of the individual; this is the general position of ‘methodological individualism’ to which the concept of social action and the striving for social action theories in sociology are intrinsically tied. These ideas are usually illustrated with the help of the socalled macro–micro–macro scheme (Coleman, 1990; Wippler and Lindenberg, 1987; Hedström and Swedberg, 1998), which allows one to locate the role of social action theories in sociology more closely. Accordingly, any sociological explanation entails three analytically distinct steps. (1) It has to specify how macro-level conditions affect the situation of (typical) individual actors. This macro–micro step is often called the ‘logic of the situation,’ and the assertions and hypotheses developed in this step are termed ‘bridge assumptions.’ (2) It has to explain why (typical) individual actors select specific individual actions. This step on the micro level, the ‘logic of selection,’ is the realm of social action theories. (3) It has to clarify how the actions of typical individual actors interact and give rise to the collective phenomena of interest. This micro–macro step is called the ‘logic of transformation’ or ‘logic of aggregation.’ The reference to the macro–micro–macro model is not only helpful in understanding the specific role of social action theories as one vital step within the more general sociological enterprise, but also crucial for identifying and understanding the more detailed requirements that a social action theory should fulfill in order to be appropriate for sociology (Lindenberg, 1985). Most importantly, it must be able to connect smoothly to the other two steps: the logic of the situation and the logic of transformation. This means, among
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others, that the action theory should conveniently allow formulation of bridge hypotheses that link structural conditions to the parameters of actions, without requiring too much knowledge about the individual. The fact that the analytical primacy is on the macro level sets somewhat other priorities for a social action theory appropriate for sociology compared to action theories in a field like psychology, where the analytical primacy is on the micro level (Wippler and Lindenberg, 1987). Nevertheless, social action theories in sociology should certainly not explicitly contradict wellknown findings in neighboring disciplines. Thus, in a sense, they can and should be more abstract, but allow one to decrease the level of abstraction if necessary (Lindenberg, 1992). Not least, like all theories, theories of social action should aim for high precision (i.e., information content) and should be well corroborated (Popper, 1959).
Traditional Views on Social Action In the history of sociological thought, very different views on social action and underlying ‘models of man’ have been suggested and discussed. Among the most influential are the homo sociologicus, which emerged from Parsons’ voluntaristic theory of action, the interpretative paradigm, and the homo economicus of neoclassical economics.
Voluntaristic Theory of Action and Homo Sociologicus A major milestone in the development of sociological theories of social action is Talcott Parsons’ The Structure of Social Action (1937), in which he develops his ‘voluntaristic theory of action.’ This can be understood as an attempt to synthesize ideas on human behavior to be found in the work of various classical sociologists, among them Weber and Durkheim, but also in that of classical economists. The basic elements of Parsons’ framework are actors, goals, means, situational conditions, and normative orientations (norms, values, and ideas). Social action should, accordingly, in general be understood as individual actors making decisions about means to achieve goals, whereby the goals and the availability of alternative means are influenced, on the one hand, by situational constraints and, on the other, by values, norms, and ideas that are shaped by processes of internalization and institutionalization. Accounting for situational conditions and, most importantly, for normative orientations is Parsons’ contribution to the logic of the situation. It pays tribute to the legacy of Durkheim and marries his idea of social determination to the methodological individualism of Weber. The fact that, thus, social structure is explicitly integrated into a general model action is certainly a major comparative strength of the ‘voluntaristic theory of action.’ But there is also a major weakness, which is the lack of information content with respect to the logic of selection. Parsons’ focus is clearly on synthesis and conceptualization; his framework does not provide, however, a clear rule for choosing a precise action alternative. The mere reference to values and norms is not sufficient as they tend not to represent coherent systems that give unambiguous advice.
The latter problem is especially visible in the general idea of homo sociologicus, which emerged out of Parsons’ work (Dahrendorf, 1968). This model of man underlying structural functionalism assumes that individuals basically act according to internalized expectations that are embedded in systems of social roles. Role conflicts and deviant behavior are only the most obvious difficulties of this view on behavior. When referring to the macro–micro–macro scheme, the more fundamental problem of the homo sociologicus idea is that, in a sense, it tries to relate social structure directly to the actions, neglecting the role of the active and resourceful actor. As a consequence, it seems adequate only under very special and stable conditions (Lindenberg, 1985), and thus it ends up with problems similar to those of a purely macro-theoretical account.
The Interpretative Paradigm The voluntaristic theory of action has stimulated intensive sociological attention to the problem of finding adequate theories of social action, and homo sociologicus as suggested by structural functionalism has provoked much critique. A very important line of argument has led to the ‘interpretative paradigm’ (Wilson, 1970), which is intended to be a corrective against the so-called normative paradigm underlying the work of Parsons and Durkheim. The interpretative paradigm can be traced to rather diverse roots, such as European phenomenology (Husserl, 1965; Schütz, 1967) or American pragmatism and behaviorism (Dewey, 1922; Mead, 1934). The theoretical perspective has been worked out, especially within symbolic interactionism by Herbert Blumer (1969); it targets the passive role of actors in the normative paradigm, in which norms and values seem to treat individuals like puppies on a leash. This general critique crystallizes into two major points. First, homo sociologicus is seen as, at least, severely incomplete, as norms and values only rarely give clear advice for specific actions. Second, and even more importantly, norms and values cannot be understood as externally given by social structure, but they should rather be understood as an endogenous result of the interactions between individual actors. According to symbolic interactionism, the way that individuals act toward things is fundamentally dependent on the meaning they attribute to them. This meaning is by no means objectively given but must be understood as a subjective accomplishment of the individual actor, an idea that is tellingly described by the famous ‘Thomas theorem’: “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (Thomas and Thomas, 1928, p. 572). The meaning results, above all, from permanent social interactions and communications in which symbols and their interpretation play crucial roles. Accordingly, meanings are constantly changing in response to the environment, and interpretation processes are heavily dependent on situational clues. Symbolic interactionism thus brings the actor back in and emphasizes his or her very active role via processes of interaction and interpretation. In doing so, it contributes specifically to a more adequate and realistic understanding of the definition of the situation. In this attempt, however, the analytical primacy shifts away from the macro level, and correspondingly it is difficult within this approach to develop bridge hypotheses
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that link individual interpretations back to social structure; it requires quite a lot of idiosyncratic information about the individual. Moreover, the approach is particularly weak (even weaker than the normative paradigm) with respect to the logic selection: It does not provide clear and information-rich rules about how actors finally choose among different action alternatives.
Neoclassical Economics and Homo Economicus The theory of behavior used by neoclassical economics has always been a kind of baseline and contrast model against which the sociological search for appropriate social action theories has developed. Basically, homo economicus is assumed to calculate the costs and benefits of available action alternatives and to choose the alternative that best satisfies his or her interests. The underlying core assumptions are thus that social action (1) aims at the realization of preferences, (2) underlies opportunities and restrictions, and (3) is guided by the principle of maximization. These assumptions are seen to constitute the core of so-called rational choice theory (RCT) (Opp, 1999), which comes in a series of more differentiated variants (Goldthorpe, 1998). Given the inbuilt weaknesses of the genuine sociological approaches sketched here, the economic approach to behavior has also received much attention in sociology. And it has been applied quite successfully: For example, economist Gary Becker received the Nobel Prize in 1992 for proving the microeconomic approach to be extremely fruitful in core sociological fields like discrimination, crime, and the family (Becker, 1976). No less important and impressive, James Coleman demonstrated in his Foundations of Social Theory (1990) that RCT can lay the groundwork for a comprehensive treatment of sociology. In general, RCT is one of the most influential theoretical approaches guiding current empirical research in sociology (Kroneberg and Kalter, 2012). Considering the general criteria for social action theories, RCT provides many comparative advantages: Most importantly, the maximization principle delivers an extremely precise rule of selection, thus overcoming one of the major weaknesses of the normative and interpretative paradigm. It conveniently allows the specification of bridge hypotheses linking action back to social structures, as opportunities and restrictions are crucial parameters of the actor’s decision-making process. Viewing actors not only as consumers but also as producers even allows fruitful bridge hypotheses on preferences (Stigler and Becker, 1977). All these aspects foster the main purpose of any explanatory framework, which is to derive precise and testable hypotheses. And all this explains the above-mentioned success of RCT, especially in applied empirical research. This has led many scholars to the view that homo economicus would in the end best satisfy the needs of explanatory sociology and that the search for alternative models of man might be superfluous and misleading; the term ‘economic imperialism’ has even been used. The diffusion of RC theorizing in sociology has been likewise accompanied, however, by a growing skepticism: Empirical research has yielded more and more findings that question the core assumptions of RCT (Elster, 1989). Much evidence along these lines stems from experimental research in social psychology, behavioral
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economics, and behavioral game theory, suggesting that actors are often by no means egoistic maximizers but that behavior is heavily dependent on situational clues, cultural frames, fairness norm, and so on. The evidence that actors thus only show a ‘bounded rationality’ (Simon, 1957) is overwhelming. Similar doubts on the rational actor model arose from applied research in sociology, with one example being that individuals contribute to the provision of public goods in spite of the incentives of free riding (Opp, 1986). Thus, homo economicus fails to satisfy the basic criterion of delivering an action principle that could claim general validity, and it explicitly contradicts empirical findings in sociology and its neighboring disciplines.
Strategies and Perspectives The ‘ Traditional Views’ section has shown that the different traditional models of man exhibit different advantages and disadvantages with respect to criteria for an adequate theory of social action. They also emphasize different aspects of human behavior, all of which seem to be indispensable parts of a comprehensive sociological account. This leads back to Max Weber, who in his famous ‘Economy and Society’ also made a well-known distinction between four main types of social action: action based on instrumentally rational action, valuerational action, affectual action, and traditional action (Weber, 1922, pp. 24–25). To deal with the different strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches to social action and with the seemingly different types of social action that can be observed in social life, two general strategies can be distinguished: Proponents of a ‘pluralistic strategy’ claim that sociology simply has to live and work with different models of actors, to keep all of them in a toolbox in peaceful coexistence, and to employ each for different tasks (Schimank, 2000). This, however, remains unsatisfactory for explanatory purposes as long as there is no clear overarching meta-rule specifying exactly under what conditions and for what kind of concrete behavior the one or the other model might be more appropriate; it does not free each of its inbuilt methodological weaknesses, either. Proponents of an ‘integrative strategy’ therefore seek to work out more refined theories of social action that combine the insights from the different approaches within one overarching model, so that meta-rules are clearly specified and so that the strength of one might heal the weaknesses of the others. An important development along the integrative line has been the refinement of the narrow model of homo economicus underlying neoclassical economics into ‘wide versions of RCT’ (Opp, 1999). In particular, these wide versions relax the assumptions that actors are perfectly informed, are purely egoistic, regard only tangible consequences, and react only to objective characteristics of the situation. By allowing, for example, that actors might receive intrinsic utility from fairness, altruism, and compliance to norms, or that they might fear the costs of sanctions, it is possible to marry RCT to many aspects of homo sociologicus. By emphasizing that actors’ beliefs are subjective, and can be based on imperfect or even systematically biased information, wide versions of RCT can refute some of the basic objections from the
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interpretative paradigm and explicitly account for the importance of processes of interpretation in the logic of a situation. At the same time, however, they keep the main advantage of RCT, which is the clear selection rule. The development from expected value (EV) theory, over expected utility (EU) theory, into the theory of subjective expected utility (SEU) is a major lane in the process of widening (Schoemaker, 1982), and SEU theory has become especially popular in empirical sociological research. However, the integrative merits and the huge flexibility of wide versions of RCT come at a cost: Releasing the strict assumptions of neoclassical economics leaves the core of the theory almost empty; if everything can in principle be conceptualized as costs and benefits, the theory seems to come close to being a tautology. While this allegation is exaggerated (Opp, 1999), the least one can say, however, is that wide versions of RCT move the explanatory burden from the action theory to the bridge assumptions (i.e., to the auxiliary assumptions made in the step of the logic of the situation, creating new methodological challenges) (Esser, 1998). Consequently, there is widespread skepticism toward ‘softening’ the RCT approach (Mood, 2009), and there are pleas to stick to narrower versions (if ever, and for as long as possible) (Raub et al., 2011), sometimes leading to an instrumentalist tendency in practice (Hedström, 2005). The ‘method of decreasing abstraction’ (Lindenberg, 1992) provides a potential recipe in the context of these problems, by emphasizing that it is adequate to work with simplifying assumptions as long as these do not contradict more complex insights and that it must be possible, in principle, to replace the former with the latter if need be. There are important arguments, however, that even allowing for a much wider range of preferences, expectations, and constraints within RCT might not be enough to enable the necessary theoretical integration, but that a more fundamental revision, touching also – partly at least – its core of the maximization principle, is needed. Accordingly, attempts explicitly try to account for the fact that rationality in actions is conditional and variable. An early example is the contribution by political scientists William H. Riker and Peter C. Ordeshook (1973) to model aspects of bounded rationality in a two-step model, where in the first step actors confronted with information costs decide whether to make a decision at all, thus allowing routines (i.e., ‘traditional action’ in terms of Max Weber) to take over in many circumstances. Influential two-steps models, in which rational processing is only one possible option, were also suggested in social psychology (Fazio, 1990). Sociologists working on the front of social action theories have especially tried to bring classical insights about the definition of the situation explicitly and more accurately back into behavioral models. Raymond Boudon (1996) has suggested a ‘cognitivist model’ that, among others, gives Weber’s notion of value-rationality a new fruitful interpretation. Accordingly, actors are often motivated by normative beliefs rather than instrumental incentives, and they are seen to hold these beliefs, because they have good reasons to do so. According to Boudon, this cognitivistic model of action avoids the shortcomings of RCT by providing a more realistic account, at the same time
saving RCT’s advantage of providing a selection rule within an explanatory framework (Boudon, 1998). Siegwart Lindenberg (2008) has developed a theory of ‘goal-framing’ that pays specific attention to the role of situational clues within actions. The basic idea is that actors, rather than considering a wide range of preferences and weighting the corresponding consequences of action (as assumed in traditional RCT), are rather limited and usually regard only one goal that is dominant in a given situation. This goal is in the foreground and mainly frames the definition of the situation (i.e., the attentions, perceptions, and consequently the behavior of actors). Other goals stay in the background, but they might be activated by situational clues and challenge the salience of the dominant ‘goal-frame.’ Lindenberg identifies some general goals that are shared by all actors, such as the hedonic goal, which is the default in many situations; the gain goal; and the normative goal. Frames are also the key concept in the ‘model of frame selection’ that has been brought forward by Hartmut Esser (2009). The model distinguishes several subprocesses in action: ‘Modeselection’ determines, as a kind of meta-selection, whether actors behave automatically–spontaneously or reflexively– calculatingly. ‘Frame-selection’ is crucial to how actors define the situation. ‘Script-selection’ provides actors with repertoires of action, routines, and programs. ‘Action-selection’ is the last step. A comparative strength of the model is that it specifies very explicit rules about each of these subprocesses and about how they are interrelated (Kroneberg et al., 2010), thus trying to retain the explanatory power of RCT even while modifying some of its core assumptions. This precision, on the other hand, has made it vulnerable to critique. In general, these – and other – recent attempts to integrate different lines of sociological thinking about social action are confronted with much skepticism, even more so than against the wide versions of RCT. Many regard these models as much too complex, and especially the concept of frames is suspected to bring black boxes back into explanations (Boudon, 2003). As the analytical primacy of sociology is collective phenomena, the key to the explanation might often lie in the complexity of the aggregation (Hedström, 2005); so one can afford, or is even forced, to work with much more parsimonious models of individual behavior. Proponents of the more complex theories of action would certainly agree, but they would argue that, if necessary, a decrease in abstraction (Lindenberg, 1992) must be possible, and a social action theory must specify in a systematic way how simplifying assumptions, if necessary, can be relaxed. It is important to recall that whichever kind of simplification or abstractness in the theories of social action is appropriate will always be dependent on the specific explanatory task under consideration.
See also: Coleman, James Samuel (1926–95); Durkheim, Emile (1858–1917); Interactionism, Symbolic; MacrosociologyMicrosociology; Methodological Individualism in Sociology; Norms; Parsons, Talcott (1902–79); Popper, Karl Raimund (1902–94); Rational Choice Theory in Sociology; Weber, Max (1864–1920).
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Bibliography Becker, G.S., 1976. The Economic Approach to Human Behavior. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Blumer, H., 1969. Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Boudon, R., 1996. The ‘cognitivist model’: a generalized ‘rational-choice model’. Rationality and Society 8, 123–150. Boudon, R., 1998. Social mechanisms without black boxes. In: Hedström, P., Swedberg, R. (Eds.), Social Mechanisms. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 172–203. Boudon, R., 2003. Beyond rational choice theory. Annual Review of Sociology 29, 1–21. Coleman, J.S., 1990. Foundations of Social Theory. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Dahrendorf, R., 1968. Homo sociologicus. In: Dahrendorf, R. (Ed.), Essays in the Theory of Society. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, pp. 19–87. Dewey, J., 1922. Human Nature and Human Conduct. Henry Holt, New York. Durkheim, E., 1982 [1895] (W.D. Halls, Trans.). In: Lukes, S. (Ed.), The Rules of Sociological Method. The Free Press, New York. Elster, J., 1989. Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Esser, H., 1998. Why are bridge hypotheses necessary? In: Blossfeld, H.-P., Prein, G. (Eds.), Rational Choice Theory and Large-Scale Data Analysis. Westview, Boulder, CO, pp. 94–111. Esser, H., 2009. Rationality and commitment: the model of frame selection and the explanation of normative action. In: Cherkaoui, M., Hamilton, P. (Eds.), Raymond Boudon: A Life in Sociology, Part Two: Toward a General Theory of Rationality. Bardwell, Oxford, pp. 207–230. Fazio, R.H., 1990. Multiple processes by which attitudes guide behaviour: the MODE model as an integrative framework. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 23, 75–109. Goldthorpe, J., 1998. Rational action theory for sociology. British Journal of Sociology 49, 167–192. Hedström, P., 2005. Dissecting the Social. On the Principles of Analytical Sociology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Hedström, P., Swedberg, R., 1998. Social mechanisms. In: Hedström, P., Swedberg, R. (Eds.), Social Mechanisms. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 1–31. Husserl, E., 1965 [1936]. Phenomenology and the Crisis of Western Philosophy. Harper & Row, New York. Kroneberg, C., Kalter, F., 2012. Rational choice theory and empirical research: methodological and theoretical contributions in Europe. Annual Review of Sociology 38, 73–92. Kroneberg, C., Yaish, M., Stocké, V., 2010. Norms and rationality in electoral participation and in the rescue of Jews in WWII: an application of the model of frame selection. Rationality and Society 22, 3–36.
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Lindenberg, S., 1985. An assessment of the new political economy: its potential for the social sciences and for sociology in particular. Sociological Theory 3, 99–114. Lindenberg, S., 1992. The method of decreasing abstraction. In: Coleman, J.S., Fararo, T.J. (Eds.), Rational Choice Theory: Advocacy and Critique. Sage, Newbury Park, pp. 3–20. Lindenberg, S., 2008. Social rationality, semi-modularity and goal-framing: what is it all about? Analyse & Kritik 20, 669–687. Mead, G.H., 1934. Mind, Self, and Society. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Mood, C., 2009. Problems without ends: how rational choice theory escapes its explanatory task. In: Cherkaoui, M., Hamilton, P. (Eds.), Raymond Boudon: A Life in Sociology, Part Two: Toward a General Theory of Rationality. Bardwell, Oxford, pp. 271–287. Opp, K.D., 1986. Soft incentives and collective action: participation in the anti-nuclear movement. British Journal of Political Science 16, 87–112. Opp, K.D., 1999. Contending conceptions of the theory of rational action. Journal of Theoretical Politics 11, 171–202. Parsons, T., 1937. The Structure of Social Action. McGraw-Hill, New York. Popper, K.R., 1959. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Hutchinson,, London. Raub, W., Buskens, V., van Assen, M.A.L.M., 2011. Micro–macro links and microfoundations in sociology. Journal of Mathematical Sociology 35, 1–25. Schimank, U., 2000. Handeln und Strukturen. Einführung in die akteurstheoretische Soziologie. Juventa, Weinheim. Schoemaker, P.J.H., 1982. The expected utility model: its variants, purposes, evidence and limitations. Journal of Economic Literature 20, 529–563. Schütz, A., 1967 [1932]. The Phenomenology of the Social World. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL. Simon, H., 1957. Models of Man. Wiley, New York and London. Stigler, G.S., Becker, G.S., 1977. De gustibus non est disputandum. American Economic Review 67, 76–90. Thomas, W.I., Thomas, D.S., 1928. The Child in America. Behavior Problems and Programs. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. Weber, M., 1968 [1922]. Economy and Society. Bedminster Press, New York. William H. Riker, & Peter C. Ordeshook., 1973. An introduction to positive political theory. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Wilson, T.P., 1970. Normative and interpretive paradigms in sociology. In: Douglas, J.D. (Ed.), Understanding Everyday Life. Toward the Reconstruction of Sociological Knowledge. Aldine, Chicago, pp. 57–79. Wippler, R., Lindenberg, S., 1987. Collective phenomena and rational choice. In: Alexander, J.C., et al. (Eds.), The Micro–Macro Link. University of California Press, Berkeley, pp. 135–152.
Abstract Social action is a key concept in sociology, and the development of adequate theories that can explain it is a central task. The social sciences suggest very different models of individual behavior without agreeing on a best solution. To understand the controversies and to sketch fruitful pathways, it is helpful to examine the specific role of social action theories within the more general sociological enterprise in more detail and to derive central quality criteria. Against the background of these criteria, a review of influential, traditional ‘models of man’ reveals the relative advantages and disadvantages of each approach. Major questions are how to deal with this variety of models and how to progress on the front of social action theories.
Theories of Social Action and Their Role in Sociology Max Weber clearly defined the concept of ‘social action’ in his classical work ‘Economy and Society’: “We shall speak of ‘action’ insofar as the acting individual attaches a subjective meaning to his behavior – be it overt or covert, omission or acquiescence. Action is ‘social’ insofar as its subjective meaning takes account of the behavior of others and is thereby oriented in its course” (Weber, 1968, p. 4). This definition is commonly shared by sociologists, as is the fact that the concept is of key importance to sociology. Max Weber even regarded it as the constituent subject of the discipline, which is expressed by the sentence preceding the quotation above: “Sociology (.) is a science concerning itself with the interpretive understanding of social action and thereby with a causal explanation of its course and consequences” (Weber, 1968, p. 4). ‘Theories of social action,’ accordingly, aim at this understanding and explanation and try to answer why certain (types of) actors chose specific alternatives of action. Superficially, moving theories of social action into the center of sociological interest might seem somewhat questionable: The demarcation of sociology from other social sciences, for example psychology, is usually seen in the fact that it is basically interested in collective phenomena, rather than in the individual actor; in other words, the ‘analytical primacy’ for a sociologist lies at the macro level (i.e., the level of the society) (Wippler and Lindenberg, 1987). This view has been explicitly expressed by another prominent father of sociological thinking, Emile Durkheim. According to Durkheim, sociology is the science of ‘social facts,’ which he explicitly viewed as “existing outside the consciousness of the individual” (Durkheim, 1982, p. 51) and “not having the individual as their substratum” (Durkheim, 1982, p. 52). When it comes to explaining social phenomena, however, the strategy of staying only at the macro level faces at least two severe problems: On the one hand, relations between social phenomena can hardly be regarded as ‘sociological laws,’ as they are simply not stable enough but are heavily dependent on time- and space-specific conditions (Hedström, 2005). On the other hand, even under well-specified limited conditions, regularities that are stated at the macro level lack a deeper
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 1
understanding of the underlying mechanisms and leave a black box in any explanatory storyline (Hedström, 2005; Wippler and Lindenberg, 1987). It is here where theories of social action come in. Going down to the micro level and looking at the behavior of individuals can provide the necessary depth and possibly fill this black box. Regularities in social action seem to be more stable and general than those at the macro level, so social action theories can possibly build the ‘nomological core’ of a sociological explanation. In other words, while the analytical primacy of sociology is at the macro level of the society, there are good reasons to see the ‘theoretical primacy’ at the micro level of the individual; this is the general position of ‘methodological individualism’ to which the concept of social action and the striving for social action theories in sociology are intrinsically tied. These ideas are usually illustrated with the help of the socalled macro–micro–macro scheme (Coleman, 1990; Wippler and Lindenberg, 1987; Hedström and Swedberg, 1998), which allows one to locate the role of social action theories in sociology more closely. Accordingly, any sociological explanation entails three analytically distinct steps. (1) It has to specify how macro-level conditions affect the situation of (typical) individual actors. This macro–micro step is often called the ‘logic of the situation,’ and the assertions and hypotheses developed in this step are termed ‘bridge assumptions.’ (2) It has to explain why (typical) individual actors select specific individual actions. This step on the micro level, the ‘logic of selection,’ is the realm of social action theories. (3) It has to clarify how the actions of typical individual actors interact and give rise to the collective phenomena of interest. This micro–macro step is called the ‘logic of transformation’ or ‘logic of aggregation.’ The reference to the macro–micro–macro model is not only helpful in understanding the specific role of social action theories as one vital step within the more general sociological enterprise, but also crucial for identifying and understanding the more detailed requirements that a social action theory should fulfill in order to be appropriate for sociology (Lindenberg, 1985). Most importantly, it must be able to connect smoothly to the other two steps: the logic of the situation and the logic of transformation. This means, among
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others, that the action theory should conveniently allow formulation of bridge hypotheses that link structural conditions to the parameters of actions, without requiring too much knowledge about the individual. The fact that the analytical primacy is on the macro level sets somewhat other priorities for a social action theory appropriate for sociology compared to action theories in a field like psychology, where the analytical primacy is on the micro level (Wippler and Lindenberg, 1987). Nevertheless, social action theories in sociology should certainly not explicitly contradict wellknown findings in neighboring disciplines. Thus, in a sense, they can and should be more abstract, but allow one to decrease the level of abstraction if necessary (Lindenberg, 1992). Not least, like all theories, theories of social action should aim for high precision (i.e., information content) and should be well corroborated (Popper, 1959).
Traditional Views on Social Action In the history of sociological thought, very different views on social action and underlying ‘models of man’ have been suggested and discussed. Among the most influential are the homo sociologicus, which emerged from Parsons’ voluntaristic theory of action, the interpretative paradigm, and the homo economicus of neoclassical economics.
Voluntaristic Theory of Action and Homo Sociologicus A major milestone in the development of sociological theories of social action is Talcott Parsons’ The Structure of Social Action (1937), in which he develops his ‘voluntaristic theory of action.’ This can be understood as an attempt to synthesize ideas on human behavior to be found in the work of various classical sociologists, among them Weber and Durkheim, but also in that of classical economists. The basic elements of Parsons’ framework are actors, goals, means, situational conditions, and normative orientations (norms, values, and ideas). Social action should, accordingly, in general be understood as individual actors making decisions about means to achieve goals, whereby the goals and the availability of alternative means are influenced, on the one hand, by situational constraints and, on the other, by values, norms, and ideas that are shaped by processes of internalization and institutionalization. Accounting for situational conditions and, most importantly, for normative orientations is Parsons’ contribution to the logic of the situation. It pays tribute to the legacy of Durkheim and marries his idea of social determination to the methodological individualism of Weber. The fact that, thus, social structure is explicitly integrated into a general model action is certainly a major comparative strength of the ‘voluntaristic theory of action.’ But there is also a major weakness, which is the lack of information content with respect to the logic of selection. Parsons’ focus is clearly on synthesis and conceptualization; his framework does not provide, however, a clear rule for choosing a precise action alternative. The mere reference to values and norms is not sufficient as they tend not to represent coherent systems that give unambiguous advice.
The latter problem is especially visible in the general idea of homo sociologicus, which emerged out of Parsons’ work (Dahrendorf, 1968). This model of man underlying structural functionalism assumes that individuals basically act according to internalized expectations that are embedded in systems of social roles. Role conflicts and deviant behavior are only the most obvious difficulties of this view on behavior. When referring to the macro–micro–macro scheme, the more fundamental problem of the homo sociologicus idea is that, in a sense, it tries to relate social structure directly to the actions, neglecting the role of the active and resourceful actor. As a consequence, it seems adequate only under very special and stable conditions (Lindenberg, 1985), and thus it ends up with problems similar to those of a purely macro-theoretical account.
The Interpretative Paradigm The voluntaristic theory of action has stimulated intensive sociological attention to the problem of finding adequate theories of social action, and homo sociologicus as suggested by structural functionalism has provoked much critique. A very important line of argument has led to the ‘interpretative paradigm’ (Wilson, 1970), which is intended to be a corrective against the so-called normative paradigm underlying the work of Parsons and Durkheim. The interpretative paradigm can be traced to rather diverse roots, such as European phenomenology (Husserl, 1965; Schütz, 1967) or American pragmatism and behaviorism (Dewey, 1922; Mead, 1934). The theoretical perspective has been worked out, especially within symbolic interactionism by Herbert Blumer (1969); it targets the passive role of actors in the normative paradigm, in which norms and values seem to treat individuals like puppies on a leash. This general critique crystallizes into two major points. First, homo sociologicus is seen as, at least, severely incomplete, as norms and values only rarely give clear advice for specific actions. Second, and even more importantly, norms and values cannot be understood as externally given by social structure, but they should rather be understood as an endogenous result of the interactions between individual actors. According to symbolic interactionism, the way that individuals act toward things is fundamentally dependent on the meaning they attribute to them. This meaning is by no means objectively given but must be understood as a subjective accomplishment of the individual actor, an idea that is tellingly described by the famous ‘Thomas theorem’: “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (Thomas and Thomas, 1928, p. 572). The meaning results, above all, from permanent social interactions and communications in which symbols and their interpretation play crucial roles. Accordingly, meanings are constantly changing in response to the environment, and interpretation processes are heavily dependent on situational clues. Symbolic interactionism thus brings the actor back in and emphasizes his or her very active role via processes of interaction and interpretation. In doing so, it contributes specifically to a more adequate and realistic understanding of the definition of the situation. In this attempt, however, the analytical primacy shifts away from the macro level, and correspondingly it is difficult within this approach to develop bridge hypotheses
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that link individual interpretations back to social structure; it requires quite a lot of idiosyncratic information about the individual. Moreover, the approach is particularly weak (even weaker than the normative paradigm) with respect to the logic selection: It does not provide clear and information-rich rules about how actors finally choose among different action alternatives.
Neoclassical Economics and Homo Economicus The theory of behavior used by neoclassical economics has always been a kind of baseline and contrast model against which the sociological search for appropriate social action theories has developed. Basically, homo economicus is assumed to calculate the costs and benefits of available action alternatives and to choose the alternative that best satisfies his or her interests. The underlying core assumptions are thus that social action (1) aims at the realization of preferences, (2) underlies opportunities and restrictions, and (3) is guided by the principle of maximization. These assumptions are seen to constitute the core of so-called rational choice theory (RCT) (Opp, 1999), which comes in a series of more differentiated variants (Goldthorpe, 1998). Given the inbuilt weaknesses of the genuine sociological approaches sketched here, the economic approach to behavior has also received much attention in sociology. And it has been applied quite successfully: For example, economist Gary Becker received the Nobel Prize in 1992 for proving the microeconomic approach to be extremely fruitful in core sociological fields like discrimination, crime, and the family (Becker, 1976). No less important and impressive, James Coleman demonstrated in his Foundations of Social Theory (1990) that RCT can lay the groundwork for a comprehensive treatment of sociology. In general, RCT is one of the most influential theoretical approaches guiding current empirical research in sociology (Kroneberg and Kalter, 2012). Considering the general criteria for social action theories, RCT provides many comparative advantages: Most importantly, the maximization principle delivers an extremely precise rule of selection, thus overcoming one of the major weaknesses of the normative and interpretative paradigm. It conveniently allows the specification of bridge hypotheses linking action back to social structures, as opportunities and restrictions are crucial parameters of the actor’s decision-making process. Viewing actors not only as consumers but also as producers even allows fruitful bridge hypotheses on preferences (Stigler and Becker, 1977). All these aspects foster the main purpose of any explanatory framework, which is to derive precise and testable hypotheses. And all this explains the above-mentioned success of RCT, especially in applied empirical research. This has led many scholars to the view that homo economicus would in the end best satisfy the needs of explanatory sociology and that the search for alternative models of man might be superfluous and misleading; the term ‘economic imperialism’ has even been used. The diffusion of RC theorizing in sociology has been likewise accompanied, however, by a growing skepticism: Empirical research has yielded more and more findings that question the core assumptions of RCT (Elster, 1989). Much evidence along these lines stems from experimental research in social psychology, behavioral
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economics, and behavioral game theory, suggesting that actors are often by no means egoistic maximizers but that behavior is heavily dependent on situational clues, cultural frames, fairness norm, and so on. The evidence that actors thus only show a ‘bounded rationality’ (Simon, 1957) is overwhelming. Similar doubts on the rational actor model arose from applied research in sociology, with one example being that individuals contribute to the provision of public goods in spite of the incentives of free riding (Opp, 1986). Thus, homo economicus fails to satisfy the basic criterion of delivering an action principle that could claim general validity, and it explicitly contradicts empirical findings in sociology and its neighboring disciplines.
Strategies and Perspectives The ‘ Traditional Views’ section has shown that the different traditional models of man exhibit different advantages and disadvantages with respect to criteria for an adequate theory of social action. They also emphasize different aspects of human behavior, all of which seem to be indispensable parts of a comprehensive sociological account. This leads back to Max Weber, who in his famous ‘Economy and Society’ also made a well-known distinction between four main types of social action: action based on instrumentally rational action, valuerational action, affectual action, and traditional action (Weber, 1922, pp. 24–25). To deal with the different strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches to social action and with the seemingly different types of social action that can be observed in social life, two general strategies can be distinguished: Proponents of a ‘pluralistic strategy’ claim that sociology simply has to live and work with different models of actors, to keep all of them in a toolbox in peaceful coexistence, and to employ each for different tasks (Schimank, 2000). This, however, remains unsatisfactory for explanatory purposes as long as there is no clear overarching meta-rule specifying exactly under what conditions and for what kind of concrete behavior the one or the other model might be more appropriate; it does not free each of its inbuilt methodological weaknesses, either. Proponents of an ‘integrative strategy’ therefore seek to work out more refined theories of social action that combine the insights from the different approaches within one overarching model, so that meta-rules are clearly specified and so that the strength of one might heal the weaknesses of the others. An important development along the integrative line has been the refinement of the narrow model of homo economicus underlying neoclassical economics into ‘wide versions of RCT’ (Opp, 1999). In particular, these wide versions relax the assumptions that actors are perfectly informed, are purely egoistic, regard only tangible consequences, and react only to objective characteristics of the situation. By allowing, for example, that actors might receive intrinsic utility from fairness, altruism, and compliance to norms, or that they might fear the costs of sanctions, it is possible to marry RCT to many aspects of homo sociologicus. By emphasizing that actors’ beliefs are subjective, and can be based on imperfect or even systematically biased information, wide versions of RCT can refute some of the basic objections from the
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interpretative paradigm and explicitly account for the importance of processes of interpretation in the logic of a situation. At the same time, however, they keep the main advantage of RCT, which is the clear selection rule. The development from expected value (EV) theory, over expected utility (EU) theory, into the theory of subjective expected utility (SEU) is a major lane in the process of widening (Schoemaker, 1982), and SEU theory has become especially popular in empirical sociological research. However, the integrative merits and the huge flexibility of wide versions of RCT come at a cost: Releasing the strict assumptions of neoclassical economics leaves the core of the theory almost empty; if everything can in principle be conceptualized as costs and benefits, the theory seems to come close to being a tautology. While this allegation is exaggerated (Opp, 1999), the least one can say, however, is that wide versions of RCT move the explanatory burden from the action theory to the bridge assumptions (i.e., to the auxiliary assumptions made in the step of the logic of the situation, creating new methodological challenges) (Esser, 1998). Consequently, there is widespread skepticism toward ‘softening’ the RCT approach (Mood, 2009), and there are pleas to stick to narrower versions (if ever, and for as long as possible) (Raub et al., 2011), sometimes leading to an instrumentalist tendency in practice (Hedström, 2005). The ‘method of decreasing abstraction’ (Lindenberg, 1992) provides a potential recipe in the context of these problems, by emphasizing that it is adequate to work with simplifying assumptions as long as these do not contradict more complex insights and that it must be possible, in principle, to replace the former with the latter if need be. There are important arguments, however, that even allowing for a much wider range of preferences, expectations, and constraints within RCT might not be enough to enable the necessary theoretical integration, but that a more fundamental revision, touching also – partly at least – its core of the maximization principle, is needed. Accordingly, attempts explicitly try to account for the fact that rationality in actions is conditional and variable. An early example is the contribution by political scientists William H. Riker and Peter C. Ordeshook (1973) to model aspects of bounded rationality in a two-step model, where in the first step actors confronted with information costs decide whether to make a decision at all, thus allowing routines (i.e., ‘traditional action’ in terms of Max Weber) to take over in many circumstances. Influential two-steps models, in which rational processing is only one possible option, were also suggested in social psychology (Fazio, 1990). Sociologists working on the front of social action theories have especially tried to bring classical insights about the definition of the situation explicitly and more accurately back into behavioral models. Raymond Boudon (1996) has suggested a ‘cognitivist model’ that, among others, gives Weber’s notion of value-rationality a new fruitful interpretation. Accordingly, actors are often motivated by normative beliefs rather than instrumental incentives, and they are seen to hold these beliefs, because they have good reasons to do so. According to Boudon, this cognitivistic model of action avoids the shortcomings of RCT by providing a more realistic account, at the same time
saving RCT’s advantage of providing a selection rule within an explanatory framework (Boudon, 1998). Siegwart Lindenberg (2008) has developed a theory of ‘goal-framing’ that pays specific attention to the role of situational clues within actions. The basic idea is that actors, rather than considering a wide range of preferences and weighting the corresponding consequences of action (as assumed in traditional RCT), are rather limited and usually regard only one goal that is dominant in a given situation. This goal is in the foreground and mainly frames the definition of the situation (i.e., the attentions, perceptions, and consequently the behavior of actors). Other goals stay in the background, but they might be activated by situational clues and challenge the salience of the dominant ‘goal-frame.’ Lindenberg identifies some general goals that are shared by all actors, such as the hedonic goal, which is the default in many situations; the gain goal; and the normative goal. Frames are also the key concept in the ‘model of frame selection’ that has been brought forward by Hartmut Esser (2009). The model distinguishes several subprocesses in action: ‘Modeselection’ determines, as a kind of meta-selection, whether actors behave automatically–spontaneously or reflexively– calculatingly. ‘Frame-selection’ is crucial to how actors define the situation. ‘Script-selection’ provides actors with repertoires of action, routines, and programs. ‘Action-selection’ is the last step. A comparative strength of the model is that it specifies very explicit rules about each of these subprocesses and about how they are interrelated (Kroneberg et al., 2010), thus trying to retain the explanatory power of RCT even while modifying some of its core assumptions. This precision, on the other hand, has made it vulnerable to critique. In general, these – and other – recent attempts to integrate different lines of sociological thinking about social action are confronted with much skepticism, even more so than against the wide versions of RCT. Many regard these models as much too complex, and especially the concept of frames is suspected to bring black boxes back into explanations (Boudon, 2003). As the analytical primacy of sociology is collective phenomena, the key to the explanation might often lie in the complexity of the aggregation (Hedström, 2005); so one can afford, or is even forced, to work with much more parsimonious models of individual behavior. Proponents of the more complex theories of action would certainly agree, but they would argue that, if necessary, a decrease in abstraction (Lindenberg, 1992) must be possible, and a social action theory must specify in a systematic way how simplifying assumptions, if necessary, can be relaxed. It is important to recall that whichever kind of simplification or abstractness in the theories of social action is appropriate will always be dependent on the specific explanatory task under consideration.
See also: Coleman, James Samuel (1926–95); Durkheim, Emile (1858–1917); Interactionism, Symbolic; MacrosociologyMicrosociology; Methodological Individualism in Sociology; Norms; Parsons, Talcott (1902–79); Popper, Karl Raimund (1902–94); Rational Choice Theory in Sociology; Weber, Max (1864–1920).
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