Write short answer of the following in about 150 words: How is sociological approach to human actions different from that of psychological approach? (2014)
Both study the same human beings; they differ in the unit of analysis, and therefore in the kind of explanation each accepts.
The difference
- Level of explanation: Émile Durkheim‘s rule in The Rules of Sociological Method (1895) draws the line — “the determining cause of a social fact must be sought among antecedent social facts, not among states of individual consciousness”. Psychology explains conduct by motive, personality and learning.
- Rates, not cases: Suicide (1897) took the most private of acts and showed its rate patterned by social integration and regulation.
- Meaning: for Max Weber, action becomes social when the actor attaches meaning to it and orients it to others, grasped through Verstehen.
- C. Wright Mills (1959) separated personal troubles from public issues.
India. The National Crime Records Bureau recorded 1,71,418 suicides in 2023 (rate 12.3 per lakh); daily wage earners were about 28 per cent. Psychology asks why this individual; sociology asks why this occupational category.
Conclusion
The boundary is analytical, not real: George Herbert Mead‘s socially constituted self and George Homans‘s reductionist counter-claim both show the two approaches to be complementary.