4 Ways To Understand The Social Sciences

The social sciences try to understand human behavior from very special perspectives. And if you want to study human behavior, you must first ask yourself whether the human being is able to interpret his behavior and whether he can grasp social reality. The answer you will give will determine how you will study human behavior. This is the ontological assumption.

The second question that determines how you can analyze human behavior is epistemological. This is about the relationship between the researcher and the object to be examined , and it can either be assumed that the researcher and the subject are separate elements or that they are the same.

So the answers to these questions can help you determine your social science focus. But there are other differences between the various social science approaches. We’re talking about the methodology here. While different approaches can use different methods, there are some that are common in certain disciplines.

Based on these distinctions (ontology, epistemiology or epistemology, methodology) there are at least four approaches to investigate social behavior. These four different social science approaches are positivism, postpositivism, interpretationism and humanism. We will introduce them in more detail below.

The positivist approach in the social sciences

The first approach we want to talk about is positivism. This assumes that social reality is objective. In other words, interactions between people obey certain laws of nature that are easy to understand. The positivist social scientist continues to assume that the researcher and the subject are separate elements. As a result, he uses inductive methods to collect data.

Observing behavior in social groups helps us to recognize the laws of nature that determine our social reality. By examining these behaviors, we can pinpoint the reasons for our actions.

Positivists use the empirical method. You strive to fully understand reality through experience. The methods they use come from the natural sciences. From these experiments, the researchers get data and they use statistical analysis to create mathematical models. These models explain the behavior under investigation.

The Post-Positivist Approach in Social Sciences

There was criticism of the positivist approach. It was recognized that human behavior is not subject to the laws of nature alone. This realization led to a different approach called postpositivism.

While this approach still assumes that reality is objective, it also takes into account that it is just not that easy to understand. As a result , researchers and subjects are no longer viewed as separate items. Instead, post-positivists believe that the researcher can influence the research process.

This approach is based on the use of deductive methods that start with generally accepted facts, which are broken down into individual cases in order to check their validity. The postpositivist methods are still empirical, but greater importance is attached to the context . Here we find experiments, statistical analyzes and quantitative evaluations.

The interpretive approach in the social sciences

Interpretationism assumes that social reality is both objective and subjective. This new concept of subjectivity implies that reality is a human construct. This means that people create their own social reality. According to this approach , we can understand social reality and behavior, even if our interpretation of them remains subjective.

Interpretationists use a context-based methodology. They attach great importance to the meaning that people themselves assign to their actions. To find out, the researchers mainly use text and language analysis.

The humanistic approach in the social sciences

The humanistic approach, on the other hand, goes to the other extreme. He suggests that reality is entirely subjective. As a result, we cannot understand social reality. Given that we will never understand them, we can only hope that we can at least empathize. We can only understand how other people see the world insofar as it differs from our own understanding.

Humanists are interested in values, meanings, and goals. To obtain this information, researchers use empathic interaction: they empathize with the test subjects in order to obtain information about how they understand their social reality.

As you can see, the social sciences offer different ways of understanding our behavior. There are different approaches to studying them. At first glance, they seem to be mutually exclusive. However, the approaches can also be combined. Also, some approaches are more useful than others in understanding certain behaviors.

Human behavior is very complicated and certainly cannot be pigeonholed. A thorough study using different approaches can therefore help the budding scientist gain a better understanding.