4 Ways To Understand The Social Sciences

The social sciences try to understand human behavior from very specific perspectives. If you want to study behavior, you have to accept certain ideas. First, you need to determine if people are really capable of interpreting behavior and if they can understand social reality.

The answer you give determines how you study behavior. This is the ontological assumption. The second question that determines how to study human behavior is epistemological. This assumption suggests a relationship between the researcher and the object being studied in such a way that you can assume that the researcher and the subject are separate elements or the same. The answer will again determine the social science focus.

In addition to these two assumptions, there are other differences between approaches. We’re talking about methodology. While it is true that different approaches can use different options, there are methods and practices that are common within certain approaches. Based on these differences (ontology, epistemology, methodology and methods), at least four approaches to studying behavior arise. These four different social science approaches are positivism, post-positivism, interpretation and humanism. 

The positive approach in the social sciences

The first approach we are going to talk about is positivism. This approach believes that social reality is objective. In other words, human interaction obeys certain natural laws that are easy to understand. This approach in the social sciences believes that researchers and disciplines are separate elements. Consequently, it uses inductive inquiry procedures.

Being able to identify some behaviors will help us understand the natural laws that govern our social reality. So, by studying certain behaviors, we can find the reasons for our actions.

Positivists use the empirical method. They hope to fully understand reality through experience. The methods they use come from the natural sciences and are about experiments. From these experiments, researchers obtain data and use statistical analysis to create mathematical models. These models explain behavior.

Post-positivist approach to the social sciences

Over time, people began to criticize the positivist approach. They saw that human behavior does not obey the laws of nature. This critique gave rise to another approach called post-positivism.

This approach still believes that reality is objective, even though it takes into account that it is not easy to understand. As a result of the change, researchers and topics are no longer considered separate elements. Instead, post-positivists believe that the researcher can influence the process. This approach began using deductive methods, beginning with accepted facts that were used in individual cases to test their validity using probability.

Post-positivist methodology is still empirical, but it gives greater significance to the context. In the same vein, the methods are approaches to the natural method. Among them we find experiments, statistical analysis and quantitative interviews.

The interpretive approach in the social sciences

Interpretation assumes that social reality is both objective and subjective. This new concept, subjectivity, implies that reality is a human construction. This means that people create their own social reality.

According to this approach, we can understand social reality and behavior, although the interpretation will depend on human subjectivity.  To understand subjective behavior, interpretive users rely on knowledge of concepts.

Interpretive users use a methodology based on context. They pay a lot of attention to the meaning that people assign to actions. To find these meanings, researchers use text analysis and speech analysis.

The humanistic approach to the social sciences

Finally, the humanistic approach goes to the other extreme. It suggests that reality is completely subjective. Therefore, we can not understand social reality. In this approach, human subjectivity is more important than anything else. Given that we can never understand it, we can only hope to feel empathy. We can only understand how other people see the world by looking at how it differs from our own understanding.

The humanities methodology in the social sciences is interested in values, meanings and goals. To obtain this information, researchers use empathic interaction. They interact with the test person to gather 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 ways to study them. At first glance, they probably look mutually exclusive. However, they can be combined. Human behavior is very complicated. Studying it with different approaches can help the researcher to come to a more comprehensive conclusion. Some approaches are more useful for understanding some types of behavior than others. But that does not mean that the rest of them are useless or less valuable.