Abstract

A social fact consists of collective thoughts and shared expectations that influence individual

actions. Examples of social facts include social roles, norms, laws, values, rituals, and customs.

Violating social facts confirms their existence because people who act against social facts are

typically sanctioned. Sociology is one of the primary disciplines in which social facts are studied.

Keywords: altruism; classical theory; culture; Durkheim, Émile; life course sociology; sociology

of education; sociology of family; sociology of health and illness; sociology of knowledge;

sociology of organizations; sociology of religion; sociology of work and occupations

Introduction
A social fact is an idea, force, or “thing” that influences the ways individuals act and the kinds of

attitudes people hold. As a social subject, these facts are not particular to a single individual but

are rather “supra-individual,” meaning they are held in the minds of multiple people and

culminate in the “collective conscience.” Émile Durkheim (1938[1895]) is credited with coining

the term social fact, and he defines the term by saying:

A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an

external constraint; or again, every way of acting which is general throughout a given society,

while at the same time existing in its own right independent of its individual manifestations. (59)

Thus, while a social fact is considered within the minds of an individual, it originates outside of

an individual and is experienced and expressed by more than one person.

Social facts are best understood by way of examples. A key example of a social fact is a

social role, such as being a mother, sister, daughter, student, or employee. People associate

certain expectations with these roles, and these expectations are remarkably consistent across

individuals, without those individuals ever having explicitly discussed their expectations. For

example, were an individual in the United States and another individual in Europe asked how

they would describe the role of a student, the two people would likely provide similar

descriptions, despite never having met or had access to the description provided by the other

person. Such circumstances indicate the existence of a social fact, in this case a student role.

Other examples of social facts include laws, morals, beliefs, rituals, and customs.
Another common way to discover social facts is in their violation. Because social facts

impose themselves upon people, individuals feel compelled to conform to their implicit

expectations. When people violate those expectations, they often experience a sanction, which is

a form of punishment. A sanction can range from small and informal to severe and formal. For

example, being arrested for violating the law is a formal and more severe sanction. An informal

sanction could be a negative glance of the eyes from a passerby who wishes to nonverbally

Intellectual and Social Context

Sociology is one of the primary disciplines in which social facts are studied. In fact, Durkheim

(1938[1895]) stated that sociology is defined as the study of social facts and their functions.

Social facts are part of the unique content of sociology that specifies the ways this discipline is

distinct from other social sciences, such as psychology, anthropology, economics, or political

science. In this regard, sociology is characterized by a study of the collective conscience, those

social forces which compel the minds of individuals to vibrate in unison. The subject matter for

the science of people is the collective aspects of attitudes, beliefs, and tendencies.

Social psychology is another prominent domain in which social facts are of interest,

especially because social facts overlap internal and cognitive processes with external social and

relational processes. Social facts belong to both the realms of individual and social, and thus are

best understood through what Durkheim referred to as “hybrid sciences.” Here it is important to

be cognizant of the different levels involved in social action. At the basic levels, there are

actions, reactions, and thoughts of individuals. These add together into collective actions that

move beyond the contributions of any one individual in forming social actions. In this sense, the

whole (collective conscious) is greater than the sum of its parts (individual conscious).
Major Dimensions
Three major dimensions of social facts described below are: (1) norms and values, which

pertains to the rules or expectations of society and are often a focus in the sociology of religion

or the sociology of culture; (2) socialization, which pertains to the way norms and values are

learned and is often a focus in the sociology of youth and emerging adulthood or the sociology of

education; and (3) social outcomes, which pertain to the ways that social facts affect people and

are often operationalized as indicators of health and well-being or educational attainment and

school-to-work transitions.

Social norms are expectations regarding acceptable behavior. These rules of social life

can be explicit (clearly stated or expressed verbally) or implicit (nonverbal and unwritten).

Norms are often the focus in the sociology of culture, and the social facts of different cultures or

subcultural groups are studied to learn what each cultural entity takes for granted as “common

sense” notions. Comparing different cultural understandings of social facts reveals the ways that

social facts are constructed and modified through collective consciousness, indicating that they

are not universal properties that exist ubiquitously in all places and times. For example, in many

cultures around the world and throughout time, it is a social norm to act altruistically by giving to

the collective good. However, the ways that people give to benefit others differs across cultures.

In the United States, it is normative to give financial donations to charitable organizations. While

many Americans take for granted that they should give to charitable organizations, yet this form

of generosity is not as common in other countries where government and nongovernmental

entities structure acts toward the collective good in other ways (Warner et al., 2015).

Similar to the monetary values assigned to particular objects, social values reflect the

relative importance that cultures place on particular behaviors, attitudes, or inclinations.

Understanding what is of value to a culture or group reveals the underlying social forces thatmotivate
people in that culture or group to act (2001[1912]). It is a social fact that values

motivate action. People feel compelled to protect and enforce their values, and they also act in

ways that prevent actions that would undermine their values. Values are often the focus of

studies in the sociology of religion, and the social facts of different religions are studied to learn

what social impacts result from holding certain beliefs, affiliating with specific denominations,
or expressing particular practices. For example, many religions value regular service attendance,

and people who frequently attend religious services tend to give more to charitable causes than

people who attend religious services infrequently or never (Herzog and Price, 2016).

Socialization refers to the processes by which people learn and internalize norms and

values. Sometimes socialization is an intentional process, such as when parents instruct children

how to behave. For example, when a parent tells their children not to pick their nose while in

public, the parent is intentionally socializing the child to conform with societal expectations for

courteous public behavior. Socialization can also occur unintentionally and without explicit

attention. For example, parents in the United States socialize their children through different

logics of parenting (Lareau, 2011). Parents from working-class backgrounds tend to socialize

their children with a strong emphasis on obedience to authority figures and with strong

boundaries between children and adults. In contrast, parents from middle-class backgrounds tend

to socialize their children to treat adults as relative equals and tend to promote their familiarity

with formal organizations in which they can experience interacting with adults as peers. In

addition to parents, educational systems are another primary way in which youth are socialized

to learn the norms of their culture. Through these socialization processes, young people learn the

social facts of their family and of the broader society. Most of the time these social facts become

internalized and unquestioned. However, in some cases young people deviate from social norms

and values.

Social outcomes are another important dimension to social facts. Since social facts

compel actions, habits, and attitudes, many studies in the social sciences seek to explain

differences in outcomes based on their underlying social facts. Examples of important social

outcomes include health, well-being, educational attainment, and work placements. For example,

Durkheim (1951[1897]) studied suicide rates to discern whether there were differences across

groups. He found evidence in support of these social facts: People who were married committed

suicide less than unmarried people, and Catholics committed suicide less than Protestants. From

these social facts, Durkheim deduced a theory of social isolation in which he postulated that

people who are more socially integrated are less likely to commit suicide. Other social outcomes

in school and work indicate evidence that supports these social facts: Young people whose
parents graduated from college are more likely to attend college (Pascarella et al., 2004), and

young people who have mentors in their formative years are more likely to have desirable work

placements (McDonald et al., 2007).

Changes over Time

Though the term social facts sounds stable and not dynamic, this is far from the case. Social facts

change over time. For example, in the twenty-first-century United States, the normative

expectation is that children are to become financially and residentially independent as young

adults. The reality is that many young people continue to live with their parents and/or remain

financially dependent upon them into their 20s or even into their 30s (Lopata and Levy, 2003).

This reality differs from the expectations that many parents have, based on the normative

expectations of their generation. However, as the public becomes more aware of this change, future
generations in the United States may view multigenerational households as normative, as

is already the case in other cultures.

SEE ALSO: Althusser, Louis; Annales School; Durkheim, Émile; Foucault, Michel;

Functionalism/Neofunctionalism; Marx, Karl; Marxism and Sociology; Parsons, Talcott;

Positivism; Structuralism

Strength social fact Theory

A social fact, as defined in Rules, is “a category of facts which present very special characteristics:
they consist of manners of acting, thinking, and feeling external to the individual, which are
invested with a coercive power by virtue of which they exercise control over him.

In essence, Durkheim's work was all about culture, and as such, it remains deeply relevant and
important to how sociologists study culture today.

Social facts are the reason why people within a society seem to choose to do the same basic
things; e.g., where they live, what they eat, and how they interact. The society they belong to shapes
them to do these things, continuing social facts.

Weakness of social fact theory

Some critics claim that Durkheim is guilty of saying that social facts exist independent and outside
of all individuals, which leads them to think that Durkheim hypostatizes some sort of metaphysical
“group mind.” Other critics argue that Durkheim is guilty of an ontologism or a realism in which he
considers social ...
Durkheim's theory of social facts completely ignores the importance of individual and places too
much importance to society.

Durkheim has not made it clear anywhere as to what he means by the term 'things' in the context of
social facts.

Conclusion
According to Durkheim (a French dude from the 19th century), society exists at a level
above the individual and it kind of has a life of its own. It consists of social facts such as
institutions and the class structure which constrain individuals depending on their
relation to said social facts.

Durkheim believed that we should limit ourselves to studying ‘social facts’ at the level of
society – aim to understand how and why social trends vary, and do this in a scientific
way.

Understanding more about how these social forces drive social change, and deriving the
laws which govern human interaction is the point of sociology according to Durkheim,
and doing this requires us to study social facts at the level of society, there is no need to
focus on individuals.
References
Durkheim, É. (1938[1895]) The Rules of Sociological Method, Simon & Schuster, New York.

Durkheim, É. (1951[1897]) Suicide: A Study in Sociology, Free Press, New York.

Durkheim, É. (2001[1912]) The Elementary Forms of Religious Life: A New Translation by

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Herzog, P.S. and Price, H.E. (2016) American Generosity: Who Gives and Why, Oxford

University Press, New York.

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