Rational Choice Theory

Rational choice theory in sociology applies models of rational, self-interested individual decision-making, originally developed in economics, to explain social behavior and collective social outcomes. The sociologist James Coleman set out an influential comprehensive statement of the approach in his 1990 book Foundations of Social Theory, arguing that many features of social structure and social action, including cooperation, trust and the formation of social norms, can be explained as the aggregate outcome of individuals weighing the costs and benefits of their available choices and acting to maximize their own interests. The approach builds directly on the earlier social exchange theory developed by George Homans and Peter Blau, which had already treated everyday social interaction as an exchange of costs and rewards between participants, and rational choice theory extends that exchange logic into a more general framework for explaining large-scale social phenomena, including collective action problems, from the aggregation of many individually rational choices. Critics have argued that the approach can understate the role of emotion, habit, culture and non-rational motivation in social behavior, but rational choice theory remains an influential framework, particularly within analytical sociology and the sociological study of organizations and markets, for connecting individual-level decision-making to broader social patterns.