Читать книгу Essentials of Sociology - George Ritzer - Страница 65

In rational choice theory people are regarded as rational, but the focus is not on exchange, rewards, and costs. Rather, the focus is on people who have goals and intend to do certain things. To achieve their goals, people have a variety of means available to them and choose among the available means on a rational basis. They choose the means that are likely to best satisfy their needs and wants; in other words, they choose on the basis of “utility” (Kroneberg and Kalter 2012). In the case of hookups, for example, we can easily imagine a series of potential purposes for hooking up, such as engaging in sexual exploration, having fun, and doing something sexual without the risk of getting deeply involved emotionally or getting hurt.

Rational choice theorists understand that people do not always act rationally. They argue, however, that their predictions will generally hold despite these occasional deviations (Coleman 1990; Zafirovski 2013). The degree to which people act rationally is one of the many topics that can be, and has been, researched by sociologists. It is to the general topic of sociological research that we turn in the next section.