Methodological individualism is an epistemological, theoretical, and methodological approach in which the actions of individuals and their motivations have priority in creating explanations and theoretical models. In this approach, social and cultural phenomena are aggregate results of individual actions. 

German sociologist Max Weber used methodological individualism as he believed that it is necessary to understand individual psychological motives, goals, and values, but also to interpret and document culturally and historically unique phenomena. The goal of social science is to build a network of abstract concepts and to investigate objectively existing causal relationships in individual events. Through the study of causal relationships in individual events, we can determine general social rules. The starting point for studying individual events is human "social action". Social action is any behavior that has meaning for a person who performs a social action and includes failing to perform an activity, as well as suffering from an external situation. Another condition for a behavior to be viewed as social action is that the actor must take into account the behavior of others and coordinate his social actions with it.

Human social action is the only thing we can really understand because it has its objective, external side, which we can directly observe, but also because it has an internal, subjective side, which we can understand and interpret. That is why social action is the basic unit of sociological analysis. Human social action is voluntary, however, it can be a product of conscious and intentional desire, just as it can be a product of unconscious motives. Unconscious motives are influenced by culture and tradition, as external factors, but also personal emotional states, as internal factors. Weber believes that fully conscious and intentional social action is just a borderline case and that people are much more likely to act instinctively or routinely. In that sense, every social action can be directed by several different factors: values, goals, emotions, and rationality. These factors are expressed in different proportions in any particular social action of an individual, but they are also shaped in different ways by the broader cultural and historical context of social action.

 The scientific study of social action requires the application of the cognitive method of „understanding“ (verstehen). Understanding is made possible by the fact that there is an identity between the subject (researcher) and the object (individual that is studied) of cognition, and therefore understanding has a higher degree of clarity and certainty compared to other forms and methods of cognition. The identity of the subject and the object of knowledge, in essence, means that scientists, as well as people whose work is the object of the study, have similar psychology. This is what enables scientists to understand the subjective meaning that social action has for the person who performs the social action. Understanding has both an intellectual and an emotional component. This means that we can understand the rational aspect of one's social actions, while at the same time understanding the emotional motives of that social action.

Understanding social action, as a sociological method, allows us to create causal explanations of individual events. On the other hand, creating causal explanations of complex processes requires the application of a comparative-historical method, while a thought experiment, also, serves as a research aid. A special type of sociological concept, in Weber's approach, is "ideal types". Ideal types represent abstract sociological concepts that allow us to classify the subjective side of human social action (both conscious and unconscious; both rational and emotional) according to their type into different categories. Ideal types can serve hypothetical-analytical understanding, or serve descriptive and historical explanations.

German sociologist Georg Simmel states that we understand other people as objects of our notions, creating them to some extent, using different categories. These categories represent the basis of sociological knowledge. There are three such categories: 1) abstraction of individual characteristics of persons in order to classify them into different general and a priori categories. Such categories are classes, races, professions, and the like. 2) Reserve of personality - the personal psychic life of an individual that cannot be reported from any general category, and that area is a subject of psychology and history. The two sides of the individual, social and personal, influence each other, the personality is a product of society, while, on the other hand, the personality determines the reaction of the individual to social influences. The end product of this relationship is the achievement of personality unity. 3) The third category enables the unification of the first two. Individuals have different roles and functions in society, so it is crucial for the normal functioning of society that individuals internalize awareness of the necessity of the roles they perform.

Simmel views society as an area of ​​psychological interaction between individuals and groups. In that sense, society, in essence, represents a process of association, where not every psychological interaction is at the same time an association. For the association to form, over time, from simple interaction, there must be unity around common values ​​and common goals. There are various forms by which unity is achieved around values ​​and goals: law achieves external goals by external means; morality achieves internal goals by internal means; honor achieves external goals by internal means. The law regulates the narrowest part of common values, while morality is the most comprehensive.

French sociologist and criminologist Gabriel Tarde used the process of imitation to explain society and thus came to methodological individualism which serves as the basis for his macro-social theory. Tarde explains social phenomena by permanent, socially shaped, psychological predispositions. Innovations occur in certain social groups and then spread further through social groups, and then to the whole society. If there were no social barriers, innovation would spread quickly and evenly, but in real situations, there are always barriers. The speed and patterns of the spread of innovation depend on these social circumstances. Individuals, themselves, are not able to resist this spread but fall under the influence of social groups with which they are connected by interactions. 

French sociologist Raymond Boudon was one of the main proponents of methodological individualism. According to Boudon, the focus of sociology should be the structure of the system of interaction. The basic atom of sociological analysis is the individual actor who operates within the wider social and institutional environment. Individual actors are not just people, but every collective unit that has the power of collective action. Although one part of the actions of the actors is based on the coercion of external elements, which that actor must accept as given, his behavior is not only a consequence of that coercion. The relationship of causality between the system of interaction and the behavior of an individual can be understood only if the behavior is viewed as a purposeful action.

In this sense, Boudon develops a utilitarian conception of action. However, his understanding of the rationality of the actors is limited. Sociology should abandon the vision of homo economicus because the behavior of individuals is never directed by perfect utilitarian rationality. The behavior of homo sociologicus, which is the counterpart of homo economicus, is also shaped by internalized habits and values. Although people act within social roles, they always retain some room for maneuvering. Besides, the rationality of people is never perfect. All this leads him to conclude that sociology should focus on the intentions of the actor, and not attribute perfect rationality to him.

Austrian sociologist Alfred Schütz believed that, of all the activities of consciousness, subjective meaning springs mostly from a hypothetical formulation by which the actor himself explains, to himself, his own motives. Schütz distinguishes between two types of motifs. He calls the first type of motives " in-order-to" motives ("Um-zu" -Motiven) which, from the point of view of the actor, refer to the future, that is, to the activities that the actor wants to achieve in the future. He calls the second group of motives "because" motives ("Weil" -Motiven), this group of motives refer to the past experiences of the actors that drove him to meet his needs in a specific way. The meaning that an actor gives to his own action depends on the time distance from those activities, because the actor since the action has already ended, reacts to the changes that his action has caused in the structures of meaning.

With his approach, Schütz wanted to provide a developmental theory of human action and to create a theoretical model of the life-world that would be able to encompass multiple levels of reality that are created through the process of subjective meaning and intersubjectivity. This theory of action seeks to provide answers to three key questions: 1) how is meaningfully oriented human action created ?; 2) how can people understand other people ?; and 3) how is common socially valid knowledge created? In the context of such a theory of human action, the subject of sociology would be: the conscious and meaningful activities of individuals through which they try to give meaning to reality and thus create and transform the social world (life-world).

A person's personal experience is not available to sociologists, because they cannot explain all the specifics of the process during which that person reconstructed his own experience. The social sciences can only build analytical models that use shared typologies (typologies that are common to all or a large number of actors) in order to understand the experience and motives of an actor. That method Schütz called „typification“. Schütz wanted to use the approach of methodological individualism, which takes the activities of individuals as the starting point of sociological analysis, in order to build a general theory of human action.

Schütz applied the ideal-typological method used by Weber to the process of typifying subjective knowledge and life-world. He introduced a methodological postulate which he called the "postulate of adequacy". This postulate argues that scientific typologies must be constructed to fit the structure of everyday typologies. Both ordinary actors and scientists must use the same life-world typology reference system. What sets scientists apart from ordinary actors is that they do not have the same pragmatic interest as the actors. Scientists must not impose their theoretical concepts on the object of study, that is, on the life-world, so they must come to knowledge by discovering already existing structures and typologies.

American sociologist James Coleman took the theoretical approach of microeconomics and the rational choice theory that he developed in order to create his methodological individualism. In his books Individual Interests and Collective Action (1986) and Fundations of Social Theory (1990b), Coleman applies the rational choice theory to the behavior of individual actors. He believes that this theoretical approach has an obvious advantage because it starts from the assumption that the behavior of actors depends on their interests and their power. On the other hand, this theory provides an excellent basis for explaining how large organizations are formed and how they operate, as well as how social exchange and collective action take place.

Coleman starts from elementary actions and relationships in order to build a macro theory. Actors have interests and they control some of the resources they use to pursue those interests. Some resources and events, however, are completely under someone else's control. To achieve interests, actors exchange control over resources and events that are less important to them, to gain control over things that are more important to them. At the middle level, which takes place between the activities of individual actors and macro structures, there are structures that mediate individual activities, the most important of which are: the system of authority, the system of trust, networks, norms, and organizations. Coleman applied this theory to the analysis of the collective decision-making process and the study of the functioning of the labor market. To further develop his model theoretically, Coleman also devised mathematical models.

Norwegian philosopher Jon Elster's approach is specific because in his scientific work, he combines analytical Marxism with the rational choice theory. He advocated methodological individualism, but he also accepted the existence of multiple selves. In Explaining Social Behavior (2007), he argues that individual choices should be the main theoretical starting point for the social sciences. Elster pays special attention to the relationship between rational and irrational behavior, mental states (emotions, beliefs, and attitudes) that precede choices in action, and the mechanisms of social interaction that lead to collective decision-making.

Literature: 

Boudon, Raymond. The Logic of Social Action (1981, in French 1979);

Coleman, James. Individual Interests and Collective Action (1986);

     -     Fundations of Social Theory (1990b);

Elster, Jon. Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences (2007);

Schütz, Alfred. Phenomenology of the Social World (1967, in German 1932);

Simmel, Georg. The Philosophy of Money (2004, in German 1900);

Tarde, Gabriel. Social Laws - an Outline of Sociology (1899, in French 1898b);  

Weber, Max. Collected Methodological Writings (Weber in Translation) (2014);

     -     Economy and Society: A New Translation (2019, in German 1922a).