ABSTRACT
The view that the human being is a purposeful actor runs through Coleman's work (see his Individual Interests and Collective Action , 1986). In his Foundations of Social Theory (Coleman, 1990a) this notion takes centre stage. To justify his choice of theoretical outlook, Coleman considers possible objections to it at some length. One of them stems from a large body of research in psychology which suggests that people frequently make choices and judgments that appear to be irrational. Thus they often seem to make inconsistent decisions or to break fundamental rules of normative choice in some other way (cf. Coleman, 1990a, in particular pp. 14–15, 505–6). Obviously, the image of man that such characteristics suggest does not sit well with an approach to social theory which assumes a rational actor as its analytical building block. Coleman recognizes this, and after discussing the general nature of the problem, notes, without elaborating, that while the deviations from rationality demonstrated in the psychological literature are serious, they do not substantially affect the social theory that he presents (1990a:505).
