The 5 types of rationality according to Max Weber

Are human beings truly rational creatures? Cognitive psychology has been convincing us for decades that this is the case. What’s more, as Max Weber, father of sociology, proposed to us, there are even different types of rationality that allow us to process reality from different logical and objective perspectives.

However, in recent decades, as we well know, we have begun to place attention in the field of emotions. Thus, figures such as the neurologist Antonio Damasio They tell us that people are actually emotional beings who reason..

Both spheres, reason and emotion, make us wonderful analysts when making great decisions and transforming our reality based on exceptional ideas and thoughts.

Likewise, it is worth highlighting that We all have the ability to think logically and analytically. What’s more, this ability is what distinguishes us from animals and what has led to our evolutionary success. Executive abilities such as reasoning, comparing, deciding, correcting, planning or regulating one’s own behavior are what have brought us to the point where we are.

Understanding how people reason will undoubtedly allow us to know ourselves much better.

The types of rationality according to Max Weber: which one do you identify with?

Max Weber was born at the end of the 20th century and continues to be a reference in many aspects. He was a great intellectual, a controversial man who stood out strongly in the field of philosophy, economics, politics, history and, above all, sociology.

He also emerged as a liberal and pro-democrat, someone especially concerned about the anti-Semitic movements that already appeared in his daily life just before the Second World War broke out. Thus, one of his concerns throughout his career was to understand why people interacted in certain ways and not others.

Its objective was to understand what was behind social action and for this he stipulated something interesting: we were all governed by 5 types of rationality.

1. Rationality that seeks an end (instrumentalization)

If we had to define rationality we would do it in a very simple way. It is a behavior from which to control basic instincts, postpone gratifications and be able to achieve something very specific in the short and long term.

We reason not only to adapt to the environment. What we also intend is to achieve something from it, benefit and gain well-being.

Therefore, one of the most basic and elemental types of rationality is instrumental. It is about the one that It makes it easier for us to interact with other people and contexts to achieve something concrete.

2. The rationality that is carried away by emotions (affective)

Max Weber died in 1920, however, already at that time he knew very well the impact that emotions have on social behavior.

People are not machines that react to stimuli.. We are not entities that reason in a cold and logical way to take advantage of that world and profit from it.

Our emotions and feelings govern our own behavior in many cases. This means that, at times, many of our decisions are more impulsive than logical or that our way of reacting to stimuli is somewhat oversized.

3. The beliefs that determine us, conditioned rationality

Among the different types of rationality we find that mediated by one’s own beliefs. We would love to always apply a type of objective thinking, free of prejudices, untainted by cognitive biases and unrelated to social conditioning. However, our beliefs are there, permeating everything we are, feel and think.

Something like this can make us, for example, think that it is not good to take our children to a public school because the education is mediocre or, on the contrary, that it is not good to take them to a private school because they can be indoctrinated.

That is to say, Sometimes, beliefs are barbed wire fences that limit logical reasoning. The one capable of seeing things objectively, being able to analyze each factor calmly, without conditioning, prejudices or irrational ideas.

4. Conventional thinking

Conventional reasoning comes to us through the social context in which we are born, from which we learn and that delimits us daily. Max Weber was very aware of how culture and traditions mediate our way of thinking..

Whether we want it or not, we are the product of our education, of what society inoculates us, of the fashions that surround us and of what we see every day.

It is not easy to put aside conventional thinking to reason more freely. However, knowing that among the different types of reasoning it is influenced by our environment should invite us to keep it in mind.

5. Our reasoning is an eclectic combination of all of the above

As we can well deduce, none of us think only emotionally or instrumentally. The type of approach we use in our daily lives is a combination of all the typologies mentioned above. We make decisions based on emotions, conventions and deep-rooted beliefs.

We are the product of each experience, education received and scenario in which we move daily. All of this is impregnated in our ability to decide, create and transform our reality. We are, after all, creatures immersed in a social environment guided by emotions and needs.

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