Verstehen in Sociology: Empathetic Understanding

Origin & Thinkers

Verstehen began with the philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey (Dilthey, 1977).

Max Weber was a central figure in shaping Verstehen into a core sociological tool.

He argued that it was difficult, if not impossible, to fully explain social behavior using only the standard scientific methods applied in the natural sciences.

Such methods, he believed, overlooked the powerful role of culture, meaning, and values in shaping human action (Oakes, 1977; Walker, 2011).

Weber’s 1904 classic shows the approach in action. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Weber, 1930), he examined certain Protestant beliefs. Calvinist ideas about work, discipline, and wealth, he argued, helped lay the groundwork for modern capitalism.

To grasp this link, one must interpret the subjective meanings and motivations that guided people’s actions. Observing outcomes is not enough.

For Weber, sociology had a twofold task. It had to interpret the meaning of social action. From that, it had to give a causal explanation of how the action proceeds and the effects it produces (Weber, 1936, 1947).

This required sociologists to imaginatively place themselves in the actor’s position in order to uncover the values, beliefs, and attitudes that underpinned behavior (Tucker, 1965).

Weber treated interpretation and causal explanation as partners, not rivals (Ekström, 1992).

Key Characteristics of the Interpretive Tradition

• Focus on Meanings and Motives: Interpretivists are primarily concerned with the subjective meanings people attach to their behaviour. The goal is to understand individuals’ motives and perspectives, rather than just recording outward actions.

• Qualitative Methods: This approach favours qualitative research techniques such as in-depth interviews, participant observation, and ethnography. These methods reveal the symbolic worlds people inhabit. For example, a symbolic interactionist, drawing on Weber’s ideas, might use participant observation at a political rally. They could see how protesters use signs, chants, and symbols to communicate (MacCannell, 1986).

• Emphasis on Interaction: Interpretive sociology stresses that analysing everyday interactions is essential for understanding meaning. By examining face-to-face exchanges and symbolic communication, researchers uncover how reality itself is socially constructed.

Types of Verstehen

Although Weber did not formalize a rigid typology, he distinguished between two complementary forms of understanding that operate within interpretive sociology.

These reflect different levels of depth in grasping human action:

• Direct observational understanding (Aktuelles Verstehen): the raw description of social life. It answers the “what” of an action.
• Empathetic or motivational understanding (Erklärendes Verstehen): the insight into motives and meanings. It answers the “why.”

Together, these two dimensions transform sociological data into a fuller understanding of social action. They link visible behavior with the inner worlds that drive it.

1. Direct Observational Understanding (Aktuelles Verstehen)

This is the immediate recognition of what someone is doing, simply by observing their behavior.

It answers the “what” of an action.

For example, if we see someone chopping wood, we can directly understand that the act of chopping is taking place.

In sociological research, this aligns with field observation or recording interactions, such as watching teacher–pupil exchanges in a classroom or noting the visible features of a protest.

While essential as a first step, this level stops short of uncovering the reasons or motives behind the behavior.

2. Empathetic or Motivational Understanding (Erklärendes Verstehen)

This is the deeper level of interpretation that seeks to answer the “why” behind an action.

It involves uncovering the subjective meanings, intentions, and values that guide behavior, requiring the researcher to adopt the actor’s perspective.

Paul Willis’s study of working-class boys shows the difference. It went beyond observing classroom rebellion to interpret why they rejected school norms, linking their actions to cultural identity and future aspirations.

Weber’s own work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, illustrates this approach by showing how Calvinist beliefs about work and salvation shaped economic conduct.

Verstehen in Sociological Research

The Verstehen approach is foundational to anti-positivism. This philosophy posits that social researchers should strive for subjectivity to accurately represent social phenomena.

This led to research methods aimed not at generalising or predicting, as is traditional in science, but at systematically gaining an in-depth understanding of social worlds.

Sociologists who follow this approach are often called Interpretivists.

They believe that to understand human behaviour, one must see the world through the eyes of the individuals being studied.

People give meaning to their actions and define situations in particular ways. These interpretations guide their behaviour (Outhwaite, 1976).

Discovering and interpreting these subjective meanings is therefore essential for a true sociological understanding.

1. Challenging Positivist and Structuralist Approaches

Positivist sociologists argue that research should mirror the natural sciences, relying on statistics and quantifiable measures to identify patterns.

However, Verstehen highlights the limits of this method. Official statistics often reflect social constructions rather than objective realities.

For instance, crime rates are shaped by decisions made by victims, police, and courts, not just by actual criminal acts.

Structuralist perspectives such as functionalism and traditional Marxism also risk overlooking human agency by portraying individuals as passive products of social systems.

Verstehen offers a counterweight. Research it inspires, like Paul Willis’s study of working-class boys, shows that people actively interpret and respond to their circumstances.

Willis found that students created an anti-school subculture rather than simply accepting their destined roles, underscoring the importance of understanding lived meanings.

2. Providing a Basis for Qualitative Research

Verstehen underpins qualitative methods such as in-depth interviews and participant observation, which are designed to capture the richness of social life.

These methods allow researchers to access the insider’s perspective:

• In-depth interviews give respondents the freedom to express their views in their own terms, making it possible to uncover subtle motives and experiences.
  
  Nicola Ingram’s study of working-class boys, for example, relied on interviews to reveal how students interpreted the cultural tensions between their home backgrounds and school expectations.

• Participant observation places researchers directly into a social world, offering insights that surveys or experiments might miss.
  Classic ethnographic studies of classrooms, gangs, or police culture illustrate how this method reveals the day-to-day meanings that shape social interaction.

3. Enhancing Validity and Depth

A key contribution of Verstehen-driven research is its emphasis on validity (the accuracy and truthfulness of data).

By prioritizing meaning over measurement, interpretive approaches generate detailed, context-rich accounts that capture the lived experiences of participants.

Such insights are often invisible in numerical datasets but are crucial for understanding how people navigate their social worlds.

Venkatesh’s Chicago housing-project study shows why this matters. His questionnaire could record household composition and income, but it missed almost all of what organised daily life there. It failed not because it was administered badly, but because its categories were the wrong ones.

Classic Examples of Verstehen

The practice of Verstehen requires researchers to go beyond detached observation and instead immerse themselves in the perspectives of those they study.

In sociology, this often means using qualitative methods such as in-depth interviews, participant observation, and ethnography.

Below are some key studies that illustrate how researchers have “put themselves in others’ shoes” to uncover the subjective meanings that shape social action.

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1. Dunne & Gazeley (2008): Understanding Teacher Perceptions

Dunne and Gazeley investigated how teachers’ assumptions about pupils were influenced by social class.

They relied heavily on in-depth interviews with teachers, supported by classroom observations carried out by trainee teachers embedded in the schools.

• Why it shows Verstehen: Teachers may hesitate to discuss class bias openly due to a desire to appear professional.
  
  By building rapport and creating a safe conversational environment, the researchers gained access to teachers’ unspoken assumptions and anxieties.
  
  Observations of teacher–pupil interactions allowed them to compare expressed views with actual behaviour, strengthening validity.

• Insight gained: The study revealed that teachers’ perceptions were shaped by class-based stereotypes, often affecting how they disciplined and supported students.
  
  These findings highlighted the role of subjective interpretation in classroom dynamics.

• Limitation: The sample was a small set of deliberately chosen schools. What generalises is the mechanism the study reveals, not necessarily the size of the bias.

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2. Nicola Ingram (2009): Class Identity in Schools

Ingram examined the experiences of working-class boys in two different types of schools (one grammar, one secondary).

She used group discussions followed by individual interviews to capture both shared meanings and personal reflections.

• Why it shows Verstehen: Ingram’s insider status as a local teacher who knew the boys and their families allowed her to develop deep trust.
  
  This reduced barriers between researcher and subjects, making the boys more willing to share honest insights about identity and belonging.

• Insight gained: Ingram uncovered the tensions boys faced when navigating grammar school expectations while maintaining working-class identities.
  
  Their accounts showed education was not simply imposed on them; they actively interpreted it through the lens of their social backgrounds.

• Limitation: Her closeness to the families raises a reflexivity question: how far did existing relationships shape what the boys disclosed? The group-then-individual design helps by comparing a public account with a private one.

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3. Paul Willis (1977): The ‘Lads’ and Counter-School Culture

Willis’s landmark ethnography Learning to Labour followed twelve working-class boys (“the lads”) in a Midlands school, combining participant observation, group discussions, and interviews over a prolonged period.

• Why it shows Verstehen: Willis immersed himself in the boys’ everyday world, in both classrooms and leisure spaces, to experience school life from their perspective.
  
  This allowed him to understand how they created meaning around resistance.

• Insight gained: Willis demonstrated that the lads were not passive victims of schooling but active agents who constructed an anti-school culture as a way of asserting identity and autonomy.
  
  Their rejection of authority was meaningful to them, even though it ultimately reproduced their working-class position in the labour market.

• Limitation: Twelve boys in one school and one historical moment cannot show how far the lads’ culture generalises. Willis’s sympathy for the group also raises concern about a researcher’s closeness shading into advocacy.

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4. Laud Humphreys (1970): The Tearoom Trade

Humphreys investigated anonymous sexual encounters between men in public toilets, using covert participant observation by adopting the role of a “watchqueen” (lookout).

He later tracked some participants through licence-plate numbers, interviewing them under false pretences.

• Why it shows Verstehen: Humphreys entered the social setting by adopting a recognized insider role, which gave him access to interactions that outsiders could not have witnessed.
  
  He sought to understand the participants’ meanings and unspoken rules, such as signals for initiating contact.

• Insight gained: His study revealed that many of the men engaging in these encounters were married and identified as heterosexual, challenging stereotypes of homosexuality at the time.

• Ethical issue: While rich in insight, Humphreys’ methods raised serious concerns about deception, consent, and privacy. This highlights the tension between methodological depth and ethical responsibility.

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5. Harold Garfinkel (1967): Breaching Experiments

As the founder of ethnomethodology, Garfinkel used “breaching experiments” to reveal the invisible rules of everyday life.

He asked his students to deliberately violate social norms, such as treating their parents’ home as if they were paying tenants.

• Why it shows Verstehen: By acting as “outsiders” to everyday norms, the students experienced firsthand how deeply ingrained expectations structure ordinary interactions.
  
  Observing people’s shocked reactions made the tacit rules visible.

• Insight gained: The experiments showed that social order is sustained through shared, taken-for-granted understandings.
  
  By “breaking” reality, Garfinkel was able to reveal the fragile, negotiated nature of social norms that usually remain hidden.

• Limitation: These were demonstrations, not a systematic sample, so reactions may partly reflect the students’ own staging. Deceiving unwitting parents, shopkeepers, and strangers also raises ethical questions.

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6. Sudhir Venkatesh (2008): Gang Leader for a Day

Venkatesh, a graduate student, initially attempted to study life in a Chicago housing project with a questionnaire but soon realised this approach was inadequate.

He spent around seven years living in the community and shadowing members of the Black Kings gang, combining participant observation with informal conversations and immersion in everyday life.

• Why it shows Verstehen: Venkatesh abandoned detached, survey-based methods in favour of experiencing the world through residents’ and gang members’ eyes.
  
  By embedding himself in their routines, he gained an insider’s understanding of their relationships, risks, and survival strategies.
• Insight gained: His research revealed the complex social organisation of the community, including informal economies, gang leadership structures, and reciprocal ties between residents and gang members.
  
  These insights would have been invisible through questionnaires or quantitative data alone.
• Limitation: One housing project, one gang, and one period cannot show how far the findings generalise. His closeness to gang leadership also raised ethical questions about a researcher becoming an insider.

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7. William Foote Whyte (1943): Street Corner Society

Whyte’s classic ethnography explored the lives of Italian-American young men in Boston’s North End.

He lived in the neighbourhood for several years, spending time with gangs and community groups, often “just hanging around” and listening.

• Why it shows Verstehen: By immersing himself in the rhythms of Cornerville life, Whyte was able to learn the answers to questions he would not have known to ask in formal interviews.
  
  His prolonged presence and rapport with informants like “Doc” allowed him to see the group’s world from within.
• Insight gained: Whyte uncovered the importance of friendship networks, loyalty, and informal leadership in structuring neighbourhood life.
  
  His study showed how these social ties governed behaviour in ways that outsiders could easily overlook.
• Limitation: Whyte relied heavily on a small number of informants. Their positions and interests may have shaped which parts of neighbourhood life he could see.

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The Broader Lesson

Across these studies, researchers practised Verstehen by immersing themselves in social worlds, building trust with participants, and interpreting meanings from the inside.

Whether through rapport, immersion, covert roles, or norm violations, these methods all highlight that sociology cannot be reduced to external observation alone. It must uncover the subjective experiences that drive human action.

Each route buys access at a cost:

• Rapport and insider status: closeness between researcher and participants can become too comfortable (Dunne & Gazeley; Ingram).
• Prolonged immersion: the researcher’s sympathies can bend toward the group being studied (Willis; Venkatesh; Whyte).
• Covert or deceptive access: it reaches otherwise unreachable insight, at a real ethical cost (Humphreys; Garfinkel).

The methods that best uncover subjective meaning are also the hardest to defend by natural-science standards of validity, generalisability, and ethics.

Verstehen vs Durkheim and Popper

Verstehen is easiest to grasp by contrast with two rival traditions. Each challenges a different part of the interpretive claim.

Durkheim: Social Facts as Things

Émile Durkheim argued that social facts should be studied “as things” (Durkheim, 1982). Social facts are the shared beliefs, laws, customs, and institutions of a society. Their causes lie in other social facts, not minds.

On this view, sociology is scientific once the observer sets aside common-sense understanding. Researchers use observable indicators instead. These include rates, correlations, and institutional records.

Durkheim’s studies of suicide rates and the division of labour took exactly this approach. They traced variation in a social outcome to variation in an external social condition, not to what individuals believed about their own conduct.

The disagreement with Weber is genuine. Durkheim did not deny that individuals have motives. He denied that explanations should be built from them.

Two people can perform what looks like the same meaningful act for entirely different private reasons. Yet the social fact being explained, such as a suicide rate, stays the same.

Weber’s approach inverts this priority. The meaning an actor attaches to an action is indispensable to explaining it, not noise to be averaged away in aggregate statistics.

Popper: Why Empathy Is Not a Test

Karl Popper raised a different challenge. An intuitive understanding of an actor’s motives, he argued, cannot by itself work as a scientific explanation (Popper, 1957). Feeling that you understand someone is not a test of whether you are right.

A researcher can feel sure of an insight and still be wrong. Nothing inside the Verstehen method flags that error.

For Popper, an explanation earns scientific status only when it yields a claim precise enough to be checked against evidence and, in principle, shown to be false.

An account that only has to feel intelligible risks explaining any outcome after the fact. It never rules anything out in advance.

Popper did not conclude that grasping an actor’s reasons is worthless. He proposed “situational logic” instead. This reconstructs the logic of the actor’s situation and treats that reconstruction as a testable hypothesis about what a rational agent in that position would do.

The dispute is therefore narrower than it looks. Popper conceded that meaning matters. The question is whether meaning can enter an explanation without an untestable step.

Turco and Zuckerman (2017) were still answering that charge six decades later (see Contemporary Research below).

Criticisms of Verstehen

The main criticisms of Verstehen are that it is too subjective, focuses too much on small-scale interactions, and lacks the scientific rigour of quantitative approaches.

1. Neglect of Macro-Level Social Structures

Critics from functionalist and Marxist traditions argue that Verstehen looks too closely at individual meanings and overlooks the powerful social forces that shape behaviour.

• Functionalist critique: Functionalists, following Durkheim, stress the importance of social facts: external forces like laws, norms, and the collective conscience.
  
  They argue that by focusing on personal meanings, Verstehen ignores how these wider structures constrain individuals.

• Marxist critique: Marxists see society as shaped by class conflict and ruling class ideology. From this view, subjective meanings are not always “real” but often shaped by false consciousness (a worldview shaped by the dominant ideology rather than people’s own interests).
  
  Verstehen risks taking people’s explanations at face value, without recognising the deeper power structures and inequalities influencing them.

2. Lack of Scientific Objectivity and Rigour

Positivist critics argue that sociology should mirror the natural sciences by being objective, reliable, and generalisable.

• Subjectivity vs. objectivity: Because Verstehen depends on the researcher’s empathy and interpretation, findings may be biased and hard to replicate.
  
  For example, participant observation often relies on the researcher’s personal qualities, reducing reliability.

• Validity and generalisability: Small-scale, qualitative studies may provide depth but cannot easily be applied to wider populations.
  
  There is also a risk of researchers “going native,” losing objectivity by identifying too closely with their subjects.

• Ignoring deterministic forces: Positivist and structuralist approaches argue that behaviour is shaped by external forces (like economic systems, institutions, or even environmental stimuli in psychology).
  
  From this perspective, focusing on subjective meanings misses the larger forces that actually determine behaviour.

Contemporary Research

Recent scholarship returns to Verstehen’s two most exposed weak points: whether it counts as scientific explanation, and whether its two-level distinction travels beyond sociology.

Does Verstehen Count as Scientific Explanation?

Watts (2014), a physicist-turned-sociologist, argued that sociological explanations rely on unacknowledged common sense. Researchers, he said, confuse how satisfying a story feels with whether it is causally valid.

On this view, sociology would eventually have to choose between telling satisfying stories and doing science.

Turco and Zuckerman (2017) replied in the same journal.

This was a conceptual reply, not an experiment, so it cannot be replicated like a laboratory study. It suits a claim about what Verstehen is for. Its place in a leading general sociology journal shows the question is still live.

Does the Two-Level Distinction Travel Beyond Sociology?

Aragona (2019) compared Weber’s methodological writings with the psychiatrist Karl Jaspers’s foundational textbook of psychopathology (the study of mental disorders). The study is a historical analysis of how each thinker built “understanding” into a working method.

Both wanted a rigorous method of understanding that did not reduce people to causes. They built it differently.

Weber blended causal explanation with interpretation in a more rationalistic framework. Jaspers kept Dilthey’s sharper split between natural-science explanation and humanistic understanding, with stronger empathic content.

The distinction is therefore not a teaching shortcut. Jaspers carried a version of it into psychiatric diagnosis.

Clinical training still separates a reaction that is psychologically “understandable” from a process that can only be causally “explained”, such as the onset of a psychotic break.

As a study of texts, it cannot show that researchers reliably achieve empathetic understanding in practice. It shows the idea is rigorous enough to be worth carefully distinguishing from a neighbouring discipline’s rival version.

Neither study is an experiment. Neither could settle the older functionalist, Marxist, or positivist worries with new data. Together they show that Verstehen has not been abandoned as pre-scientific. It remains an actively contested, actively refined concept.

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