Durkheim would say that individual, purely personal feelings or actions are not social facts , because they do not exist outside the individual nor exert coercive power over others.

What Durkheim Calls “Social Facts”

Durkheim defines social facts as:

  • Ways of acting, thinking, and feeling that are external to the individual.
  • They exercise a coercive power over individuals (pressure to conform, sanctions if you disobey).
  • They are general in a society, not limited to one single person (e.g., laws, norms, institutions).

Examples of social facts:

  • Laws, moral rules, and religious obligations.
  • Institutions like family, education, and state.
  • Social rates such as suicide rate, birth rate, crime rate (these show “social currents” beyond individual motives).

What Is Not a Social Fact

Anything that is:

  • Entirely inside a single individual’s mind or body (a private emotion, a personal habit), and
  • Does not impose a general, external constraint on others

is not a social fact for Durkheim.

So, in a typical multiple-choice question framed as:

According to Durkheim, which of the following is not a social fact?

The correct option will be something like:

  • “An individual’s private feeling of sadness”
  • “A person’s unique habit that no one else follows”
  • “A purely biological reflex of a single individual”

These are psychological or biological facts, not social facts, because they are not external, coercive, and general in the way Durkheim requires.

Quick exam tip

When you see options:

  • Laws, customs, religion, collective morality → these are social facts.
  • Private feelings, individual motives, personal preferences → these are not social facts.

If you paste the exact options you are given, a more precise answer can be pinned to the correct choice. Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.