  At the same time, it is worth noting that too much emphasis on the action-theoretic perspective can generate its own fallacies. One of the most powerful resources of sociological inquiry is precisely the capacity to objectivate and aggregate social behavior using large-scale data collection and analysis. The analysis of social phenomena at this level can often generate results that are counterintuitive from an action-theoretic perspective. Too much emphasis on the action-theoretic perspective, because of its proximity to common sense, can generate false assumptions about what must be going on at the aggregate level. As Arthur Stinchcombe observes in his classic work, Constructing Social Theories, constructing “demographic explanations” of social phenomena often requires a break with our everyday interpretive perspective. Too much focus upon individual attitudes can lead us to make illegitimate generalizations about the characteristics of these attitudes in groups (1968, 67). For example, the stability of a belief in a population only very rarely depends upon its stability in individuals. There can be considerable volatility at the individual level, but so long as it runs with equal force both ways, its prevalence in the population will be unchanged (68). If ten per cent of the population loses their faith in God every year, yet ten per cent have a conversion experience, then there will be no change in the overall level of religiosity. This may seem obvious, but as Stinchcombe observes, it is “intuitively difficult for many people” (67), and inattention to it is a common source of fallacious sociological thinking.