In sociology, social facts are the values, cultural norms, and social structures which transcend the individual and are capable of exercising a social constraint.
French sociologist [Emilie Durkheim] defined the term and argued that the discipline of Sociology should be understood as the empirical study of social facts. For Durkheim, social facts "consist of manners of acting, thinking and feeling external to the individual, which are invested with a coercive power by virtue of which they exercise control over him