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Behavioral sciences explore the cognitive processes within
organism In biology, an organism () is any living system that functions as an individual entity. All organisms are composed of cells (cell theory). Organisms are classified by taxonomy into groups such as multicellular animals, plants, and ...
s and the behavioral interactions between organisms in the natural world. It involves the systematic analysis and investigation of
human Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, ...
and
animal Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the Kingdom (biology), biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals Heterotroph, consume organic material, Cellular respiration#Aerobic respiration, breathe oxygen, are Motilit ...
behavior through
naturalistic observation Naturalistic observation, sometimes referred to as fieldwork, is a research methodology in numerous fields of science including ethology, anthropology, linguistics, the social sciences, and psychology, in which data are collected as they occur i ...
, controlled scientific
experimentation An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when ...
and
mathematical model A mathematical model is a description of a system using mathematical concepts and language. The process of developing a mathematical model is termed mathematical modeling. Mathematical models are used in the natural sciences (such as physics, ...
ing. It attempts to accomplish legitimate, objective conclusions through rigorous formulations and observation.Klemke, E. D., Hollinger, R., and Kline, A. D., (1980), Introduction to the book in 'Introductory Readings in the Philosophy of Science': Buffalo, New York, Prometheus Books p 11-12 Examples of behavioral sciences include
psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
, psychobiology,
anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...
,
economics Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and intera ...
, and cognitive science. Generally, behavioral science primarily has shown how human action often seeks to generalize about human behavior as it relates to society and its impact on society as a whole.


Categories

Behavioral sciences include two broad categories: neural ''Information sciences'' and social ''Relational sciences''. Information processing sciences deal with
information processing Information processing is the change (processing) of information in any manner detectable by an observer. As such, it is a process that ''describes'' everything that happens (changes) in the universe, from the falling of a rock (a change in posit ...
of stimuli from the social environment by cognitive entities in order to engage in decision making, social judgment and social perception for individual functioning and survival of organism in a social environment. These include
psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
, cognitive science,
behavior analysis Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual' ...
, psychobiology,
neural networks A neural network is a network or circuit of biological neurons, or, in a modern sense, an artificial neural network, composed of artificial neurons or nodes. Thus, a neural network is either a biological neural network, made up of biological ...
,
social cognition Social cognition is a sub-topic of various branches of psychology that focuses on how people process, store, and apply information about other people and social situations. It focuses on the role that cognitive processes play in social interactio ...
,
social psychology Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the r ...
,
semantic networks A semantic network, or frame network is a knowledge base that represents semantic relations between concepts in a network. This is often used as a form of knowledge representation. It is a directed or undirected graph consisting of vertices, ...
,
ethology Ethology is the scientific study of animal behaviour, usually with a focus on behaviour under natural conditions, and viewing behaviour as an evolutionarily adaptive trait. Behaviourism as a term also describes the scientific and objectiv ...
, and
social neuroscience Social neuroscience is an interdisciplinary field devoted to understanding the relationship between social experiences and biological systems. Humans are fundamentally a social species, rather than solitary. As such, '' Homo sapiens'' create eme ...
. On the other hand, Relational sciences deal with relationships, interaction, communication networks, associations and relational strategies or dynamics between organisms or cognitive entities in a social system. These include fields like sociological social psychology,
social networks A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for a ...
, dynamic network analysis, agent-based model, behavior analysis, and microsimulation.


Applications

Insights from several pure disciplines across behavioral sciences are explored by various applied disciplines and practiced in the context of everyday life and business. These applied disciplines of behavioral science include: organizational behavior,
operations research Operations research ( en-GB, operational research) (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a discipline that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve deci ...
, consumer behavior,
health Health, according to the World Health Organization, is "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity".World Health Organization. (2006)''Constitution of the World Health Organiza ...
, and media psychology. Consumer Behavior is the study of the decision making process consumers make when purchasing goods or services. It studies the way consumers recognize problems and discover solutions. Behavioral Science is applied in this study by examining the patterns consumers make when making purchases, the factors that influenced that decision, and how to take advantage of these patterns. Organizational Behavior is the application of Behavioral Science in a business setting. It studies what motivates employees, how to make them work more effectively, what influences this behavior, and how to use these patterns in order to achieve the company's goals. Managers often use organizational behavior to better lead their employees. Using insights from psychology and economics, behavioral science can be leveraged to understand how individuals make decisions regarding their health and ultimately reduce disease burden through interventions such as loss aversion, framing, defaults, nudges, and more. The University of Pennsylvania’
Center for Health Incentives & Behavioral Economics
uses behavioral science to inform health policy, improve health care delivery and increase healthy behavior in areas such as physical activity, vaccine uptake, medication adherence, smoking cessation, and food choice.


Differentiation from social sciences

The terms ''behavioral sciences'' and ''
social sciences Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of soci ...
'' are often used interchangeably. Regardless of these two broad areas being connected and study systematic processes of behavior, they do differ on their level of scientific analysis of various dimensions of behavior. Behavioral sciences abstract empirical data to investigate the decision processes and communication strategies within and between organisms in a social system. This characteristically involves fields like psychology, social neuroscience, ethology, and cognitive science. In contrast, social sciences provide a perceptive framework to study the processes of a social system through impacts of social organization on structural adjustment of the individual and of groups. They typically include fields like
sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of Empirical ...
,
economics Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and intera ...
,
public health Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals". Analyzing the det ...
,
anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...
,
demography Demography () is the statistics, statistical study of populations, especially human beings. Demographic analysis examines and measures the dimensions and Population dynamics, dynamics of populations; it can cover whole societies or groups ...
and
political science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...
. Many subfields of these disciplines test the boundaries between behavioral and social sciences. For example,
political psychology Political psychology is an interdisciplinary academic field, dedicated to understanding politics, politicians and political behavior from a psychological perspective, and psychological processes using socio-political perspectives. The relation ...
and
behavioral economics Behavioral economics studies the effects of psychological, cognitive, emotional, cultural and social factors on the decisions of individuals or institutions, such as how those decisions vary from those implied by classical economic theory. ...
use behavioral approaches, despite the predominant focus on systemic and institutional factors in the broader fields of political science and economics.


History

Behavioral Science began being studied predominantly in the early 1900s. One of the pioneers of the study is John B Watson. He began teaching as a professor of psychology at Johns Hopkins University in 1908. In 1915 he served as the president of the American Psychological Association (APA). Some of his methods in studying behavioral science have been controversial. One of these instances was the "Little Albert" experiment. This experiment was to condition a child to fear a white rat. The fear also translated to other furry white things. This was done by associating the objects with a loud clanging noise. A point that drew controversy is that the child was never de-conditioned. In 1957 he received the APA's Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions. In 2009, behavioral scientists conducted a report on loss aversion (Gächter et al., 2009). The research concluded that the pain of losing is psychologically twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining. Behavioral scientists use loss aversion now in studying human behavior. It has helped show why in some instances penalty frames are more effective than reward frames in motivating human behavior.


See also

*
Behaviour Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems or artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as wel ...
**
Human behavior Human behavior is the potential and expressed capacity ( mentally, physically, and socially) of human individuals or groups to respond to internal and external stimuli throughout their life. Kagan, Jerome, Marc H. Bornstein, and Richard M. L ...
*
List of academic disciplines An academic discipline or field of study is a branch of knowledge, taught and researched as part of higher education. A scholar's discipline is commonly defined by the university faculties and learned societies to which they belong and the ac ...
* Science ** Fields of science ***
Natural science Natural science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and repeatab ...
s ***
Social science Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of soc ...
s **
History of science The history of science covers the development of science from ancient times to the present. It encompasses all three major branches of science: natural, social, and formal. Science's earliest roots can be traced to Ancient Egypt and Meso ...
**
History of technology The history of technology is the history of the invention of tools and techniques and is one of the categories of world history. Technology can refer to methods ranging from as simple as stone tools to the complex genetic engineering and info ...


References


Selected bibliography

*
George Devereux Georges Devereux (born György Dobó; 13 September 1908 – 28 May 1985) was a Hungarian-French ethnologist and psychoanalyst, often considered the founder of ethnopsychiatry.
: ''From anxiety to method in the behavioral sciences'', The Hague, Paris. Mouton & Co, 1967 * * E.D. Klemke, R. Hollinger & A.D. Kline, (eds.) (1980). ''Introductory Readings in the
Philosophy of Science Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultim ...
''. Prometheus Books, New York. *
Neil J. Smelser Neil Joseph Smelser (1930–2017) was an American sociologist who served as professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He was an active researcher from 1958 to 1994. His research was on collective behavior, sociological the ...
&
Paul B. Baltes Paul B. Baltes (18 June 1939 – 7 November 2006) was a German psychologist whose broad scientific agenda was devoted to establishing and promoting the life-span orientation of human development. He was also a theorist in the field of the psycholog ...
, eds. (2001). ''
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences The ''International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences'', originally edited by Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes, is a 26-volume work published by Elsevier. It has some 4,000 signed articles (commissioned by around 50 subject edit ...
'', 26 v. Oxford: Elsevier.


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Behavioral Sciences Cognitive science