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Behavioural Sciences
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Behavioral science is the systematic analysis and investigation of human and
animal behaviour through controlled and naturalistic observation, and
disciplined scientific experimentation. It attempts to accomplish legitimate,
objective conclusions through rigorous formulations and observation. Examples
of behavioural sciences include psychology, psychobiology, criminology and
cognitive science.
Difference between behavioural sciences and social sciences
The term behavioural sciences is often confused with the term social sciences.
Though these two broad areas are interrelated and study systematic processes of
behaviour, they differ on their level of scientific analysis of various dimensions
of behaviour.
Behavioural sciences abstract empirical data to investigate the decision
processes and communication strategies within and between organisms in a
social system. This involves fields like psychology, social neuroscience and
cognitive science.
In contrast, social sciences provide a perceptive framework to study the
processes of a social system through impacts of social organisation on structural
adjustment of the individual and of groups. They typically include fields like
sociology, economics, public health, anthropology, demography and political
science.
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Obviously, however, many subfields of these disciplines cross the boundaries of
behavioral and social. For example, political psychology and behavioral
economics use behavioral approaches, despite the predominant focus on
systemic and institutional factors in the broader fields of political science and
economics.
Categories of behavioral sciences
Behavioral sciences can be divided into two academic fields: neural
(information sciences) and social (relational sciences).
Information processing sciences deal with information processing of stimuli
from the social environment by cognitive entities, to engage in decision making,
social judgment and social perception for individual functioning and survival of
organism
in
a
social
environment.
Psychology,
cognitive
science,
psychobiology, neural networks, social cognition, social psychology, semantic
networks, ethology and social neuroscience are classified as information
processing sciences.
On the other hand, relational sciences deals with relationships, interaction,
communication networks, associations and relational strategies or dynamics
among organisms or cognitive entities in a social system. sociological social
psychology, social networks, dynamic network analysis, agent-based model and
microsimulation are classified as relational sciences.
Theories of Behavioral Psychology
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Classical Conditioning
A theorist that contributed a theory to behavioral science is Ivan P. Pavlov. He
was a Russian psychologist born in 1849. In 1883 acquired a medical degree
from the Imperial Medical-Surgical Academy. He then received a Nobel Prize
for his extensive research of the digestive glands’ physiology at the age of 55 in
1904. In the United States the majority of psychologists did not recognize
Pavlov for all his work, instead they only gave consideration to his idea of
classical conditioning.
Classical conditioning was discovered by Ivan P. Pavlov in 1927. Classical
conditioning is accompanying a specific stimuli with a certain response which is
learned over a period of time. Pavlov came to the discovery of this theory
through an experiment he carried out which involved his dog and its reaction to
their food. Pavlov had noticed that his dog would salivate whenever they would
smell the food or see him coming. Intrigued by the connection between the food
and the salivation, he chose to identify why this was happening. He concluded
that the dog salivating was an unconditioned reflex, meaning it is something
that they are born with and it is not learned, and therefore he wondered whether
he could pair the behavior of salivation with any other stimuli.
He began the experiment where he would try to recreate the connection between
the food and the salivation with a connection between a conditioned stimuli and
a conditioned response. When he was going to feed his dog he would ring a bell
and as the food would come into sight the dog started to produce saliva. After
doing this for a certain period of time, the dog would pair the sound with the
food which resulted in the dog providing a conditioned response. Over time the
dog learned that whenever the bell rang food would be provided therefore when
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the bell was rung it would begin to produce saliva. By utilizing the process of
classical conditioning, Pavlov managed to teach his dog to learn the pairing of
the bell and his production of saliva.
Operant Conditioning
Another contributor to behavioral psychology was Burrhus Frederic Skinner,
also known as B. F. Skinner, who created the theory of operant conditioning.
Skinner was born in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania in 1904 and was one of two
children. Once he graduated high school, he attended Hamilton College where
he was an English major, eventually earning a degree in writing. He began his
career in writing, but felt as though he had nothing to offer and decided to end
his pursuit of a career as a writer. This led him to return to school. He attended
the Psychology Graduate Program at Harvard, receiving his Ph.D in 1931. With
a doctorate degree he continued in the field of psychology, in 1945 becoming
the Chair of Psychology at Indiana University. Three years later in 1948 he
decided to return to Harvard when he was offered a job as a professor of
psychology.
Operant conditioning is a theory that falls under operant condition. It is
composed of the idea that if behavior is reciprocated with a certain
consequence, whether it is a positive or a negative reinforcement, the behavior
is more likely to be repeated and become constant. A consequence is a reaction
to a behavior which serves as a reinforcement. Although both a positive
reinforcement and a negative reinforcement will encourage the repetition of the
specific behavior. A positive reinforcement is a consequence that provides you
with a good feeling that then encourages the certain behavior, which led to this
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positive reinforcement to be repeated until it becomes a learned behavior that
you do unconscientiously.
For example, if you eat a chocolate and you find it to taste very good then you
will most likely eat another chocolate whether it is immediately after or some
other time. In the given event, the pleasing taste of the chocolate was the
positive reinforcement and the act of eating it was the behavior that was
reinforced. This scenario can also be altered to show the meaning of a negative
reinforcement. A negative reinforcement is a consequence that causes
discomfort leading to the aversion of the behavior that led to that consequence.
For example, say you eat the chocolate and you find it to be disgusting, then
that will lead you to avoid eating that chocolate making the taste of the
chocolate the negative reinforcement and the avoidance of eating that chocolate
again the behavior.
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