Behavioural sciences

Behavioural science (or Behavioral science) is a term that encompasses all the disciplines that
explore the activities of and interactions among organisms in the natural world. It involves the
systematic analysis and investigation of human and animalbehaviour through controlled and
naturalistic experimental observations and rigorous formulations. (E. D. Klemke, R. Hollinger,
and A. D. Kline, (ed) (1980))
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 essentially
investigate the decision processes and communication strategies within and between organisms
in a social system. This involves fields like psychology and social neuroscience, among others.
In contrast, Social sciences study the structural-level processes of a social system and its impact
on social processes and social organization. They typically include fields
like sociology, economics, history, public health, anthropology, and political science (E. D.
Klemke, R. Hollinger and A. D. Kline, eds., 1988).
Categories of behavioural sciences
Behavioural sciences includes two broad categories: Neural-Decision sciences and Social-
Communication sciences. Decision sciences involves those disciplines primarily dealing with the
decision processes and individual functioning used in the survival of organism in a social
environment. These include psychology, cognitive science, organization
theory, psychobiology, management science, operations research (not to be confused with
business administration) and social neuroscience.
On the other hand, Communication sciences include those fields which study the communication
strategies used by organisms and its dynamics between organisms in an environment. These
include fields like Anthropology, Organizational behaviour, Organization
studies, Sociology and Social networks.

In psychology
Human behavior (and that of other organisms and mechanisms)
can be common, unusual, acceptable, or unacceptable. Humans
evaluate the acceptability of behavior using social norms and
regulate behavior by means of social control. In sociology,
behavior is considered as having no meaning, being not
directed at other people and thus is the most basic
human action. Animal behavior is studied incomparative
psychology, ethology, behavioral ecology and sociobiology.
Behavior became an important construct in early 20th century
Psychology with the advent of the paradigm known
subsequently as "behaviorism". Behaviorism was a reaction
against so-called "faculty" psychology which purported to see
into or understand the mind without the benefit of scientific
testing.Behaviorism insisted on working only with what can be
seen or manipulated and in the early views of John B. Watson, a
founder of the field, nothing was inferred as to the nature of the
entity that produced the behavior. Subsequent modifications of
Watson's perspective and that of so-called "classical
conditioning" (see under Ivan Pavlov) led to the rise of operant
conditioning, a theory advocated by B.F. Skinner, which took
over the academic establishment up through the 1950s and
was synonymous with "behaviorism" for many.
For studies on behavior, ethograms are used.

Outside psychology
Behavior as used in computer science is an anthropomorphic
construct that assigns “life” to the activities carried out by a
computer, computer application, or computer code in response
to stimuli, such as user input. Also, "a behavior" is a reusable
block of computer code or script that, when applied to anobject
(computer science), especially a graphical one, causes it to
respond to user input in meaningful patterns or to operate
independently. The term can also be applied to some degree
to functions in mathematics, referring to the anatomy
of curves.
In environmental modeling and especially in hydrology,
a behavioral model means a model that is
acceptably consistent with observed natural processes, i.e.,
that simulates well, for example, observedriver discharge. It is
a key concept of the so-called Generalized Likelihood
Uncertainty Estimation(GLUE) methodology to quantify how
uncertain environmental predictions are.

Human behavior is the collection of behaviors exhibited

by human beings and influenced
by culture,attitudes, emotions, values, ethics, authority, rapport,
hypnosis, persuasion, coercion and/or genetics.
The behavior of people (and other organisms or even
mechanisms) falls within a range with some behavior being
common, some unusual, some acceptable, and some outside
acceptable limits. Insociology, behavior is considered as having
no meaning, being not directed at other people and thus is the
most basic human action. Behavior should not be mistaken
with social behavior, which is more advanced action, as social
behavior is behavior specifically directed at other people. The
acceptability of behavior is evaluated relative to social norms and
regulated by various means of social control.
The behavior of people is studied by the academic
disciplines of psychology, sociology, economics, andanthropology.

Factors affecting human behavior

 Genetics - (see also evolutionary psychology)
 Attitude – It is the degree to which the person has a favourable
or unfavourable evaluation of the behaviour in question.
 Social Norms – This is the influence of social pressure that is
perceived by the individual (normative beliefs) to perform or
not perform a certain behaviour.
 Perceived Behavioural Control – This is the individual’s belief
concerning how easy or difficult performing the behaviour will
be.