Human behavior theories

Recent research on motivation theories has provided more elaborate models of the factors which drive human behavior and has taken into account issues of individual differences and the influence of the social and cultural... 

Reductionist theories of human behavior are hardly new. During much of the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries man has been constructed as an evolutionary product, the brain as biochemical, and the body as hormones or genes. The Nineteenth century sciences of craniometry and phrenology reduced social, moral, and intellectual differences to physical manifestations. 

Such beliefs are drawing respectability from the tendency to reduce human behavior to evolutionary explanations. Neo-Darwinist theories seem to explain why some people thrive in the competitive world of the 1990s and others do not. Promoting these theories, some scientists argue that genetics is important in selecting people with superior skills. Says, Daniel Koshland, molecular biologist and former editor of Science - As society... 

I think McDougall was right and we should return to comparisons with naturalistic animal behavior, and to the emotions, in our search for the roots of human behavior. That is, we should ground our research in ethological theory and methods. These whole-body movement patterns are the basic units of behavior for our species, the human ethogram. 

Bouchard, T. J. J. (under review). Exprience producing drive theory How genes drive exprience and shape personality. Acta Paediatrica, Paper presented as part of the Nobel Symposium on Genetic vs. Environmental Determination of Human Behavior and Health, Stockholm Sweden, January 22—24, 1996. 

Rational-CHOICE theory aims at explaining human behavior. To achieve this, it must, in any given case, proceed in two steps. The first step is to determine what a rational person would do in the circumstances. The second step is to ascertain whether this is what the person actually did. If the person did what the theory predicted he would do, it can add the case to its credit side. Similarly, the theory can fail at each of the two steps. First, it can fail to yield determinate predictions. Second, people can fail to conform to its predictions -they can behave irrationally. 

Pike, K.L. (1966) Language in Relation To a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior. The Hague Mouton. 

The concept of motivahon is a key deferminant in influencing human behavior. At its core, mohvation theory revolves around needs, actions, and goals. According to Bassett and Metzger (1986) ... 

It is no secret that taking a biopsychosocial perspective of the causes of the substance-use disorders leads us to a new level of complexity. But drugs and human behavior is a complex subject that requires complex analysis for its understanding. Because of its complexity and recency, the biopsychosocial viewpoint is just that, a viewpoint, at this time—it is not precise or developed enough to be called a theory. Our premise is that this perspective has been providing and will continue to provide a guide for the kind of research that will find explanations of the causes of the substance-use di.sorders. 

As a normative ideal, classical decision theory has influenced the study of decision making in a major way. Much of the earlier work in behavioral decision theory compared human behavior to the... 

The science of psychology, which attempts to predict and explain human behavior in terms of mental states, is committed to the idea that mental states causally influence behavior. If mental states do not cause behaviors, then behaviors caimot be explained in terms of mental states. As Kim says, A science that invokes mental phenomena in its explanations is presumptively committed to their causal efficacy for any phenomenon to have an explanatory role, its presence or absenee in a given situation must make a difference - a causal difference (1998 31). If we cannot account for mental causation, then it seems we also lose human agency and the science of psychology as explanatory science. A good account of mental causation is thus an indispensable part of any successful theory of mind. 

It seems to me that one of the most (if not the most) important things we need from a theory of mind is a good account of mental causation. If we think that the science of psychology, whose job it is to predict and explain human behavior, is a legitimate science, then we need it to be the case that mental properties are causal, fri addition, a great part of our survival as social creatures in this world depends on our ordinary assessment of one another s mental states and our assumption that those mental states are causally responsible for behavior. We regularly make predictions about what others are going to do and offer explanations of why others have behaved as they have based on our belief that mental states cause behaviors. If we want to retain the independently plausible idea that predictions and explanations of behavior in terms of mental states work because mental states are causal, then we need to account for how it is that mental states can be causal. 

Both oiir ability to act based on our thoughts, beliefs and intentions, and our ability to predict and explain human behavior depend on the possibility of mental causation. Any non-eliminativist intentional theory of mind will therefore need to give an account of how mental causation is possible. This dissertation argues for accepting a nonreductive materialist view of mental causation, while defending the view against some reductionist criticisms, especially recent criticisms from Jaegwon Kim. 

From the former researches, many theories of safety behavior science copy the knowledge and theory system of behavior science, lack deeper understanding of human behavior in work safety. Therefore, this paper will deeply study the differences between behavior science and safety behavior science, and through behavior classification, more... 

Safety behavior science is an important branch of behavior science, which is the application of behavior science in the field of work safety, and is an applied science which is based on the science of physiology, psychology and sociology. It analyzes, recognizes and studies the factors and mode of influence in human safety behaviors, masters the rules of human behavior, and realizes driving safety behavior and restraining unsafe behavior. The theory of behavior science can be directly applied to the safety behavior science. It however has significant difference. 

In recent years, safety behavior science has gradually become a hot topic in safety science research. Safety behavior science learned from many theories achievements of behavior science. At the same time, safety behavior science researches on special field, that is, human behavior in the work safety field is more in favor of understanding of safety behavior science. 

Swuste, R, van Gulijk, C. and Zwaard, W. 2008. Human behavior The first safety theory. Proceedings of the 4th International Conference iVevent/on of OcupationalAccident in a Changing Work Environment, 30 September-3 October 2008, Crete, Greece. 

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