One of the most used psychological terms in our contemporary world is “behavior.” However, not too many people have a full grasp of its real meaning. In the next few paragraphs, I will be exploring the real and practical meanings of behavior. Online Dictionary defines behavior as “the way in which one acts or conducts oneself, especially towards others.” From this definition, it is crystal clear that your behavior is not what you think about yourself but the perception of people about in relation to how you relate with them. Even though people might have misconception about your behavior, but we cannot override the fact that what people think about you is totally incorrect, especially if it isn’t made out of first impression. The dictionary also gives another definition as “the way in which an animal or person behaves in response to a particular situation or stimulus.” Your reaction per time to a given situation is your behavior. This latter definition is shared by Business Dictionary too which defines behavior as “A response of an individual or group to an action, environment, person, or stimulus.”
Another definition states that behavior “is the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems, or artificial entities in conjunction with themselves or their environment, which includes the other systems or organisms around as well as the (inanimate) physical environment” (Rainis, 2018). It is the response of the system or organism to various stimuli or inputs, whether internal or external, conscious or subconscious, overt or covert, and voluntary or involuntary (Lynn, 2018).
In scientific research, human behavior is a complex interplay of three components: actions, cognitions and emotions, reports Dr. Bryn Farnsworth. In order to shed light on them, each will be explicitly explained.
Actions are behavior. An action denotes everything that can be observed, either with bare eyes or measured by physiological sensors. Think of an action as an initiation or transition from one state to another – at a movie set, the director shouts “action” for the next scene to be filmed. Behavioral actions can take place on various time scales, ranging from muscular activation to sweat gland activity, food consumption, or sleep (Farnsworth, 2017).
Cognitions are behavior: Cognitions describe thoughts and mental images you carry with you, and they can be both verbal and nonverbal. “I have to remember to buy groceries,” or “I’d be curious to know what she thinks of me,” can be considered verbal cognitions. In contrast, imagining how your house will look like after remodeling could be considered a nonverbal cognition. Cognitions comprise skills and knowledge – knowing how to use tools in a meaningful manner (without hurting yourself), sing karaoke songs or being able to memorize the color of Marty McFly’s jacket in “Back to the Future” (it’s red) (Farnsworth, 2017).
Emotions are behavior. Commonly, an emotion is any relatively brief conscious experience characterized by intense mental activity, and a feeling that is not characterized as resulting from either reasoning or knowledge. This usually exists on a scale, from positive (pleasurable) to negative (unpleasant). Other aspects of physiology that are indicative of emotional processing – such as increased heart rate or respiration rate caused by increased arousal – are usually hidden to the eye. Similar to cognitions, emotions cannot be observed directly. They can only be inferred indirectly by tracking facial electromyographic activity (fEMG), analyzing facial expressions, monitoring arousal using ECG, galvanic skin response (GSR), respiration sensors, or self-reported measures, for example (Farnsworth, 2017).
Actions, cognitions and emotions do not run independently of each other – their proper interaction enables you to perceive the world around you, listen to your inner wishes and respond appropriately to people in your surroundings. However, it is hard to tell what exactly is cause and effect – turning your head (action) and seeing a familiar face might cause a sudden burst of joy (emotion) accompanied by an internal realization (cognition):
action = emotion (joy) + cognition (“hey, there‘s Peter!”)
In other cases, the sequence of cause and effect might be reversed: Because you’re sad (emotion) and ruminating on relationship issues (cognition), you decide to go for a walk to clear your head (action).
emotion (sadness) + cognition (“I should go for a walk“) = action (Farnsworth, 2017).
Human behavior is believed to be influenced by the endocrine system and the nervous system. It is most commonly believed that complexity in the behavior of an organism is correlated to the complexity of its nervous system. Generally, organisms with more complex nervous systems have a greater capacity to learn new responses and thus adjust their behavior and that is what we have absolutely demonstrated above with the illustrations given (Gregory, 2015).
There are two basic laws of psychology in relation to behavior. They are “behavioral adaptations” and “evolutionary mismatch” (each of which is, ultimately, derived from the law of natural selection, which simply states that those qualities of organisms that are relatively likely to be selected naturally are more likely to exist in the future compared with alternative qualities). Importantly, again, these are only a subset of the many laws that evolutionary psychologists have documented as underlying human behavioral phenomena (Geher, 2018).
A behavioral adaptation is any psychological feature that was naturally selected and came to characterize a species because it helped increase the survival and/or reproduction of individuals in that species who displayed that adaptation under ancestral conditions. Evolutionary mismatch (Giphart & Van Vugt, 2018) exists when the organism, in some objective kind of way, finds itself in an environment that is mismatched from the ancestral environments that surrounded the evolution of that organism. A simple example would be found if you tried to plant a palm tree in upstate New York. That plant would not survive the winter. That is because the adaptations of that plant are matched to more temperate conditions; its ancestors evolved under temperate environmental conditions (Geher, 2018). It is logical to conclude at this point that behavior can either be innate or learned from environmental context.
References
Farnsworth, B (2017). Human Behavior: The Complete Pocket Guide. Retrieved from https://imotions.com/blog/human-behavior/
Geher, G (2018). Laws of Human Behavior. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/darwins-subterranean-world/201806/laws-human-behavior
Lynn R. (2014). Belief Systems, Religion, and Behavioral Economics. New York: Business Expert Press LLC. ISBN 978-1-60649-704-3.
Images are from: www.freepik.com
(C) 2021, Alan Elangovan, All Copy Rights Reserved.