Laboratory Methods in Human Behavioral Ecology

Abstract

Human behavioral ecology is an empirically based set of methods, concepts, and interpretations aimed at understanding human behavior in a biological and social context. As a tradition of research and theory, human behavioral ecology is in its infancy. It is the intellectual offspring of two major approaches to the study of behavior from a biological perspective: behavioral ecology, which focuses primarily on behavior in natural settings, and the experimental analysis of behavior, which focuses primarily on behavior in laboratory settings. The past decade has seen promising attempts at integrating these two complementary approaches to gain a fuller appreciation of behavior in relation to general principles of adaptation and selection (see Fantino & Abarca, 1985; Kamil, Krebs, & Pulliam, 1987).