“Like-Ratings” in the Prediction of Human Behaviour

Abstract

This paper presents a testable modal and semantic theory about human actions. Prediction of human behaviour on the basis of answers to questions requires a close consideration of the modes of speech employed in the questions and of the relation of these to categories of behaviour. The classical categories of feeling, knowing and doing can serve as the basis for classification and questions can be phrased with reference to a “liking-disliking” scale of feeling, a “likeness-unlikeness” scale of knowing and a “likelihood-unlikelihood” scale of doing. The effectiveness of such “like-ratings” and hypotheses based on them can be tested by experiment.