Explanation Of Human Behavior Research Articles

Biology, Society, or Choice: How Do Non-Experts Interpret Explanations of Behaviour?

Explanations for human behaviour can be framed in many different ways, from the social-structural context to the individual motivation down to the neurobiological implementation. We know comparatively little about how people interpret these explanatory framings, and what they infer when one kind of explanation rather than another is made salient. In four experiments, UK general-population volunteers read vignettes describing the same behaviour, but providing explanations framed in different ways. In Study 1, we found that participants grouped explanations into 'biological', 'psychological' and 'sociocultural' clusters. Explanations with different framings were often seen as incompatible with one another, especially when one belonged to the 'biological' cluster and the other did not. In Study 2, we found that exposure to a particular explanatory framing triggered inferences beyond the information given. Specifically, psychological explanations led participants to assume the behaviour was malleable, and biological framings led them to assume it was not. In Studies 3A and 3B, we found that the choice of explanatory framing can affect people's assumptions about effective interventions. For example, presenting a biological explanation increased people's conviction that interventions like drugs would be effective, and decreased their conviction that psychological or socio-political interventions would be effective. These results illuminate the intuitive psychology of explanations, and also potential pitfalls in scientific communication. Framing an explanation in a particular way will often generate inferences in the audience-about what other factors are not causally important, how easy it is to change the behaviour, and what kinds of remedies are worth considering-that the communicator may not have anticipated and might not intend.

Enacting the ‘consuming’ brain: An ethnographic study of accountability redistributions in neuromarketing practices

The figure of the brain has continued to rise in prominence for at least 30 years. This development continues to raise important questions: in particular, to what extent and in what ways does the brain supplant the person as the presumed origin of human behaviour? Whereas it has previously been discussed in general terms, here we address this question through an ethnographic study of the experimental articulation of the brain in neuromarketing research. Drawing on analytical themes from science and technology studies, we argue that it is crucial to investigate the enactment of the brain in situated practice and to understand the effects on prevailing accountability relations. We analyse the enactment of the ‘consuming’ brain in neuromarketing experiments and in experts’ communication of experimental results. We show how the consuming brain emerges from reconfigured sets of socio-material relations (between e.g. consumers, brains, brain scanning operators, consultants) and how this entails a redistribution of accountability relations. This results in an ontological respecification of the consumer, who is no longer deemed accountable for his/her actions. Instead spokespersons on behalf of the brain – neuromarketing technologies and experts – assume accountability for revealing why consumers buy what they buy. We conclude that the putative shift from person to brain is in fact characterised by a redistribution of accountability relations in neuromarketing practices. We call for further studies of accountability redistributions in practice, so as better to situate novel explanations of human behaviour.

Decoding human behavior with big data? Critical, constructive input from the decision sciences

AbstractBig data analytics employs algorithms to uncover people's preferences and values, and support their decision making. A central assumption of big data analytics is that it can explain and predict human behavior. We investigate this assumption, aiming to enhance the knowledge basis for developing algorithmic standards in big data analytics. First, we argue that big data analytics is by design atheoretical and does not provide process‐based explanations of human behavior; thus, it is unfit to support deliberation that is transparent and explainable. Second, we review evidence from interdisciplinary decision science, showing that the accuracy of complex algorithms used in big data analytics for predicting human behavior is not consistently higher than that of simple rules of thumb. Rather, it is lower in situations such as predicting election outcomes, criminal profiling, and granting bail. Big data algorithms can be considered as candidate models for explaining, predicting, and supporting human decision making when they match, in transparency and accuracy, simple, process‐based, domain‐grounded theories of human behavior. Big data analytics can be inspired by behavioral and cognitive theory.

ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR IN HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT

Organizational behaviour is a discipline of social science that look for explanations for human behaviour in organizations. Organisational behaviour draws on core disciplines such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, communication, and law to create and investigate multilevel explanations of why people take part in particular behaviour, and which behaviour under which situation lead to better outcomes in organizations. Created using an applied or pragmatic lens and tested with a wide range of both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, most Organisational behaviour theories and research have direct implications for managers and for other organizational participants. Not surprisingly, one focal area of Organisational behaviour research concerns safety in organizations, and a growing body of safety-oriented literature in Organisational behaviour is based on data collected during simulation training across a variety of organizations such as hospitals, airlines, nuclear power plants, and other high reliability organizations. Keywords: Organizational Behaviour, Human Resource Management, Human Behaviour

The Constraints Hypothesis: Rethinking Causality in Deradicalisation, Disengagement and Reintegration Pathways. A Complex Systems Perspective

This paper re-frames the concept of causality in deradicalisation, disengagement and reintegration pathways. Analysis of the theories and frameworks in counter-terrorism research indicate that prevalent causal models offer reductive explanations of human behavior, revealing the absence of a scientifically credible account of how agents undergo transformation in pathways out of terrorism. To address the problem of causality, I borrow from the thought bank of complexity theory and reconceptualise causality as the operation of “constraints.” The paper then goes on to operationalize the concept of constraints for counter-terrorism researchers and practitioners, laying down a new and preliminary conceptual framework for thinking about how people leave terrorism behind.

Authority matters: propaganda and the coevolution of behaviour and attitudes.

Human decision-making is controlled by various factors including material cost-benefit considerations, values and beliefs, social influences, cognitive factors and errors. Among social influences, those by external authorities (e.g. educational, cultural, religious, political, administrative, etc.) are particularly important owing to their potential reach and power. To better understand the effects of 'soft' power of authorities we develop a unifying theoretical framework integrating material, cognitive and social forces controlling the joint dynamics of individual actions and beliefs. We apply our approach to three different phenomena: evolution of food sharing in small-scale societies, participation in political protests and effects of priming social identity in behavioural experiments. For each of these applications, we show that our approach leads to different (or simpler) explanations of human behaviour than alternatives. We highlight the type of measurements which can be helpful in developing practical applications of our approach. We identify and explicitly characterise the degree of mismatch between individual actions and attitudes. We assert that the effects of external authorities, of changing beliefs and of differences between people must be studied empirically, included in mathematical models, and accounted for when developing different policies aiming to modify or sustain human behaviour.

Note on Explanation of Human Behavior

Apparently everybody is keen on understanding the reasons for human conduct. However numerous researchers and the overall population embrace reasons for conduct that have coherent blemishes. Crediting conduct to mental occasions, feelings, character, or unusual character, regularly, is submitting one of various normal blunders, like reification, roundabout thinking, or ostensible paradoxes. An undeniably continuous blunder is accepting hereditary clarifications of conduct without a recognized quality. Essentially, clarifying conduct as far as cerebrum construction or capacity neglects to ask what caused that mind design or capacity to create or work with a specific goal in mind.

One rationality to rule them all

The claim that rationality is ‘limited, falsified and unhelpful’ for explaining norms is false, for it does not apply to rationality as conceptualized by rational choice theory. Rationality as conceptualized by rational choice theory is not limited: it can be used to develop explanations of any observed human behavior. Rationality as conceptualized by rational choice theory has not been falsified: indeed, it is not falsifiable. Rationality as conceptualized by rational choice theory is not unhelpful for explaining norms: it is often used to develop explanations of observed norms, including norms that seem most puzzling. Rationality as conceptualized by rational choice theory provides a universal framework for developing explanations of human behavior.

Complex Dynamical Systems in Human Development

Researchers from the complex dynamical systems perspective seek their explanations of human behavior and development in the dynamical interactions across many levels in an active, situated individual. Tat is to say, behavior and development are both constraining and constrained by the continuous exchange between a myriad of processes distributed across brain, body, and environment. This fundamentally questions the more traditional rationale that behavior and development of any kind can be explained by targeting a low number of domain-specific, static components or environmental factors. In such a mechanistic approach, components are typically thought to exert their causal effects in a chain-like fashion, and development is explained by the function and place of the components in the chain. However, compiling evidence demonstrates that human behavior and development are dynamic, multi-scaled, and emergent phenomena. It is for this reason that they should be studied from a complex dynamical systems perspective.

Innate Talent in Sport: Beware of an organismic asymmetry – comment on Baker & Wattie

Of fundamental, theoretical and practical, relevance to sport science is the conceptualisation of talent, skill and expertise. Revisiting the question of innate talent is timely, given current pressure on young children selected to specialise in sport at an early age. Here, we re-iterate the conceptualisation of talent, skill and expertise in sport as an increasingly functional relationship between an athlete and a specific performance environment, developed over the macro-timescale of years and decades. This ecological dynamics rationale avoids an organismic asymmetry, the bias towards explanations of human behaviour which over-emphasise the role of inherent properties and qualities, identifiable through early selection. An ecological dynamics rationale, eschewing the organismic asymmetry of innate talent, in favour of exploiting and developing individual functionality in specific performance environments, challenges coaches and sport scientists to collaborate in new models for developing talent, skill and expertise.

Navigating conflict and difference in medical education: insights from moral psychology

Medical students and educators face a myriad of complex moral disagreements and conflicts both in preclinical and clinical training environments. Inability to deal with these conflicts effectively and compassionately can lead to undesirable consequences and threaten important relationships in high-stakes healthcare environments. We suggest that the integration of moral psychology into medical education can help trainees and faculty constructively respond to behavior they may find immoral or misguided. Here we focus on the application of Moral Foundations Theory (MFT), which demonstrates how the instantaneous gut reactions which guide reactionary behavior can be categorized into six foundational categories. These categories offer psychological explanations for human behavior which can help medical trainees and professionals navigate challenging moral conflicts.

Legal Realism and Functional Kinds: Michael Moore's Metaphysically Reductionist Naturalism

Michael Moore aims primarily, but not exclusively, at providing legal scholars and others with a defensible naturalist ontology of law and legal phenomena. Accordingly, he defends: (1) an account of scientific, mental, moral, and legal properties, according to which there are not only natural kinds, but also moral and functional kinds, and (2) a causal theory of word meaning, according to which natural, moral and functional kind words get their meaning not from a list of conventionally accepted criteria, or from conventionally accepted exemplars, but from the natural, moral, or functional kinds to which they refer. He maintains, more specifically, (1A) that distinctively legal phenomena, such as legal rights, legal duties, precedent, malice, etc. are functional kinds, in the sense that they have a nature that consists not in their structure, but in the function they fulfill in law (or in a given legal order), and (1B) that the function of a functional kind is that effect, or those effects, of the functional kind that causally contribute more than does any of its other effects to the goal of the larger system within which it occurs. He also maintains, (1C) that functional kinds can be reduced to indefinitely large disjunctions of natural properties, (1D) that the relevant version of reductionism is metaphysically reductionist naturalism, and (1E) that functional kinds play an indispensable role in the explanation of human behavior. I am inclined to agree with Moore that there is no escaping metaphysics in legal thinking, and that any legal metaphysics should be naturalistic. I am, however, going to argue: (i) that the method for determining the function of a (purported) functional kind proposed by Moore is too indeterminate to be able to pin down the function in an unequivocal way; that this suggests, though it does not entail, that there is no fact of the matter as regards the question of what the function is of a (purported) functional kind, and that there seems to be no way to remedy this troublesome indeterminacy. I am also going to argue – assuming, for the sake of argument, that functional kinds do exist and that we can determine their function using Moore’s method – (ii) that it turns out to be very difficult to identify the properties that are part of the indefinitely large disjunction of natural properties which, on Moore’s analysis, is identical to a functional kind, and that this suggests, as things stand, that Moore’s claim that functional kinds can be reduced to such disjunctions is too abstract to be illuminating; and (iii) that the so-called logical connection argument, which requires that cause and effect be logically distinct in a functional causal explanation of an action or event, does not undermine Moore’s account of functional kinds. Furthermore, I am going to argue, (iv) that functional kinds cannot be part of the best explanation of human behavior, because they lack systematic (or nomological) unity, and that they lack such unity because they are necessarily multiply realizable, in the sense that they can be realized on different occasions by different first-order properties that may have very different causal powers; and (v) that Moore will therefore have to give up: (a) the view that functional kinds are identical to indefinitely large disjunctions of natural properties, or (b) the view that functional kinds are part of the best explanation of human behavior, or both; that if he drops (a), his naturalism will be undermined, or at least seriously threatened, and that if he drops (b), he will have to admit either that functional kinds do not exist or that they are not as interesting as they seem. On the basis of claims (i), (ii), (iv), and (v), I am also going to argue: (vi) that the idea of a functional kind should not play a central role in any theory of law or legal reasoning, or in any other theory of a legal phenomenon. Finally, I am going to suggest (vii) that the way forward in the field of the metaphysics of law is to explore a version of anti-realism, namely, conventionalism.

Motivation Theory and Performance Measurement: Lessons from Classical Schools of Thought.

This paper traces the development of motivation theory, particularly as an explanation of human behaviour in the workplace. It provides a new interpretation of recent developments in theory management. It also examines the uneasy relationship between performance measurement, appropriate for the purpose of establishing motivational rewards, and performance measurement as an integral part of the financial control systems. The paper is also written in response to and as a confirmation of a student’s question as to whether classical management theories are still relevant. The study of classical management thoughts, which involve a set of concepts that started in 1800s, took their roots in the study of organisations. The effects of the sets of theories of organisations have been and are still profound as demonstrated in this paper using Motivation Theory and Performance Management Measurement Concepts

Motivation Theory and Performance Measurement: Lessons from Classical Schools of Thought

This paper traces the development of motivation theory, particularly as an explanation of human behaviour in the workplace. It provides a new interpretation of recent developments in theory management. It also examines the uneasy relationship between performance measurement, appropriate for the purpose of establishing motivational rewards, and performance measurement as an integral part of the financial control systems. The paper is also written in response to and as a confirmation of a student’s question as to whether classical management theories are still relevant. The study of classical management thoughts, which involve a set of concepts that started in 1800s, took their roots in the study of organisations. The effects of the sets of theories of organisations have been and are still profound as demonstrated in this paper using Motivation Theory and Performance Management Measurement Concepts.

Happenings, Acts, and Actions: Articulating the Meaning and Implications of Human Agency for Criminology

In recent years, criminological theorists, mainly theorists of desistance from crime, have incorporated notions of human agency into their theories. Although acknowledging the importance of human agency, most desistance theorists have not presented a detailed conceptualization of precisely what is meant by human agency (what agency consists of and how it is manifested) nor have they been aware of the fact that the understanding of human agency that they have articulated is fundamentally at odds with the substantive content of the theory. This paper presents a detailed discussion of one conceptualization of human agency, a conceptualization that sees human agency as both very individualistic and cognitive. At its core, human agency is understood to be action—deliberate and intended or willed conduct. When persons act as agents, they direct their behavior toward some goal and is preceded by processes of deliberation, decision-making, intention formation, volition or activation of the will, and guidance. This notion of human agency is incompatible with event causality but is entirely consistent with a teleological explanation, an explanation of human behavior in terms of the goals that are sought by persons. The conceptualization of human agency developed here is fully consistent with rational choice theory and the recently developed identity theory of desistance because our choices, and intentional actions based on those choices, are essential expressions of our identity.

Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience in Organizational Research: Functional and Nonfunctional Approaches

Neuroscience offers a unique opportunity to elucidate the role of mental phenomena, including consciousness. However the place of such phenomena in explanations of human behavior is controversial. For example, consciousness has been construed in varied and conflicting forms, making it difficult to represent it in meaningful ways without committing researchers to one species of consciousness or another, with vastly different implications for hypothesis development, methods of study, and interpretation of findings. We explore the conceptual foundations of different explications of consciousness and consider alternative ways for studying its role in research. In the end, although no approach is flawless or dominates all others in every way, we are convinced that any viable approach must take into account, if not privilege, the self in the sense of representing the subjective, first-person process of self as observer and knower of one’s own actions and history, and the feelings and meanings attached to these. The most promising frameworks in this regard are likely to be some variant of nonreductive monism, or perhaps a kind of naturalistic dualism that remains yet to be developed coherently.

Celano: ontological commitment and normative bite

In his article on pre-conventions, Celano presents, what the author calls, the Ontological Commitment Thesis and the Normative Bite Thesis. In this short comment, the author argues that the two theses are together both incompatible with the idea that pre-conventions are facts which have causal powers in human behaviour; also, if the ontological thesis is abandoned, normative determination could not be obtained. In other terms, the author argues that either pre-conventions (as part of the Background) are part of our causal explanation of human behaviour or pre-conventions are abstract entities able to determine human behaviour normatively. In the first case, pre-conventions lack normative meaning, while in the second pre-conventions cannot integrate our causal explanation of human actions. Tertium non datur.

Faith and Form on Screen

To understand any aspect of being-in-the-world in general or cinematic experience in particular, both reductionist and holistic approaches are needed. Psychological accounts can give us only functional explanations of human behaviour or responses to signifying artifacts such as art. To understand the significance of these experiences the psychological must be complemented by a study on a level which may be termed spiritual. This line of thought is applied to analyses of Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket, starting from David Bordwell’s formalist and cognitive account of why many people experience this film as religious despite there being no explicit reference to religion. Paul Schrader’s analysis of the formal structure of this film in terms of his notion of transcendental style in film goes a step forward by explaining how the formal structure as he analyses it suggests a transcendental dimension which cannot be addressed directly. This approach connects in an illuminating way with Slavoj Žižek’s notions of the imaginary and the symbolic sphere. Bordwell’s approach, functioning on the psychological level, is basically reductionist, while Schrader’s, boosted with Žižek’s ideas as appropriated for the purposes of this article, is holistic and operative on the spiritual level. This two-tiered analysis reveals how cinematic form in Pickpocket serves as an indirect expression of faith.

Mediated and moderated effects of violent media consumption on youth violence

Violent media consumption is often thought to lead to more aggression and violence, especially in juveniles. Social cognitive theories assume a pivotal role for cognitive functions, such as normative beliefs, in the explanation of human behaviour (including violence) and see violent media as a possible and potent learning environment. Although many studies have analysed the relationship between violent media consumption and violence, only a few are longitudinal and apparently no study has analysed mediator effects of violence-approving normative beliefs with data from a Western country at more than two points in time. Some researchers assume that violent media consumption can only aggravate an already existing disposition for violence due to other experiences such as parental maltreatment (double-dose or intensifier effect, which is methodologically described as a moderator effect). Both assumptions – mediation and moderation – are tested with structural equation models using cross-sectional and longitudinal data from a German panel study. Results show that interaction effects between parental behaviour and violent media consumption are surprisingly weak, whereas both influence the approval of violence to a remarkable extent and mediated by this eventually, to a smaller extent, violent behaviour.

Veblen, Sen, and the Formalization of Evolutionary Theory

It has been suggested that economics could benefit greatly from recent developments in evolutionary game theory. In fact, key authors in the study of the role of ethical norms in economic behavior like Amartya Sen argue that evolutionary game theory could contribute much to the study of social norms and behavior. Others have suggested that evolutionary game theory could be most helpful for formalizing the work of classic authors in evolutionary and institutional economics like Thorstein Veblen. Here I discuss the behavioral assumptions of evolutionary game theory models, and Jörgen Weibull’s approach in particular. I will argue that Weibull’s models, and evolutionary game theory in general, pose overly strong restrictions on the explanation of human behavior, which limit the potential of evolutionary explanation. I also suggest Tony Lawson’s population-variety-reproduction-selection (PVRS) model as an alternative evolutionary framework that can successfully accommodate developments in behavioral economics, while also providing a solution to important critiques of Darwinian evolutionary analysis made by Richard Nelson, among others.