Science Of Human Behavior Research Articles

Causal representation learning through higher-level information extraction

The large gap between the generalization level of state-of-the-art machine learning and human learning systems calls for the development of artificial intelligence (AI) models that are truly inspired by human cognition. In tasks related to image analysis, searching for pixel-level regularities has reached a power of information extraction still far from what humans capture with image-based observations. This leads to poor generalization when even small shifts occur at the level of the observations. We explore a perspective on this problem that is directed to learning the generative process with causality-related foundations, using models capable of combining symbolic manipulation, probabilistic reasoning and pattern recognition abilities. We briefly review and explore connections of research from machine learning, cognitive science and related fields of human behavior to support our perspective for the direction to more robust and human-like artificial learning systems.

The Use of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and Electroencephalogram (EEG) during Self-Reflection: A Scoping Review

The integration of two fields, which are neuroscience and psychology has allowed a deeper understanding of the mental processes in the human mind, through the observation of biological and chemical processes in the brain and nervous system. Even though the gap between neuroscience and the human behavioral sciences is still large, the advancement of technology has helped narrow the gap, especially over the past two decades. This scoping review is aimed to explore the currently published research on self-reflection using the fMRI and the EEG. The present study describes the scope of existing research, and summarizes findings and recommendations for future work. The scoping review methodology guided by the standards of the PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) was used. Comprehensive searches on the use of the fMRI and the EEG during self-reflection studies were conducted using several electronic databases including Scopus, Science Direct, Web of Science, Emerald Insights, and PubMed. The results obtained showed that all studies did not justify the sample size. The findings also revealed that various terms were used to describe the cognitive aspect of a self-reflection process. The brain functional connectivity data were taken through several experimental stages, which shows the flexibility of the experimental process. The activation of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is one of the most commonly found regions in most studies, together with other areas associated with the self-reflection process. Based on the results obtained, this scoping review is believed to provide a comprehensive summary of the existing research on self-reflection using neuroimaging techniques.

Lexicon-Based Sentiment Analysis in Behavioral Research.

A complete science of human behavior requires a comprehensive account of the verbal behavior those humans exhibit. Existing behavioral theories of such verbal behavior have produced compelling insight into language's underlying function, but the expansive program of research those theories deserve has unfortunately been slow to develop. We argue that the status quo's manually implemented and study-specific coding systems are too resource intensive to be worthwhile for most behavior analysts. These high input costs in turn discourage research on verbal behavior overall. We propose lexicon-based sentiment analysis as a more modern and efficient approach to the study of human verbal products, especially naturally occurring ones (e.g., psychotherapy transcripts, social media posts). In the present discussion, we introduce the reader to principles of sentiment analysis, highlighting its usefulness as a behavior analytic tool for the study of verbal behavior. We conclude with an outline of approaches for handling some of the more complex forms of speech, like negation, sarcasm, and speculation. The appendix also provides a worked example of how sentiment analysis could be applied to existing questions in behavior analysis, complete with code that readers can incorporate into their own work.

The Ethologist’s Corner

A review of the book “Evolutionary science of human behavior: an interdisciplinary approach”, edited by Peter LaFreniere and Glenn Weisfeld (2014).

Особенности количественного анализа проектов с позиций современной теории принятия решений

Improving the quality of project analysis requires the involvement of mod-ern achievements in the field of quantitative methods and mathematical modeling, in particular in the field of game theory and decision theory. The article presents a critical understanding of the horizons of the established theory, traditionally used in the practice of project analysis, and a description of techniques that contribute to improving the quality of project anal-ysis. Special attention is paid to the mechanisms of taking into account the subjective perceptions of the investor, which complicate the classical scheme of choice and decision-making in various information conditions. A set of criteria for the analysis of projects has been constructed, which has features of relative simplicity and universality, and consists of nine positive criteria that have received a meaningful interpretation. The set of criteria is open for expansion by adding special criteria specific to the subject areas of the analyzed projects. The presented approaches to making a decision on choosing a project in the conditions of multi-criteria optimization allow us to use the achievements of modern economics as a science of human behavior in the real practice of analyzing projects.

Theopsych: A Psychological Science Primer for Theologians

Theopsych: A Psychological Science Primer for Theologians

Psychology: the science of human behavior

In this text we will reflect on psychology as a scientific discipline focused on mind and behavior, which initially diverged from philosophy and medicine and has made a long process of recognition as an autonomous science. Since the 19th century, with Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener, William James, John Dewey to the famous Thorndike as main pioneers. Thorndike discovered a premise so important in psychology and applicable to so many human behaviors which is the fact that a stimulus tends to produce a certain response over time, if a given organism is rewarded for that response. Introducing Psychology as a science at the service of humanity in the 21st century is one of the goals of this text. It will reflect on the importance of constructivist paradigms and narrative and the perception of psychotherapeutic reality as a multiverse perspective.

Hits and Misses: Digital Contact Tracing in a Pandemic

Traditional contact tracing is one of the most powerful weapons people have in the battle against a pandemic, especially when vaccines do not yet exist or do not afford complete protection from infection. But the effectiveness of contact tracing hinges on its ability to find infected people quickly and obtain accurate information from them. Therefore, contact tracing inherits the challenges associated with the fallibilities of memory. Against this backdrop, digital contact tracing is the “dream scenario”—an unobtrusive, vigilant, and accurate recorder of danger that should outperform manual contact tracing on every dimension. There is reason to celebrate the success of digital contact tracing. Indeed, epidemiologists report that digital contact tracing probably reduced the incidence of COVID-19 cases by at least 25% in many countries, a feat that would have been hard to match with its manual counterpart. Yet there is also reason to speculate that digital contact tracing delivered on only a fraction of its potential because it almost completely ignored the relevant psychological science. We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of digital contact tracing, its hits and misses in the COVID-19 pandemic, and its need to be integrated with the science of human behavior.

The Influence of Organizational Culture and HR Competency on Employee Commitment and Their Impact on Organizational Performance

There are several factors that affect Organizational Performance through Employee Commitment including Organizational Culture and HR Competencies. This study aims to empirically test and prove the direct influence of Organizational Culture and HR Competencies on Employee Commitment. The direct influence of Organizational Culture and HR Competencies on Organizational Performance and the influence of Organizational Culture and HR Competencies indirectly through the mediation of Employee Commitment to Organizational Performance. This study used a quantitative approach. The population consists of the State Civil Apparatus (ASN) of the West Sumatra Tourism Office. This study is a population census study with a sample of 248 people. Partial Least Square (PLS) analysis method with SmartPLS Application. The results showed that the accepted hypothesis that Organizational Culture and HR Competencies have a direct impact on employee commitment and the influence of the construct of Organizational Culture and HR Competencies on organizational performance whose hypothesis is accepted. The employee commitment variable in this study cannot be a mediator variable of Organizational Culture and HR Competence variables. The results of this research are expected to advance the science of human resource management and behavior for the benefit of both academics and practitioners.

Closing the compliance gap in marine protected areas with human behavioural sciences

AbstractAdvocates, practitioners and policy‐makers continue to use and advocate for marine protected areas (MPAs) to meet global ocean protection targets. Yet many of the worlds MPAs, and especially no‐take MPAs, are plagued by poaching and ineffective governance. Using a global dataset on coral reefs as an example, we quantify the potential ecological gains of governing MPAs to increase compliance, which we call the ‘compliance gap’. Using ecological simulations based on model posteriors of joint Bayesian hierarchical models, we demonstrate how increased compliance in no‐take MPAs could nearly double target fish biomass (91% increases in median fish biomass), and result in a 292% higher likelihood of encountering top predators. Achieving these gains and closing the compliance gap necessitates a substantial shift in approach and practice to go beyond optimizing enforcement, and towards governing for compliance. This will require engaging and integrating a broad suite of actors, principles, and practices across three key domains: (i)) harnessing social influence, (ii) integrating equity principles, and (iii) aligning incentives through market‐based instruments. Empowering and shaping communication between actor groups (e.g., between fishers, practitioners, and policy‐makers) using theoretically underpinned approaches from the behavioural sciences is one of the most essential, but often underserved aspects of governing MPAs. We therefore close by highlighting how this cross‐cutting tool could be further integrated in governance to bolster high levels of compliance in MPAs.

Female Leadership Portraits in Commercial Movies: Gender Social Representations from the STEAM Sector

To encourage girls and women to pursue STEAM careers, it is crucial to increase the positive representation of female role models in science. The study uses the Bechdel test and an adapted Greimas Actantial Method to analyse mainstream films. Results show that female characters are often attractive, Caucasian scientists, not mothers, and play secondary roles above all. The most represented careers were in Biology, Astronomy, and Social or Human Behavioural Sciences. Representation of women in leadership positions in the STEAM sector in commercial movies is clearly deficient.

Historical Psychology

A growing body of evidence suggests that many aspects of psychology have evolved culturally over historical time. A combination of approaches, including experimental data collected over the past 75 years, cross-cultural comparisons, and studies of immigrants, points to systematic changes in psychological domains as diverse as conformity, attention, emotion, morality, and olfaction. However, these approaches can go back in time only for a few decades and typically fail to provide continuous measures of cultural change, posing a challenge for testing deeper historical psychological processes. To tackle this challenge most directly, computational methods emerging from natural language processing can be adapted to extract psychological information from large-scale historical corpora. Here, we first review the benefits of psychology as a historical science and then present three useful classes of text-analytic techniques for historical psychological inquiry: dictionary-based methods, distributed-representational methods, and human-annotation-based methods. These represent an excellent suite of methodologies that can be used to examine the record of “dead minds.” Finally, we discuss the importance of going beyond English-centric text analysis in historical psychology to foster a more generalizable and inclusive science of human behavior. We propose that historical psychology should incorporate and further develop a variety of text-analytic approaches to reliably quantify the historical processes that gave rise to contemporary social, political, and psychological phenomena.

Human motor behaviour. An outline of a system-theoretical approach.

The author presents a system-theoretical approach (STA) to the issue of the construction and control of motor operations in humans. It is based on the theory of Nikolai Bernstein, who developed a neurophysiological model called the ‘brain skyscraper’, of a systemic nature. Taking it as a model, a functional equivalent of a skyscraper, a modalities’ ladder, was developed. The common denominator of both these mental structures is the system-theoretical basis for the construction and control of motor operations in humans. The science of human motor behaviour – anthropokinetics – eludes mathematical description and explanation, which works well in physics. STA, however, seems to be a promising method of revealing specific aspects of anthropokinetics. This is one of the possible perspectives that allows us to analyse such a multifaceted and complex problem as human motor behaviour, which is the only observable manifestation of any mental activity. This is probably the greatest intellectual challenge for all modern science. STA is an original method of thinking about human motor behaviour, which probably reveals its specific aspects and thus may contribute to a better understanding of anthropokinetics. It also enables the construction of an original, novel family tree of science as a whole.

A Bibliometric Analysis to Identify Research Trends in Intervention Programs for Smartphone Addiction.

Smartphone addiction is a serious social problem that necessitates research. To identify trends in intervention programs for smartphone addiction, distribution of research topics, and inter-relationships in academic research. We analyzed 104 studies published between 30 June 2022, and 31 August 2022, on the Web of Science (WoS). We applied the bibliometric method and identified the relationship and development trends of academic research in the field using descriptive analysis, the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), co-citation analysis, bibliographic coupling, and co-occurrence. There were four findings: First, intervention programs are classified into 10 types: psychological, social support, lifestyle, technological, family, medical care, educational, exercise, mindfulness, and meditation. Second, the volume of research on intervention programs increased every year. Third, China and South Korea had the highest research involvement. Finally, academic studies were split into either the human behavior or social science categories. Most of them defined the symptoms in terms of individual behavior and social relations, implying that smartphone addiction is not yet recognized as a disorder. Smartphone addiction has not yet been internationally recognized as a disorder, despite its impact on human physiology, psychology, and social behavior. Most related studies have been conducted in Asia, specifically in China and South Korea; Spain has the most outside Asia. Additionally, most of the research subjects were students, probably because of the convenience of sampling. As smartphones gain popularity among older adults, future studies could focus on smartphone addiction among individuals of varied ages.

Enculturating the Science of International Development: Beyond the WEIRD Independent Paradigm

Initiatives in international development and behavioral science rely predominantly on the independent models of the self and agency that are prevalent in individualist Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) cultural contexts. Programs that are guided by these independent models, explicitly or implicitly, as the default way of being and that neglect interdependent models can reduce the potential of development initiatives to advance poverty reduction and well-being in two ways. First, programs based solely on independent models of agency—centered on personal goals and values; self-advancement and self-expression; and autonomy—can limit the scope and effectiveness of the development science toolkit. Second, programs that are not responsive to interdependent ways of being—centered on relational goals and values; responsiveness to social norms, roles, and obligations; and social coordination—that are common in many Global South sociocultural contexts can be met with resistance or backlash. We propose that taking account of interdependent psychosocial tendencies is a promising way to diversify the behavioral science toolkit and to build a more comprehensive science of human behavior. Furthermore, culturally responsive program designs have the potential both to promote decolonized, inclusive approaches that preserve rather than override local ways of being and to enable diverse trajectories of societal development to flourish. We integrate experimental and descriptive research from psychology, economics, education, and global health to suggest how models of interdependent agency can be productively integrated into development program designs to advance quality of life in locally resonant ways.

Empirical Study on Linear, Non-linear, and System Dynamics: Oriented Human Motor Behavior

Human movement and motor behavior science involve various theoretical frameworks and methodologies. This study describes the force control of motor phenomenon, processes of linear or nonlinear dynamics, and proposes a system approach as an additional potential aspect. Thus far, issues regarding these motor control and learning paradigms were critically examined, and their respective mechanisms were compared using descriptive analysis. Elaborate simulations based on the transitions and development flow of each component at issue contributed to the linear approach, laid concrete emphasis on the advantages of the nonlinear approach, and empirically derived the rationale for the indispensable application of system dynamics. Sports science can benefit from system dynamics associated with human motor behavior, as demonstrated in this study.

Beyond facial width-to-height ratios: bizygomatic width is highly sexually dimorphic when adjusting for allometry

A large and ever-growing literature implicates male facial width-to-height ratio (bizygomatic width divided by facial height) as a secondary sexual trait linked to numerous physical and psychological perceptions. However, this research is based entirely on the premise that bizygomatic width is sexually dimorphic, which recent research has called into question. Unfortunately, statisticians for the last 125 years have noted that morphological ratio measurements may engender spurious correlations and biased effect-size estimates. In the current study, we find that bizygomatic width is highly sexually dimorphic (equivalent d = 1.39), even after adjusting for 92 allometric measurements, including multiple facial height and other craniofacial measurements (equivalent d = 1.07) in a sample of 6068 men and women. By contrast, facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) measurements demonstrated a statistical pattern consistent with the age-old argument that morphological ratio measurements may engender spurious correlations and biased effect-size estimates. Thus, when avoiding facial ratio measurements and adjusting for allometry in craniofacial measures, we found strong support for a key premise in the human evolutionary and behavioural sciences that bizygomatic width exhibits male-biased sexual dimorphism.

Teaching Graduate Students to Translate Nonbehavioral Treatments Into Behavioral Principles.

Behavior analytic translations of nonbehavioral treatments were recommended by Brodhead in Behavior Analysis in Practice, 8(1), 70-78 (2015) as part of a decision-making framework for practitioners working on interprofessional treatment teams. Professionals from different disciplines often have overlapping scopes of practice and competence, yet each recommends interventions according to their discipline-specific worldview and training. Nonbehavioral treatment recommendations may be especially challenging for behavior analytic practitioners who are committed to the science of human behavior and who are also ethically obligated to work cooperatively and in the best interest of the client. Learning to translate nonbehavioral treatments into behavior analytic principles and procedures may function as a valuable means of improving professional judgment, thereby promoting evidence-based practice and effective collaboration. Behavioral translations may expose procedures that are, in fact, conceptually systematic, creating more opportunities for behavior analysts to partner in interprofessional care. Using a behavioral skills training package, graduate students of applied behavior analysis were taught to translate nonbehavioral treatments into behavior analytic principles and procedures. All students produced more comprehensive translations following training.

Experimental and cross-cultural evidence that parenthood and parental care motives increase social conservatism.

Differences in attitudes on social issues such as abortion, immigration and sex are hugely divisive, and understanding their origins is among the most important tasks facing human behavioural sciences. Despite the clear psychological importance of parenthood and the motivation to provide care for children, researchers have only recently begun investigating their influence on social and political attitudes. Because socially conservative values ostensibly prioritize safety, stability and family values, we hypothesized that being more invested in parental care might make socially conservative policies more appealing. Studies 1 (preregistered; n = 376) and 2 (n = 1924) find novel evidence of conditional experimental effects of a parenthood prime, such that people who engaged strongly with a childcare manipulation showed an increase in social conservatism. Studies 3 (n = 2610, novel data from 10 countries) and 4 (n = 426 444, World Values Survey data) find evidence that both parenthood and parental care motivation are associated with increased social conservatism around the globe. Further, most of the positive association globally between age and social conservatism is accounted for by parenthood. These findings support the hypothesis that parenthood and parental care motivation increase social conservatism.

Psychological Thought in the Novel ‘Chemeen’ (The Prawn)

Psychology is the science of human behavior. Every person living in a society has certain psychological characteristics. Based on this, various characters have been created in the ‘Chemeen’ novel. The conduct of those characters is explored psychologically. The purpose of this article is to explore the novel ‘Chemeen’, the biography of the fishing community, the love that blossoms in the mind of the fisherwoman Karuthamma, and thus the tragedies that befall Karuthamma, the self-confidence of the character of Chembankunju, and the passion he has for work, his sufferings from depression due to greed, Chakki's struggles and her role in advising others on her life in psychological perspectives.