Behavioural sciences

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Behavioural science is the branch of science concerned with human behaviour. [1] While the term can technically be applied to the study of behaviour amongst all living organisms, it is nearly always used with reference to humans as the primary target of investigation (though animals may be studied in some instances, e.g. invasive techniques). The behavioural sciences sit at the interstice between conventionally natural and social sciences, encompassing fields such as psychology, neuroscience and economics.

Contents

In addition to pure science, behavioural science is increasingly understood as a practical discipline relevant for business, healthcare and government; here it is often referred to as behavioural insights. [2]

Scope

The behavioural sciences encompass both natural and social scientific disciplines, including various branches of psychology, neuroscience and biobehavioural sciences, behavioural economics and certain branches of criminology, sociology and political science. [3] [4] This interdisciplinary nature allows behavioural scientists to coordinate findings from psychological experiments, genetics and neuroimaging, self-report studies, interspecies and cross-cultural comparisons, and correlational and longitudinal designs to understand the nature, frequency, mechanisms, causes and consequences of given behaviours. [1] [3] [5]

With respect to the applied behavioural science and behavioural insights, the focus is usually narrower, tending to encompass cognitive psychology, social psychology and behavioural economics generally, and invoking other more specific fields (e.g. health psychology) where needed. [4] In applied settings behavioural scientists exploit their knowledge of cognitive biases, heuristics, and peculiarities of how decision-making is affected by various factors to develop behaviour change interventions or develop policies which 'nudge' people to acting more auspiciously (see Applications below). [1] [2]

Future and emerging techniques

Robila [6] explains how using modern technology to study and understand behavioral patterns on a greater scale, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and greater data has a future in brightening up behavioral science assistance/ research. Creating cutting-edge therapies and interventions with immersive technology like virtual reality/ AI would also be beneficial to behavioral science future(s). These concepts are only a hint of the many paths behavioral science may take in the future.

Applications

Insights from several pure disciplines across behavioural sciences are explored by various applied disciplines and practiced in the context of everyday life and business. [7]

Consumer behaviour, for instance, is the study of the decision making process consumers make when purchasing goods or services. It studies the way consumers recognise problems and discover solutions. Behavioural science is applied in this study by examining the patterns consumers make when making purchases, the factors that influenced those decisions, and how to take advantage of these patterns.

Organisational behaviour is the application of behavioural science in a business setting. It studies what motivates employees, how to make them work more effectively, what influences this behaviour, and how to use these patterns in order to achieve the company's goals. Managers often use organisational behaviour to better lead their employees.

Using insights from psychology and economics, behavioural science can be leveraged to understand how individuals make decisions regarding their health and ultimately reduce disease burden through interventions such as loss aversion, framing, defaults, nudges, and more.

Other applied disciplines of behavioural science include operations research and media psychology.

Differentiation from social sciences

The terms behavioural sciences and social sciences are interconnected fields [8] that both study systematic processes of behaviour, but they differ on their level of scientific analysis for various dimensions of behaviour. [9]

Behavioural sciences abstract empirical data to investigate the decision process and communication strategies within and between organisms in a social system. This characteristically involves fields like psychology, social neuroscience, ethology, and cognitive science. In contrast, social sciences provide a perceptive framework to study the processes of a social system through impacts of a social organisation on the structural adjustment of the individual and of groups. They typically include fields like sociology, economics, public health, anthropology, demography, and political science. [10]

Many subfields of these disciplines test the boundaries between behavioural and social sciences. For example, political psychology and behavioural economics use behavioural approaches, despite the predominant focus on systemic and institutional factors in the broader fields of political science and economics.

See also

Related Research Articles

Behavior or behaviour is the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems or artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as well as the inanimate physical environment. It is the computed 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cognitive neuroscience</span> Scientific field

Cognitive neuroscience is the scientific field that is concerned with the study of the biological processes and aspects that underlie cognition, with a specific focus on the neural connections in the brain which are involved in mental processes. It addresses the questions of how cognitive activities are affected or controlled by neural circuits in the brain. Cognitive neuroscience is a branch of both neuroscience and psychology, overlapping with disciplines such as behavioral neuroscience, cognitive psychology, physiological psychology and affective neuroscience. Cognitive neuroscience relies upon theories in cognitive science coupled with evidence from neurobiology, and computational modeling.

Bounded rationality is the idea that rationality is limited when individuals make decisions, and under these limitations, rational individuals will select a decision that is satisfactory rather than optimal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Behavioral economics</span> Academic discipline

Behavioral economics is the study of the psychological, cognitive, emotional, cultural and social factors involved in the decisions of individuals or institutions, and how these decisions deviate from those implied by classical economic theory.

Neuroeconomics is an interdisciplinary field that seeks to explain human decision-making, the ability to process multiple alternatives and to follow through on a plan of action. It studies how economic behavior can shape our understanding of the brain, and how neuroscientific discoveries can guide models of economics.

A rational agent or rational being is a person or entity that always aims to perform optimal actions based on given premises and information. A rational agent can be anything that makes decisions, typically a person, firm, machine, or software.

Neuromarketing is a commercial marketing communication field that applies neuropsychology to market research, studying consumers' sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective responses to marketing stimuli. The potential benefits to marketers include more efficient and effective marketing campaigns and strategies, fewer product and campaign failures, and ultimately the manipulation of the real needs and wants of people to suit the needs and wants of marketing interests.

Affective science is the scientific study of emotion or affect. This includes the study of emotion elicitation, emotional experience and the recognition of emotions in others. Of particular relevance are the nature of feeling, mood, emotionally-driven behaviour, decision-making, attention and self-regulation, as well as the underlying physiology and neuroscience of the emotions.

Some of the research that is conducted in the field of psychology is more "fundamental" than the research conducted in the applied psychological disciplines, and does not necessarily have a direct application. The subdisciplines within psychology that can be thought to reflect a basic-science orientation include biological psychology, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and so on. Research in these subdisciplines is characterized by methodological rigor. The concern of psychology as a basic science is in understanding the laws and processes that underlie behavior, cognition, and emotion. Psychology as a basic science provides a foundation for applied psychology. Applied psychology, by contrast, involves the application of psychological principles and theories yielded up by the basic psychological sciences; these applications are aimed at overcoming problems or promoting well-being in areas such as mental and physical health and education.

Consumer neuroscience is the combination of consumer research with modern neuroscience. The goal of the field is to find neural explanations for consumer behaviors in individuals both with or without disease.

Psychology encompasses a vast domain, and includes many different approaches to the study of mental processes and behavior. Below are the major areas of inquiry that taken together constitute psychology. A comprehensive list of the sub-fields and areas within psychology can be found at the list of psychology topics and list of psychology disciplines.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to social science:

Cognitive bias mitigation is the prevention and reduction of the negative effects of cognitive biases – unconscious, automatic influences on human judgment and decision making that reliably produce reasoning errors.

Nudge theory is a concept in behavioral economics, decision making, behavioral policy, social psychology, consumer behavior, and related behavioral sciences that proposes adaptive designs of the decision environment as ways to influence the behavior and decision-making of groups or individuals. Nudging contrasts with other ways to achieve compliance, such as education, legislation or enforcement.

Paul W. Glimcher is an American neuroeconomist, neuroscientist, psychologist, economist, scholar, and entrepreneur. He is one of the foremost researchers focused on the study of human behavior and decision-making, and is known for his central role in founding and developing the field of neuroeconomics which takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding how humans make decisions. Glimcher also founded the Institute for the Study of Decision Making at New York University (NYU). Today he serves as Chair of the Department of Neuroscience and Director of the Neurosciences Institute at NYU's Grossman School of Medicine.

Neuromanagement uses cognitive neuroscience, among other life science fields, and technology to analyze economic and managerial issues. It focuses on exploring human brain activities and mental processes when people are faced with typical problems of economics and management. This research provides insight into human decision-making and other general social behavior. The main research areas include decision neuroscience, neuroeconomics, neuromarketing, neuro-industrial engineering, and neuro-information systems. Neuromanagement was first proposed in 2006 by Professor Qingguo Ma, the director of Neuromanagement Laboratory of Zhejiang University.

Elizabeth Anya Phelps is the Pershing Square Professor of Human Neuroscience at Harvard University in the Department of Psychology. She is a cognitive neuroscientist known for her research at the intersection of memory, learning, and emotion. She was the recipient of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society Distinguished Scholar Award and the 21st Century Scientist Award from the James S. McDonnell Foundation, as well as other honors and awards in her field. Phelps was honored with the 2018 Thomas William Salmon Lecture and Medal in Psychiatry at the New York Academy of Medicine. She received the 2019 William James Fellow Award from the Association for Psychological Science (APS) which acknowledged how her "multidisciplinary body of research has probed the influence of emotion across cognitive and behavioral domains using novel imaging techniques and neuropsychological studies grounded in animal models of learning."

Giorgio Coricelli is professor of economics and psychology at the University of Southern California, specializing in neuroeconomics. Having done his undergraduate studies at La Sapienza in Rome, he then completed his Ph.D. at the Economic Science Laboratory of the University of Arizona studying with Vernon Smith, shortly before Smith received his Nobel Prize in economics in 2002.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carlos Alós-Ferrer</span> Economist (Universität zu Köln)

Carlos Alós-Ferrer is a neuroeconomist, decision theorist, and game theorist, a full professor of economics at Lancaster University (U.K.), and the current editor in chief of the Journal of Economic Psychology. He is also a regular contributor to Psychology Today, where he writes about Decisions and the Brain.

Behavioral Public Administration (BPA) is the study of psychological methods and findings in political administrative settings, that is, cognitive and decision biases and discriminations by bureaucrats, the interaction between citizens and bureaucrats, and the psychological effects of public service failure.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Hallsworth, M. (2023). A manifesto for applying behavioural science. Nature Human Behaviour, 7(3), 310-322.
  2. 1 2 Sanders, M., Snijders, V., & Hallsworth, M. (2018). Behavioural science and policy: where are we now and where are we going?. Behavioural Public Policy, 2(2), 144-167.
  3. 1 2 Loewenstein, G., Rick, S., & Cohen, J. D. (2008). Neuroeconomics. Annu. Rev. Psychol., 59(1), 647-672.
  4. 1 2 Bavel, J. J. V., Baicker, K., Boggio, P. S., Capraro, V., Cichocka, A., Cikara, M., ... & Willer, R. (2020). Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response. Nature human behaviour, 4(5), 460-471.
  5. ↑ Mallio, C. A., Buoso, A., Stiffi, M., Cea, L., Vertulli, D., Bernetti, C., ... & Beomonte Zobel, B. (2024). Mapping the Neural Basis of Neuroeconomics with Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging: A Narrative Literature Review. Brain sciences, 14(5), 511. Chicago
  6. ↑ Robila, Mihaela; Robila, Stefan A. (2020-10-01). "Applications of Artificial Intelligence Methodologies to Behavioral and Social Sciences". Journal of Child and Family Studies. 29 (10): 2954–2966. doi:10.1007/s10826-019-01689-x. ISSN   1573-2843.
  7. ↑ Hallsworth, Michael (2023). "A manifesto for applying behavioural science". Nature Human Behaviour . 7 (3): 310–322. doi: 10.1038/s41562-023-01555-3 . PMID   36941468.
  8. ↑ Dristi, Adhikari (2016). "Exploring the Differences Between Social and Behavioral Science". Behavioral Development Bulletin. 21 (2): 128–135. doi:10.1037/bdb0000029.
  9. ↑ "Definition of BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE". www.Merriam-Webster.com. Retrieved 23 December 2017.
  10. ↑ Klemke, E. D., Hollinger, R., and Kline, A. D., (1980), Introduction to the book in 'Introductory Readings in the Philosophy of Science': Buffalo, New York, Prometheus Books p 11-12

Selected bibliography

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