The Causes of Human Behavior; Implications for Theory and Method in the Social Sciences

1998 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 157
Author(s):  
Patrick Baert ◽  
L. B. Mohr
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
The Social

scholarly journals Tipping points among social learners: Tools from varied disciplines

2012 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 298-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Alexander Bentley ◽  
Michael J. O’Brien
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Animal Behavior ◽  
Collective Behavior ◽  
Tipping Points ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
The Social

Abstract There is a long and rich tradition in the social sciences of using models of collective behavior in animals as jumping-off points for the study of human behavior, including collective human behavior. Here, we come at the problem in a slightly different fashion. We ask whether models of collective human behavior have anything to offer those who study animal behavior. Our brief example of tipping points, a model first developed in the physical sciences and later used in the social sciences, suggests that the analysis of human collective behavior does indeed have considerable to offer [Current Zoology 58 (2): 298–306, 2012].

Reasons, Causes, and Intentional Explanation

1986 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick Stoutland
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Social ◽  
Intentional Explanation ◽  
Covering Law ◽  
Causal Laws ◽  
Physical Laws ◽  
And Behavior

AbstractThe reasons-causes debate concerns whether explanations of human behavior in terms of an agent's reasons presuppose causal laws. This paper considers three approaches to this debate: the covering law model which holds that there are causal laws covering both reasons and behavior, the intentionalist approach which denies any role to causal laws, and Donald Davidson’s point of view which denies that causal laws connect reasons and behavior, but holds that reasons and behavior must be covered by physical laws if reasons explanations are to be valid. I defend the intentionalist approach against the two causalist approaches and conclude with reflections on the significance of the debate for the social sciences.

Reviews of the Literature: Uniformities in Human Relations Tentatively Established

1942 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-45
Author(s):  
Charles Harding
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
The Social

It has been becoming increasingly evident to some of those who have to handle problems of human relations that most social sciences have provided no practical technique for analyzing human relationships. The departmentalization of the social sciences, the result of historical development rather than any actual division of labor based on definitions of human behavior, has only led to confusion. Many of the problems upon which much energy and time is spent seem to be problems arising from the division of behaviors into various fields rather than from behavior itself. Furthermore this unreal departmentalization has led to "passing the buck" among specialists. When hard pressed on a particular point they can always say that at that point the problem ceases to be theirs and becomes the problem of another group of specialists. Thus problems are tossed back and forth, are never faced, and naturally never solved. Unfortunately, the completely unwarranted division of human relations into the fields of economics, sociology, psychology, and so on seems strongly entrenched.

The Biological Bases of Behavior and Some Implications for Political Science

1971 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter A. Corning
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Biological Factors ◽  
Darwinian Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
Two Generations

In what must surely rank as one of the strangest episodes in the entirehistory of science, two generations of our immediate forebears in the social sciences managed virtually to ignore the “Darwinian” theory of biological evolution and to exclude from their purview any sustained consideration of the role of biological factors in the shaping of human behavior.

Political Networks and Computational Social Science

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lazer ◽  
Stefan Wojcik
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Big Data ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Inflection Point ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Computational Social Science ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Computational Approaches ◽  
Political Networks ◽  
The Social

The last half century has witnessed the digitization of human life, with a sharp inflection point being the widespread adoption of the Internet. In the wake of this digitization the phrase “big data” has been coined. Because many big data are explicitly or implicitly relational, this digitization of humanity has been critical in the increase in the study of networks. Further, since this digitization process continues not only forward but backward (e.g., through the scanning of millions of books and news periodicals going back for centuries), it is likely that the social sciences will be recentered over the next generation around computational approaches to data emphasizing (1) the relational aspects of human behavior, (2) phenomena that exist on societal scales rather than just individual ones, and (3) the dynamics of human behavior. This chapter discusses, in particular, the potential transformation of political science in these directions.

Animal Studies and Human Behavior

1956 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-14
Author(s):  
Bertram Schaffner
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Animal Behavior ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Energy Systems ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Original Stimulus ◽  
The Social ◽  
The 19Th Century

Contemporary students of human behavior will do well to keep abreast of what contemporary students of animal behavior are thinking and discovering. Working concepts that we have honored and used for the last century are being reexamined and tested; some are in the process of redefinition, others found wanting or incorrect, while exciting new ones emerge. Simple closed energy systems are giving way to relativity patterns, consideration of individual differences, and the inclusion of relationships and timing as vital factors in the explanation of events in nature. In the middle of the 19th century, Darwin revitalized the study of man by showing that philosophers would have to leave their academic chambers and look at living creatures in the woods and fields. The result was a happy one for the development of anthropology, sociology, psychology, and the related social sciences, including psychiatry. Unfortunately, it would seem, the social scientists' enthusiasm and success in their discoveries about human behavior led them far away from the original stimulus of animal studies. Perhaps there is an historical tendency in Western culture to divorce man from the animal, or possibly we specialists tend to forget all specialties but our own. In either case, the gap is a dangerous one.

On the Foundations of Social Science Research

1992 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis C. Mueller
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Building Block ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Past Experience ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
The Social

AbstractIs it possible that all of the social sciences could employ a common methodology? If so, what would it be? This article adresses these questions. It takes off from James Coleman’s recent book, The Foundations of Social Theory. Coleman’s social theory is built on the postulate that individuals are rational actors, the same postulate that most of modern economics is built upon. This article critiques the use of this postulate in economics, and thus questions whether it is a useful building block for the methodological foundations of social science research. It proposes an adaptive view of human behavior as an alternative in which preferences are conditioned by past experience. The work of Joseph Schumpeter is discussed as an exemplar of the methodology advocated here.

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