Transcript INTRODUCTION

 This term Behavioral science originated from the United
state in the 1950’s
 It is often used synonymously with Social Sciences
although some writers distinguish between them.
 Social Sciences, sciences concerned with the origin and
development of human society, and the institutions,
relationships, and ideas involved in social life. Included in the
social sciences are anthropology, sociology, political science,
economics, law, psychology, criminology, and social
psychology.
 Recently however, the term behavioral science suggests an
approach that is more experimental/scientific than that
connoted by the older term.
 They used it to encompass subjects as
 Psychology
 Psychiatry
 Sociology
 Social Anthropology
 History
 Economics
 Ethics etc.
 Strictly speaking the meaning of the concept Behavioral Science
could be made more meaningful simply by turning the two words
around “Science of behavior”
 in the face value means the scientific study of human and animal
behavior and the mental processes that inform them.
 What makes a subject Scientific?
 In the Behavioral Sciences Dept. and for that matter this lecture;
we use it to loosely to encompass several subject areas, namely
 Psychology
 Psychiatry (branch of medicine specializing in mental illnesses)
 Sociology (the scientific study of human social relations or group
life). Family, Class, community n power =how do they influence
society?
 Social Anthropology (the study of all aspects of human life and
culture)
the animal is not all to understanding it. You
also need an understanding of its behavior in order to
wholly understand it.
 The early years of medicine was dominated by the
“dualist philosophy” which posited that the mind and
the body were two separate entities.
 Thus, conceptualization and treatment of illnesses was
strictly biomedical, whereby the organism’s
psychological and socio - cultural factors were entirely
ignored.
 Strict biomedical practice had to give way to a more
encompassing one known as holistic/ (Biopsychosocial)
approach, because it was realized that the psychological
and social factors were after all important in the etiology
of most illnesses.
 Just learning all the Anatomy and the Physiology was not
enough to understand the human being.
 You really need to understand the behavior to be able to
effectively deal with the numerous medical problems; most
of which have behavioral/ psychological components in their
etiology.
 Common malaria – behavioral components?
 Non contagious diseases
 Essential Hypertension, diabetes
 Stroke/ heart diseases etc
MANAGEMENT OF ILLNESSES (MALARIA)
 Primary
Education and Prophylaxes
 Secondary
Actually medical treatment
 Tertiary level
Rehabilitation.
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 Lots of efforts / resources - research into treatment
regimes/ effective drugs etc but with the recent adoption of
“mosquito nets”, higher successes at controlling malaria is being
reported.
 Maintenance of hygienic environment etc.
 That is the evidence that behavior is important in the etiology of
malaria.
 Essential hypertension? / stroke?
 Diabetes?
 Do they have behavioral components?
 Common factors
 Stress
 Compromised lifestyles
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Smoking?
Lack of exercises
Lack of rest
Bad nutrition but to mention a few.
 To be effective, you may have to consider the behavioral
factors at the primary level.
 Education for instance would require knowledge of the
behavior of the people under study.
 It will also require knowledge in Sociology/ anthropology,
which deals with the cultural practices, and value systems
etc, that inform the people’s attitude and subsequently their
behavior.
 Many such sicknesses (contagious and non- contagious) have
behavioral aspects whose understanding will enhance
medical practice.
 There is the need to study behavior within its cultural
perspectives. As a doctor, knowing about the peoples
cultural practices will also enhance your care. Why?
 Doctors need to observe the people – good and bad
behaviors, their practices that can help you to educate
them. That way he/ she reduce the incidence of the
problem behaviors contributing to the illnesses and
therefore reducing the illnesses you deal, hence,
reducing their own workload.
 Is it their environmental conditions
 Their nutritional – taboos; do they not avoid some nutritional
foods that would otherwise boost their nutritional status?
And so on **
 Behavioral Sciences should help you to understand your patients
very well.
 Subjects such as motivation, personality, communication, stress
etc will enhance the patient – doctor relationship.
 Some doctors find it difficult to communicate with their patients
about their own care. They are made passive recipients of medical
care?
 No Explanation of procedures carried out on them
 No information about diagnosis/ prognosis
 No counseling skill
 How do we break news to the patients?
OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY OF
BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE
ALL HISTORICAL
OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY OF BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE
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Long before Behavioral Sciences became
distinctly established as scientific enterprises of
their own, man asked questions in order to
ascertain “TRUTHS” about human behavior.
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Our approach to the outline of the history of
Behavioral Science is to focus on the theorists
and investigators of human behavior.
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There are so many outstanding behavioral
Scientists and a review of their approaches to
understanding behavior will form the basis of
our understanding of Behavioral Sciences, as
we know it to be today.
OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY OF BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE
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Thus, a review of Historical development of
Concepts of human behaviour from the first
few models to the 1900 when Behavioral
Science was established will enhance our
knowledge of the past.
 …a
review of some observers of man; through the
time of the social philosophers and the period after
1900 when schools/ perspectives of contemporary
psychology, namely; (behavioral, psychoanalytic,
Humanistic, neurobiological, cognitive Psychology,
etc sprang up)
SOME OUTSTANDING BEHAVIOURAL SCIENTISTS
SOME OBSERVERS
EMIL DURKHEIM
He was one of the founders of modern Sociology who
published most of his work before 1900, yet enjoys
frequent citation because of its relevance today.
According to Nisbet, (1979, p.33),
 Durkheim is credited with producing the “ first clearcut scientific study of a single social problem in
modern Sociology – Suicide.
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He demonstrated empirically and theoretically that this
human behaviour was related to the organization – or more
specifically the disorganization – of the group to which the
individual belongs.
Durkheim’s methodology and the theoretical
implications of behaviour as a function of interaction
in a social environment have endured.
OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY OF BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE
GREEK PHILOSOPHER PLATO (427 – 347 B.C)
 Plato’s initially, speculation as to the nature/ behaviour
of man became theories of the state and its
functioning.
 He maintained two beliefs; that of ideal society and
his belief that the individual behaviour should be
controlled by the decisions of the ruling elite (Jowett,
1892).
 Plato argued that people behaved as they do because
they have been taught to behave so.
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According to him, men are born with the capacity to learn
and are trained by the society’s system of education. The
way therefore to influence behaviour was to change the
social system.
He reached these by Armchair philosophising
ARISTOTLE
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Aristotle’s, on the other hand, viewed the
individual’s behaviour as a reflection of the
individual’s nature.
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In his view, society is a function of the
instinctive and unchanging nature of the
human being.
SOCRATES
Socrates developed a third theory based on the
observation of the Greek society. He argued that men
naturally do things that please them and avoid the
things that displease them.
 This was the early form of HEDONISM, which
explains human behavior on the basis of pleasure and
pain. In some ways hedonism is a variation of the
Aristotelian belief that behavior is caused by innate
natural forces, and thus is impossible to change.
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Let me mention that this observation constitute one
important theme that runs through modern behavioral
Science today and psychology for that matter.
COULD BEHAVIOUR BE SCIENTIFICALLY STUDIED?
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McClelland (1951) assessed the history of man’s approach to
human behaviour and he summarized as follows;
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…”The Hebrews felt that there were dark inscrutable forces within
nature just as there were in the outside world and that even the wish to
understand them was in itself bad, in fact a symptom of those evil forces
themselves at work.
The Greeks, on the other hand, at least in the time of Plato and
Socrates, felt that man by reasoning could arrive at understanding and
control himself…. With such an inheritance from opposing Greek and
Hebrew traditions, it can hardly be wondered that beliefs about the
feasibility of scientific approach to personality swung from one extreme
to another at different periods in the history of western Civilization
(Pp.6-7).
McClelland’s assessment summarizes the attitude of
application of Scientific method to the study of human
behaviour/ nature.
And as you will see later, the Hebrews taught that there was
everything wrong with trying to investigate human nature.
Thus, even the wish to understand human behaviour was itself
evil.
ANOTHER IMPORTANT ISSUE
JOHN LOCKE AND HIS BRITISH ASSOCIATES
 Another important idea about human behaviour that
affected contemporary Psychology was that of John
Locke and his British Associations school???
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Locke and his successors thought that since man was
essentially a “blank tablet” at birth,
 society had the capacity to influence him in nearly any
manner by the kind of education it gave him.
 This was an idea that influenced J.B Watson and the other
behaviorists.
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Machiavelli, the Italian Political advisor of the
Renaissance, argued that man should accept the fact
that power was his main concern in life and act
accordingly.
OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY OF BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE
A few other scholars such as Karl Marx’s believed that
the profit motive was essentially instinctual and hence
could not be understood or controlled. Instead, he felt
it had to be accepted and curbed by social
arrangements.
 As will be revealed later, Freud combined the two
contradictory beliefs about human behaviour/ nature
(thus, that of rationality and of irrationality) above.
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He had the Greek’s strong faith in the power of man’s
ability to understand himself. Yet the aggressive,
antisocial, apparently irrational, and even mystical
aspects of man’s nature fascinated him.
THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHERS
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The Social Philosophers included Rene Descartes
(1596 – 1650), Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679), John
Locke (1632 – 1704), Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 –
1778) and David Hume (1731 – 1776).
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Their ideas have had considerable impact not only on their
peers but also on subsequent generations. It must be
mentioned that their ideas conflicted greatly.
Descartes argues that the human beings and his
behaviour were subject to the same mechanical laws
of the universe as other organisms.
 The notion of the mind- body dualism is usually traced
to Descartes, who also emphasized the innate source
of man’s ideas. Yet Descartes laid the basis for later
scientific approaches to man. This great man
contributed to the origin of Biomedical practice.
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THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHERS
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Hobbes originated a number of important concepts.
These included the believe that all human
behaviour is subject to scientific law
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He also developed a view, which was later borrowed
by John Locke to form his Associationist’s concept.
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that all other things being equal, man chooses his course of
action based on what will give him pleasure ( a variant of
hedonism), and that the state must control man’s natural
passion (a view similar to Machiavelli’s).
This was the view that every individual comes into the world
with TABULA RASA or blank slate. This view was a
counterview to the prevailing doctrine that the source of
man’s behaviour was inborn.
Locke’s believe (as opposed to that of Descartes) that
man’s ideas and behavior resulted from experience or
interaction with the external environment.
THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHERS
Another Scholar, Gall argued that the explanation of
human behaviour would be found in the
NEUROPHYSIOLOGICAL makeup of the individual.
 He believed that fundamental innate attribute (such
as pride, vanity, foresight, cunning, sense of property)
existed in man and that each attribute was
represented by an organ or a part of the brain.
 Another fact was that the development of particular
characteristics would be evidenced by the size of that
part of the brain.
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NB. For the first time somebody has attributed
human behaviour to the brain/ physiological
processes.
THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHERS
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Auguste Comte (1798 – 1857) was influenced
by Gall particularly in his belief that a
physiological substrate was correlated with
behaviour.
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Comte added another notion that human
beings possessed INNATE POSITIVE SOCIAL
INSTINCT, which interacted with environmental
demands and on which human society was
based.
MARGARET MEAD (1901 – 1978)
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ANTHROPOLOGIST – Study of the existence of man, esp. of the
beginning. Development, customs and beliefs of mankind.
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She found sex roles and temperament to be a function of each
particular culture.
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Pioneered research methods that turned cultural anthropology into a
major science. Her anthropological expedition include trips to SAMOA,
New Guinea, Bali and other parts of South Pacific.
Her first book, COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA, was a result of study of
female adolescent in that society and found no such conflicts as
characterizing American adolescent period.
Males and females were aggressive or passive in terms of what the
culture dictated. She attributed the differences in behaviour between the
sexes to the kind of upbringing, particularly by the mother.
Throughout her career, Mead promoted the importance of
environmental influences, women’s rights and harmony.
RUTH BENEDICT (1887 – 1948)
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Benedict (also Anthropologist) obtained her PHD in Anthropology under
Franz Boas at Columbia.
Most of her research dealt with the origin of American Indian cultures. She
saw in each culture as assemblage of elements of several other cultures.
*She saw the cultural personality as deriving from the influence of the
cultures on the individual during his or her development, not from any sort
of genetic determinism.
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This work is of particular importance to Psychology in that it suggests a cultural
determined definition of normality.
Benedict’s major publications include Psychological type in the Cultures
of the Southwest, in which she compares two Indian tribes, and her very
important “Pattern of Culture”.
As part of her wartime work, she wrote
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The chrysanthemum and the sword; Pattern of Japanese Culture (1946) – a
useful explanation of Japanese culture for Westerners.
Also of interest are her early Tales of the Cochiti Indians, and her two –
volume Zuni Mythology.
THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHERS
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SIGNIFICANCE OF OBSERVERS OF HUMAN
BEHAVIOUR
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Observers of human behaviour helped set the
stage for one of the more dramatic and
influential investigators of personality. The
social philosophers shared a general belief in
the role of the environment in shaping man’s
personality – even to the point of viewing man
as potential perfectible.