An unfolding set of 72 articles that describe some basic principles and practices of behaviorology. The columns feature numerous, substantial, everyday examples of human normal behavior. Each column features its own title, while the title of the set is “Mysteries of Living.” A second set of 72 unfolding articles titled “Science is Lovable” covers more advanced topics.
Welcome to the first of many columns exploring some of the mysteries of life and living, especially some behavior–related mysteries. Each column will include where to find more information. And each column provides some basics of a scientific account for its mystery.
Living on the edge of a small town, I write this as a bright February sun illuminates nearby farm fields already devoid of snow. Deer pass through the unfenced yards between well–spaced homes in the twilight hours of morning and evening, tasting everything on their way to or from an undeveloped area at the center of the next block. One or another dog is always pulling an owner down the street. The resplendent view and clean air invite one to take a walk even without a pet, but a short distance in the stiff breeze, with the temperature below freezing, quickly compels a return to the warm side of the window with a cup of hot cocoa in hand.
Two considerations recur across these columns. These concern my examples and writing style. In early columns, or with basic principles and processes, simple human behaviors as well as an occasional non–human behavior provides the examples best illustrating some particular point, because behaviorology concerns all behavior. However, the realistic explanation of ordinary, which really means complex, human behavior remains our primary emphasis as we get into later columns.
Since the causes of behavior are cast in terms of “contingencies,” the time has come to make some sense of the term “contingency.” This term stands in generically for the range of “causes” of behavior the way other terms cannot, such as “stars,” in astrology, or “selves,” in psychology.
Last time we took a quick look at contingency causes of behavior through the oversimplified “A—B—Cs of behaviorology.” A slightly more realistic formula, “A—B—P,” refers mostly to events in time and stands for “Antecedents—Behaviors—Postcedents.” We will quickly see this develop into many fully realistic versions, a common one of which is “Evocative Stimulus—Response—Consequential Stimulus.”
Consequences divide into various types that we detail later. Our concern just now is their status as either “reinforcing” or “punishing” consequences, because this characteristic pertains to the central role of consequences. This central role involves consequences either making responses occur more often, in which case the consequence earns the title “reinforcer,” or making responses occur less often, in which case the consequence earns the title “punisher.”
We approach the story of behavior and its causes as natural scientists. Traditional natural sciences cover the basic subject matters of energy, matter, and life forms as well as their related extensions. These thus include physics, chemistry, and biology, along with astronomy, geology, physiology, and so on.
Behaviorologists separated their natural–science discipline from psychology after psychologists in general repeatedly refused numerous attempts over 50 years to nudge the non–natural discipline of psychology toward natural–science.
The magazine, Consumer Reports, regularly carries articles on the benefits of maintaining a healthy weight, even if that requires some special diet. All too commonly, people claim that to maintain a diet one must restrain oneself from all the chocolates (Heaven forbid!) and one must exert lots of will power to eat only the right foods in the right amounts.
Understanding, and being able to spot, a range of fictional explanations for behavior provides a skill. The use of this skill prevents analysis errors when trying to understand the causes of behaviors, including problem behaviors, from local to global. So here we consider some more types of explanatory fictions.
