Love in not a “trait.” We could describe traits not as behaviors but as adjectives that others, who witnessed an event, turn into nouns when telling you about the event, which you never witnessed. If we take these nouns uncritically, they all too easily become fictional accounts for the behaviors that occurred in the un–witnessed event.
When contingencies, usually educational contingencies, move people away from either theological or secular (like psychological) mystical accounts for behavior, many people maintain some presumption in scientifically connected genetic accounts of behavior. Even hopelessly simplistic genetic explanations, such as “she does that because she was born that way” or “he does that because it’s in his genes,” carry some aura of scientific authority through a generalization process from real science.
The general approach to accounting for behavioral events proceeds, in its simplest form, by first analyzing the antecedent events, the ones occurring before the behavior of concern. One looks for any functional relations with the subsequent occurrence of the behavior of concern. Then, if appropriate, a next step involves analyzing the postcedent events, the ones occurring after the behavior of concern. Now one looks for any functional relations with any further subsequent occurrences of the behavior of concern.
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.
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.
Welcome to more columns scientifically exploring some of the mysteries of life and living, especially the behavior–related mysteries. Welcome to “more” columns, because this new set of columns follows an earlier set that was titled simply “Exploring Mysteries of Living.”
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.
