BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES - Universitatea de Medicină şi Farmacie

1.1. Behavior as a Concept
Introduction in Behavioral Sciences
6
Chapter 1
Human behavior flows from three main sources:
desire, emotion, and knowledge
Plato
The concept of behavior became an important construct in early
20th century psychology. It was considered to be the phenomenon
passable for scientific analyses, and consequently the phenomenon
studying of which can lead us to the better understanding of human and
development. How can be defined this concept?
Behavior or behaviour is term refers to the actions of a system or
organism, usually in relation to its environment, which includes the other
systems or organisms around as well as the physical environment. It is the
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. More generally, behavior can be regarded as any
action of an organism that changes its relationship to its environment.
Behavior provides outputs from the organism to the environment. It is
most commonly believed that complexity in the behavior of an organism is
correlated to the complexity of its nervous system. Generally, organisms
with more complex nervous systems have a greater capacity to learn new
responses and thus adjust their behavior. In the light of this supposition
human behavior is the most evolved or complex type. In Science and
Human behavior B.F. Skinner mentioned that human behavior is a
difficult subject matter, not because it is inaccessible, but because it is
extremely complex. Since it is a process, rather than a thing, it cannot
easily be held still for observation. It is changing, fluid, and evanescent,
and for this reason it makes great technical demands upon the ingenuity
and energy of the scientist. But there is nothing essentially insoluble about
the problems which arise from this fact. Nowadays behavior and