Lecture-2

Understanding Behavior

Last Lecture sum up

 Behavioral Sciences, combination of various disciplines dealing with the subject of human actions,
usually including the fields of sociology, social and cultural anthropology, psychology,
and individual/group behavioral aspects of biology, economics, and politics.
 Behavior 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,
Understanding Behaviors:

Human behavior as the population of behaviors exhibited by humans is determined by many factors.
 It is influenced by biology, through genes, neurotransmitters and other biological mechanisms;
 by environment, through social factors; and
 psychology, through the structure of the human brain and its many, varied functions.

No one mentioned area can entirely determine human behavior. It is influenced through all of them. That
mean it is influenced through the interaction of biological, sociological and psychological factors. In what is
follow we will focus on these three factors and on the way these work together.

SENSORY SYSTEMS
Human experience is effected by both internal and external stimuli. Humans are able to distinguish among
many different types of stimuli by means of a highly developed system of SENSE ORGANS. Sensory
Systems represent an integration of the functions of the Peripheral Nervous System and Central Nervous
System.
The Sensory Division of the Peripheral Nervous System gathers information about the Body's Internal
Conditions and External Environment.
Sensory Systems translate light, sound, temperature, and other aspects of the environment to electrical
signals and transmit these signals, in the form of Action Potentials, to the Central Nervous System, where
they are Interpreted.

Sensation
There are some among millions neurons which are called Sensory Receptors, React Directly to Stimulation
from The Environment. Many Receptors that enable the Body to Receive Information from the Environment
are located in highly specialized Organs called “Sense Organs”.
Examples of stimulation include: Light, Sound, Motion, Chemical, Pressure, Pain or Changes in the
Temperature.
Once these Sensory Receptors are Stimulated, they TRANSFORM one form of ENERGY from the
Environment (LIGHT, SOUND) into another form of Energy (Action Potential) that can be transmitted to
other neurons. These Action Potentials (IMPULSES) reach the Central Nervous System (CNS).
A Sensory Receptor is a Neuron that is Specialized to detect a Stimulus. There are many kinds of Sensory
Receptors, and they can be categorized on the basis of the type of stimuli they respond to different types of
sensory neurons:
Types of Sensory Neurons
A. Mechanoreceptors - Respond to Movement, Pressure, and Tension.
B. Photoreceptors- Respond to Variations in Light.
C. Chemoreceptors - Respond to Chemicals.
D. Thermoreceptors - Respond to Changes in Temperature.
E. Pain Receptors - Respond to Tissue Damage – PAIN

The sensory receptors are contained in the sense organs. Each of the five senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste,
and touch) has a specific sense organ associated with it. The most familiar sense organs are the eyes, ears,
nose, skin and taste buds. These organs have receptors that can respond to stimuli by producing nerve
impulses in a sensory neuron. Other nontraditional sense like, hearing (audioception), taste (gustaoception),
smell (olfacception), and touch (tactioception), balance (equilibrioception) and acceleration
(kinesthesioception)

Biological basis of behavior

The nervous system
Behavior, which can vary from driving a car to making a difficult mathematical exercise, depends on various
processes in the human body. The relation between these processes is regulated by the nervous system.
Here is an example of what your body has to do in order to make you stop for a red traffic light. First you
have to perceive the light, which means that the light has to be caught by the eye. The eye sends signals to
the brain. The brain compares the signals with those received from the other eye and stores the signals
temporarily in your memory.

The nervous system is the most complex system of the human body. The human brain itself consists of at
least 10 billion neurons. Every moment of the day your nervous system is active. It exchanges millions of
signals corresponding with feeling, thoughts and actions.

There are three general functions of the nervous system in man and animals:
1. Sensing specific information about external and internal conditions (in the example above, this is seeing
your friend).
2. Integrating that information (this is the understanding of the information coming from the eyes).
3. Issuing commands for a response from the muscles or glands (this is the reaction of walking towards
him).
The nervous system provides us the ability to perceive, understand and react to environmental events. That
is why the nervous system is so extremely important for human behavior.
Genetic influences, the role of genes on behavior

Psychological factors
There are three psychological basic sub-systems which act on human behavior: motivation, cognition and
emotion.
 Motivation
Motivation is the driving force of human behavior. It is a force by which humans achieve their goals.
One of the most widely discussed theories of motivation is Abraham Maslow's theory. Accordingly
 to him driving forces for human action are human heeds, structured by him hierarchically from basic
to most complexes as follows: Safety / Security / Shelter / Health, Belongingness / Love/ Friendship,
Self-esteem / Recognition / Achievement, Self-actualization.
Generally speaking motivation is classified in two types: intrinsic or extrinsic.
Intrinsic motivation is called also internal. They say that the person is intrinsically motivated if his action
(behavior) is driven by an interest or enjoyment in the task itself, rather than relying on any external
pressure.
Extrinsic motivation is called also external. It comes from outside of the individual. Common extrinsic
motivations are rewards like money and grades, coercion and threat of punishment.
 Cognition
Cognition is a complex mental phenomenon that refers to knowledge, to the way people acquired and
use their knowledge. Cognition includes processes like perception, attention, remembering,
producing and understanding language, solving problems, and making decisions.
 Perception
Perception is the process of attaining understanding of the environment by organizing and
interpreting information got from the traditionally recognized five senses of sight
(ophthalmoception), hearing (audioception), taste (gustaoception), smell (olfacception), and touch
(tactioception), and other nontraditional senses like temperature (thermoception), kinesthetic sense
(proprioception), pain (nociception), balance (equilibrioception) and acceleration
(kinesthesioception).
 Memory and attention
Memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. The
environment stimulates one or more sensory systems. This environmental information then passes
three levels of memory called sensory memory, short-term memory and long-term memory. At each
level, cognitive processes operate on the information, giving it meaning, refreshing it and integrating
it. In the sensory memory, the information is encoded to go to the short term memory. There the
information is encoded to go to the long term memory. The ability to look at an item, and remember
what it looked like with just a second of observation, or memorization, is an example of sensory
memory.
Emotions
The word emotion includes a wide range of observable behaviors, expressed feelings, and changes in
the body state. This diversity in intended meanings of the word emotion makes it hard to study. For
many of us emotions are very personal states, difficult to define or to identify except in the most
obvious instances.
Social influences
Humans are social creatures. There is a fundamental human need to belong to social groups, because
survival and prosperity is more likely if we live and work together. However, to live together, we
need to agree on common beliefs, values, attitudes and behaviors that reduce in-group threats act for
the common good. These beliefs, values and principles are expressed in social tradition, laws, ethical
codes and delivered among humans by the mean of different social system: educational system,
juridical system, mass media system etc. Society influence the behavior of its members in many
ways. It passes laws through its governmental institutions, creating severe punishments for particular
antisocial behaviors. It develop a strong desire for ethics and morals, through its religious institutions
as well as secular education (beginning with it elementary or family level end ending with highest
institutional level) and tradition (seen as an ensemble of rituals that pressure people to behave in a
predictable fashion and that why seen as source of social stability).
As we grow and develop in society, we internalize the values of the society around us by making
these our own. The process through which society influences individuals to internalize values
(attitudes and expectations) is called socialization. Individuals do not automatically absorb, but
gradually accept cultural attitudes and roles. The individual is often unaware of his acceptance of
these socially derived roles, roles are often accepted unconsciously.