Psychology of behavior

To begin with, behavioral psychology is basically interested in how our behavior results from the stimuli both in the environment and within ourselves. There are different theories developed by psychologists like Freud, Erikson and Maslow. There are many psychologists, so it is almost impossible to tell something about all of them. Thus, I would like to focus on some theories with divergent views about how to explain human behavior.

Firstly, biological basis can influence treatment. 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.

Secondly, like other social species, humans live in groups and depend on one another for survival. The most basic requirement of a social group is that of mutual beneficence -- members of the group must coordinate their actions so that they help one another more than they harm one another -one for all and all for one. And there are many aspects, which help us to do it. For instance, social emotions. Natural selection has provided us with mechanisms that serve to attract us to the social group and to help us coordinate our behaviors with those of others in the group. To a great extent, these mechanisms produce emotional states in us. Emotional expression can communicate important information to other group members, and such communication is likely to help those others coordinate their behavior so as to serve the needs of the emotional individual and the group. For example:

• Sadness is a cry for help. If the individual is still valued by the group, then expressions of sadness should elicit helping behavior from other group members.
• Expressions of love signal that one is receptive to intimacy.
• Anger warns others that their behavior is offensive and should be changed.
• Happiness communicates one’s pleasure with the company of others.

Smiling is very interesting for me, because several studies of persons in natural settings have shown that people only smile when they are around others. We may sometimes be happy when we are alone, but apparently we only smile when we are with others.

Other factor, which influences person’s behavior is social pressure. At any given moment, there are likely to be several forces that are pushing you towards or away from particular courses of action. Those forces that come from other persons or from your beliefs about other persons are referred to as social pressure. Theory proposed that a person is like a piece of iron floating in a world where it is influenced to move in various directions by electromagnetic forces from different sources. As a simple example, consider your decision to come to class today. Some forces work to push you towards coming to class, such as your desire to learn psychology and your belief that your parents would be disappointed if you flunked the class. Other forces may push toward different, incompatible goals. For example, your sleep-deprived body may be pushing you towards just staying in bed and going back to sleep, forces from some of your friends may be pushing you towards getting up and going fishing with them, and so on.

I want to emphasize that behavior occurs either for the individual, or in the context of a group and there are many factors, which can influence treatment and how a person will behave depend on environment, biological factors, cognitive processes et cetera.