The Causes Of Behavior Analysis

“I feel there are two people inside me – me and my intuition. If I go against her, she'll screw me every time, and if I follow her, we get along quite nicely” (Kim Basinger). Many of us have often found ourselves thinking like Kim Basinger, our intuition play a fundamental role in decision-making and mostly, whenever we find ourselves analyzing human behaviour; to include ourselves and others. However, is it accurate to say that using our intuition about everyday behaviour is sufficient for a complete understanding of the causes of behaviour? Certainly not! Understanding the implications of behaviour exceed mere ‘gut feeling’, as it is distorted by our perceptions, cognitions and experiences.

In other words, behaviour is a response of an individual

Now psychology is the science of human behaviour and mental processes. It is called a science due to the scientific method which is used to produce verifiable evidence and not merely ‘guy feeling’ results. In contrast to recalling past experiences from the unconscious mind, the scientific method is used consciously to observe, to theorize, to formulate a hypothesis, to design a study, to collect data and to apply results to the hypothesis. To this end, the result of the causes of behaviour would be replicable for other researchers who are investigating the particular behaviour. It must also be noted that there are some behaviours that not subjective to the scientific method. Thus, scientists must draw a distinction between values and facts. For example, a statement based on values would be, “Children who commit crimes should be tried as an adult in the court system”. While on the other hand, a statement based on facts would be, “Schizophrenia does not mean ‘split personality’, but instead means a splitting of affect, thought and behaviour”. That being the case, values cannot be judged as true or false thus scientists cannot approve or disprove

Her perception to this end would probably cause her to give up on their marriage, or become insecure and/or accuse him of something that he might not be guilty of due to her assumptions. However, let us say that Stacy and Luke visited a psychologist for assistance. The psychologist would use an approach to assist the clients such as the evidence-based approach. According to Benson and colleagues, the five principles for effective couple therapy include changing the views of the relationship by assisting both partners to view their marriage objectively, modifying dysfunctional behaviour in the marriage, decreasing emotional avoidance, improving communication between the couple and promoting the strengths of the couple. Benson and colleagues’ approach in contrast to Stacy’s intuition displays the salient features of using a systematic approach and that of hindsight bias; that is, one produces verifiable evidence and the other does not. Thus, the findings at the session could be that he felt less talkative due to the stresses at work, or it could be that he is having an extramarital affair. Even so, the approach taken would be more objective than Stacy’s