This textbook explores both the psychological and biological influences on the development of behavior, using research on both animal and human subjects to support principles and hypotheses.

This article argues that the process of development as such explains a great deal of the forms and properties of individual developmental trajectories, without the necessity of having to rely on either external or internal factors or causes. Both the problem of developmental change and invariance can be explained by employing a dynamic systems conceptualization of development. It is shown that dynamic systems models on the one hand and those of the genuine developmental models in psychology on the (...) other, share a set of important general properties that are able to explain both the universal and the idiosyncratic aspects of developmental processes. The concept of mental and behavioral ecology, which may serve as a starting point for specific theories of development of cognition, social behavior, personality and so forth, is discussed. It is concluded that both long-term and short-term developmental patterns will be shown to follow similar abstract dynamical principles. (shrink)

Traditional, quantitative behavioral geneticists and developmental psychobiologists such as Gilbert Gottlieb have long debated what it would take to create a truly developmental behavioral genetics. These disputes have proven so intractable that disputants have repeatedly suggested that the problem rests on their opponents' conceptual confusion; whilst others have argued that the intractability results from the non-scientific, political motivations of their opponents. The authors provide a different explanation of the intractability of these debates. They show that the disputants have (...) competing interpretations of the concepts of reaction norm, genotype-environment interaction, and gene. The common thread that underlies each of these disagreements, the authors argue, is the relevance of potential variation that is not manifest in any actual population to the understanding of development. (shrink)

This study developed a cognitive behavioral therapy -based psychoeducation practice aimed at reducing obsessive-compulsive symptom levels in adolescents in Turkey and tested its effectiveness with a mixed-methods study. After the study was constructed as a pretest-posttest control group experimental application consisting of qualitative stages. The experimental application of the study was carried out with high school students in Turkey. In the sampling process, the schools, where the study will be carried out, were determined with the cluster sampling method. The (...) experimental and control groups were formed with 30 students with high obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms from these schools, and the developed CBT-based psychoeducation practice was applied to the experimental group for 12 weeks. Quantitative data were collected through the “Child Version of the Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory,” and normality analysis, t-test for dependent samples, and Single Factor Analysis of Covariance were used. Qualitative data of the study were collected through document review, session evaluation forms, and semi-structured interview protocol; content and descriptive analysis techniques were used in the analysis. It was concluded that the developed CBT-based psychoeducation application was an effective approach in reducing OCD symptoms in the Turkish adolescent sample, except for the neutralizing dimension. It was also determined that the findings obtained from the analysis during the application and the interviews after the application are parallel with the findings obtained by quantitative methods, and the qualitative and quantitative findings adequately explained the quantitative documents findings. (shrink)

Social relationships are essential for humans; neglecting our social needs can reduce wellbeing or even lead to the development of more severe issues such as depression or substance dependency. Although essential, some individuals face major challenges in forming and maintaining social relationships due to the experience of social anxiety. The burden of social anxiety can be reduced through accessible assessment that leads to treatment. However, socially anxious individuals who seek help face many barriers stemming from geography, fear, or disparities (...) in access to systems of care. But recent research suggested digital behavioral markers as a way to deliver cheap and easily accessible digital assessment for social anxiety: As earlier work shows, players with social anxiety show similar behaviors in virtual worlds as in the physical world, including tending to walk farther around other avatars and standing farther away from other avatars. The characteristics of the movement behavior in-game can be harnessed for the development of digital behavioral markers for the assessment of social anxiety. In this paper, we investigate whether implicit as well as explicit digital behavioral markers, proposed by prior work, for social anxiety can be used for predicting the level of social anxiety. We show that both, explicit and implicit digital behavioral markers can be harnessed for the assessment. Our findings provide further insights about how game-based digital behavioral markers can be used for the assessment of social anxiety. (shrink)

Identifying which nonhuman animal species are capable of feeling pain is important both for understanding pain mechanisms more generally and for informing animal welfare regulations, particularly in genera that are not yet widely protected. A common way to try to provide evidence of pain experiences is through behavioral indicators. In this paper I use a very simple interventionist approach to experimentation, and the contrast case provided by C. elegans, to argue that behavioral indicators commonly used for identifying pain (...) in nonhuman animals are much less robust than typically presented. Indeed, I argue that many behavioral indicators of pain are invalid as they are currently described. More positively, this analysis makes it possible to identify what valid criteria might look like, and where relevant, to identify existing evidence related to them. Based on this I propose that the best way to make progress on questions around animal pain is to clearly ally them with questions about animal consciousness more generally, and to productively use conceptual and empirical work in both areas to develop more theoretically defensible behavioral indicators. (shrink)

Music not only regulates mood but also promotes the development and maintenance of empathy and social understanding. Since empathy is crucial for well-being and indispensable in social life, it is necessary to develop strategies to improve empathy and prosocial behaviors. To fulfill this aim, researchers have extensively investigated the effect of intensive musical training on the development of empathy. Here, we first summarize evidence showing the powerful influence of musical training on the development of empathy and then (...) discuss psychological mechanisms responsible for those observations. The conclusions drawn from most previous studies were mainly based on behavioral measurements, while the neural basis of musical training in the development of the empathic brain is still unclear. Fortunately, brain imaging research has contributed greatly to our understanding of the neural underpinnings associated with musical training and its possible connection to the development of the empathic brain. One of the most distinctive signatures of musical training is structural and functional changes of multiple brain regions, and such changes might be related to some of the empathic behaviors observed in musically trained children. Therefore, intensive musical training in childhood may increase levels of empathy, and applied research is required to optimize the training strategy before implementing music education in empathy regulation. Moreover, future longitudinal studies are needed to better understand neural mechanisms underlying the causal effect of musical training on empathy development. These findings have important implications for understanding the development of the empathic brain and for improving prosocial behaviors. (shrink)

Human faces are one of the most prominent stimuli in the visual environment of young infants and convey critical information for the development of social cognition. During the COVID-19 pandemic, mask wearing has become a common practice outside the home environment. With masks covering nose and mouth regions, the facial cues available to the infant are impoverished. The impact of these changes on development is unknown but is critical to debates around mask mandates in early childhood settings. As (...) infants grow, they increasingly interact with a broader range of familiar and unfamiliar people outside the home; in these settings, mask wearing could possibly influence social development. In order to generate hypotheses about the effects of mask wearing on infant social development, in the present work, we systematically review N = 129 studies selected based on the most recent PRISMA guidelines providing a state-of-the-art framework of behavioral studies investigating face processing in early infancy. We focused on identifying sensitive periods during which being exposed to specific facial features or to the entire face configuration has been found to be important for the development of perceptive and socio-communicative skills. For perceptive skills, infants gradually learn to analyze the eyes or the gaze direction within the context of the entire face configuration. This contributes to identity recognition as well as emotional expression discrimination. For socio-communicative skills, direct gaze and emotional facial expressions are crucial for attention engagement while eye-gaze cuing is important for joint attention. Moreover, attention to the mouth is particularly relevant for speech learning. We discuss possible implications of the exposure to masked faces for developmental needs and functions. Providing groundwork for further research, we encourage the investigation of the consequences of mask wearing for infants’ perceptive and socio-communicative development, suggesting new directions within the research field. (shrink)

Emotional, social, and cognitive intelligence competencies have been recognized as the most critical capabilities for organizations to acquire at all levels. For this reason, a wide body of research since the 1980s has demonstrated their positive impact on individual performance, career success, and wellbeing across sectors and professional roles, and a large number of theoretical contributions on how these competencies can be effectively developed has emerged over time. We focus attention on the developmental and learning processes of emotional, social, and (...) cognitive intelligence competencies that occur after formal training or educational courses provided by universities or certified organizations and directed to students or practitioners. Specifically, we conduct an exploratory literature review on the existing academic studies in order to identify the scholars and the pieces of research contributing most to the debate under investigation. This article aims at analyzing this body of research through a systematic review of the literature in order to: i) provide a comprehensive critical analysis of the distinctive features of the theoretical and methodological frameworks adopted to develop these competencies; ii) review the contexts in which the training initiatives analyzed by the literature have been delivered and the categories of learner involved; iii) discuss the learning outcomes of these educational programs and how they have been assessed; iv) identify gaps and inconsistencies in the current state of the literature, suggesting promising paths for future research; and v) stimulate insights for educators, human resource managers, executives, and policymakers by organizing and critically analyzing the extant contributions on competency development. This review represents the first attempt to systematize the methodologies of the educational programs for competency development and to assess their effectiveness in order to assist educators and executives in their ongoing efforts to equip students and employees with the relevant skills needed to achieve superior performance in the workplace. At the institutional level, policymakers should promote a dedicated agenda with concrete actions to equip people with emotional and social intelligence competencies. (shrink)

Cross-cultural research provides invaluable information about the origins of and explanations for cognitive and behavioral diversity. Interest in cross-cultural research is growing, but the field continues to be dominated by WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) researchers conducting WEIRD science with WEIRD participants, using WEIRD protocols. To make progress toward improving cognitive and behavioral science, we argue that the field needs (1) data workflows and infrastructures to support long-term high-quality research that is compliant with open-science frameworks; (2) (...) process and participation standards to ensure research is valid, equitable, participatory, and inclusive; (3) training opportunities and resources to ensure the highest standards of proficiency, ethics, and transparency in data collection and processing. Here we discuss infrastructures for cross-cultural research in cognitive and behavioral sciences which we call __Cross-Cultural Data Infrastructures (CCDIs).__ We recommend building global networks of psychologists, anthropologists, demographers, experimental philosophers, educators, and cognitive, learning, and data scientists to distill their procedural and methodological knowledge into a set of community standards. We identify key challenges including protocol validity, researcher diversity, community inclusion, and lack of detail in reporting quality assurance and quality control (QAQC) workflows. Our objective is to help promote dialogue and efforts towards consolidating robust solutions by working with a broad research community to improve the efficiency and quality of cross-cultural research. (shrink)

The importance of public confidence in scientific findings and trust in scientists cannot be overstated. Thus, it becomes critical for the scientific community to focus on enhancing the strategies used to educate future scientists on ethical research behaviors. What we are lacking is knowledge on how faculty members shape and develop ethical research standards with their students. We are presenting the results of a survey with 3,500 research faculty members. We believe this is the first report on how faculty work (...) with and educate their PhD students on basic research standards. Specifically, we wanted to determine whether individual faculty members, who are advisors or mentors, differ in how they implemented components of responsible conduct of research (RCR) with their PhD students. Mentors were more likely than advisors or supervisors to report working with all of their PhDs, who graduated in the last 5 years, on the 17 recognized critical components of RCR training and research skill development. We also found about half of the faculty members believe RCR is an institutional responsibility versus a faculty responsibility. Less than a quarter have had opportunities to participate in faculty training to be a better mentor, advisor, or research teacher, and about one third of faculty did not or could not remember whether they had guidelines related to their responsibilities to PhD students. We discuss the implications of our findings and focus on ways that PhD research mentoring can be enhanced. (shrink)

This book presents the “pleasure phenomenon” as the most important factor in individual and socio-cultural development. This study emphasizes the necessity of transformation of marketing in the 21st Century which would shift the focus from seeking pleasure to controlling desires in a way that would benefit self and society.

Young people’s environmental attitudes and behaviors are essential for environmental conservation, hence the need to identify facilitating factors. Promoting positive development among young people may empower them to contribute actively to their environment through positive attitudes and behaviors. In the present study, we examine the associations between the 5Cs of Positive Youth Development and environmental concerns among Norwegian youth, measured through environmental attitudes, conservation behavior, and responsibility. Cross-sectional data on demographic variables, the 5Cs and environmental concerns were collected (...) from high school students. For results, Character was associated with several of the environmental variables, followed by Competence and Caring, and finally Confidence, which showed a negative association with conservation behavior. There was no significant association with Connection. While these preliminary findings pave the way for future research that should involve more representative samples, the significant associations between several of the 5Cs and the environmental factors may have some implications for policy and programs on youth development and sustainable behaviors. (shrink)

in april 1933, two bright young Ph.D.s were elected to the Harvard Society of Fellows: the psychologist B. F. Skinner and the philosopher/logician W. V. Quine. Both men would become among the most influential scholars of their time; Skinner leads the "Top 100 Most Eminent Psychologists of the 20th Century," whereas philosophers have selected Quine as the most important Anglophone philosopher after the Second World War.1 At the height of their fame, Skinner and Quine became "Edgar Pierce twins"; the latter (...) obtaining the endowed chair at Harvard's department of philosophy, the former taking up the position at Harvard's psychology department.2Besides these biographical parallels, there also... (shrink)

At a time when both scholars and the public demand explanations and answers to key economic problems that conventional approaches have failed to resolve, this groundbreaking handbook of original works by leading behavioral economists offers the first comprehensive articulation of behavioral economics theory. Borrowing from the findings of psychologists, sociologists, political scientists, legal scholars, and biologists, among others, behavioral economists find that intelligent individuals often tend not to behave as effectively or efficiently in their economic decisions as (...) long held by conventional wisdom. The manner in which individuals actually do behave critically depends on psychological, institutional, cultural, and even biological considerations. "Handbook of Contemporary Behavioral Economics" includes coverage of such critical areas as the Economic Agent, Context and Modeling, Decision Making, Experiments and Implications, Labor Issues, Household and Family Issues, Life and Death, Taxation, Ethical Investment and Tipping, and Behavioral Law and Macroeconomics. Each contribution includes an extensive bibliography. (shrink)

Coinciding with the rising development of emerging markets, sustainable consumption practices in these markets are increasingly under scrutiny. In this context, we compare empirical results from consumers in four countries (three emerging markets and one developed market) in an experimental study to uncover patterns of preferences for sustainable luxury products (i.e., products that combine sustainability and luxury characteristics). Our findings illustrate that consumers’ quality, emotional, price, and social value perceptions, as well as purchase and electronic word-of-mouth intentions, are consistently (...) higher in all three emerging markets compared to the developed market. We find that sustainability (vs. conventional) product features increase consumers’ product value perceptions and behavioral intentions, although this effect is partially stronger for the developed compared to the emerging market(s). We further show a positive sustainability effect for luxury products, this effect is stronger for mass-market products. Combining sustainability and luxury signals leads to similar effects in emerging and developed markets. Thus, emerging markets have promise in terms of scope for incorporating sustainability characteristics into luxury products. Sustainable luxury consumption can therefore be understood as a manifestation of global consumer culture. (shrink)

Engaging in unethical consumption behaviors is an acute societal problem that can have severe consequences for adolescents, and businesses in particular have been accused of making such consumption particularly appealing and accessible. However, the causes of unethical behaviors are not well understood and research on the causes has been mixed. In this research, we investigate the effects of coping strategies for loneliness on adolescents’ adoption of unethical behaviors, a topic that business ethics research has not explored. In a large-scale study (...) of adolescents, we show that whether loneliness leads to the adoption of unethical behaviors depends on the strategies adolescents use to cope with their loneliness: active coping strategies are associated with fewer unethical behaviors, whereas passive coping strategies are associated with more unethical behaviors. In addition, we show that active and passive coping strategies can be executed through consumption practices. We show that the relation between active coping and fewer unethical behaviors is mediated by sharing of possessions, whereas the relation between passive coping strategies and more unethical behaviors is mediated by product acquisition. Finally, we also show that these mediated relations differ as a function of age cohort. The indirect effect of active coping on fewer unethical behaviors via sharing holds only for middle school adolescents, whereas the indirect effect of passive coping on more unethical behaviors via product acquisition holds only for high school adolescents. We shed new light on both the bright and dark sides of materialism and unethical behaviors and provide practical implications for research on loneliness, business ethics, and unethical behaviors. (shrink)

In behavioral ethics today, there is debate as to which theory of moral development is the best for understanding ethical decision making, thereby facilitating ethical behavior. This debate between behavioral ethicists has been profoundly influenced by the field of moral psychology. Unfortunately, in the course of this marriage between moral psychology and business ethics and subsequent internal debate, a simple but critical understanding of human being in the field of management has been obscured; i.e., that morality is (...) not a secondary phenomenon arising out of something else. Therefore, in this paper, we will argue that there is a need in behavioral ethics to shift our understanding away from the influence of contemporary moral psychology and back to management theorist Ghoshal’s :75–91, 2005) view of what it means to be human in which the moral is fundamental. To assist in this labor, we will build on the philosophical work of Emmanuel Levinas who sees ethics, regardless of the setting, as a metaphysical concern. What this means is that Levinas sees the essential moral character of human life and the reality of human agency as ontologically fundamental, or constitutive of human nature itself. In other words, the ethical is the “first cause” in regard to understanding the nature and action of the individual, including within organizations. Thus, morality in any sphere of human endeavor, including in business, is not merely epiphenomenal to some more fundamental reality. (shrink)

Governments and non-govermental organizations (NGOs) that plan projects to conserve the environment and alleviate poverty often attempt to modify rural livelihoods by halting activities they judge to be destructive or inefficient and encouraging alternatives. Project planners typically do so without understanding how rural people themselves judge the value of their activities. When the alternatives planners recommend do not replace the value of banned activities, alternatives are unlikely to be adopted, and local people will refuse to participate. Human behavioral ecology (...) and behavioral economics may provide useful tools for generating and evaluating hypotheses for how people value economic activities in their portfolios and potential alternatives. This is demonstrated with a case example from southwestern Madagascar, where plans to create a Mikea Forest National Park began with the elimination of slash-and-burn maize agriculture and the encouragement to plant labor-intensive manioc instead. Future park plans could restrict access to wild tuber patches, hunting small game, and fishing. The value of these activities is considered using observational data informed by optimal foraging theory, and experimental data describing people’s time preference and covariation perception. Analyses suggest that manioc is not a suitable replacement for maize for many Mikea because the two crops differ in terms of labor requirements, delay-to-reward, and covariation with rainfall. Park planners should promote wild tuber foraging and stewardship of tuber patches and the anthropogenic landscapes in which they are found. To conserve small game, planners must provide alternative sources of protein and cash. Little effort should be spent protecting lemurs, as they are rarely eaten and never sold. (shrink)

The substantial work on cognitive moral development (CMD) by Lawrence Kohlberg and James Rest popularized the use of this construct in the literature on business ethics. This construct has been prominently used in models attempting to explain ethical/unethical behavior in management, marketing, and accounting, even though Kohlberg did not intend for the construct to be used in that manner. As a predictor of behavior, CMD has been attacked on the theoretical level, and its empirical performance has been weak. This (...) article uses another established construct, which seems to satisfy the central criticisms of CMD, as a means of testing those complaints. The comparative multidimensional ethics scale (MES) substantially outperforms CMD, operationalized using Rest’s Defining Issues Test, in every test. These results seem to suggest that other options perform better than CMD when the purpose is to model ethical/unethical behavior or even ethical judgment. (shrink)

Background: The COVID-19 crisis has had a considerable mental health impact on healthcare workers. High levels of psychological distress are expected to have a significant impact on healthcare systems, warranting the need for evidence-based psychological interventions targeting stress and fostering resilience in this population. Online cognitive behavioral therapy has proved to be effective in targeting stress and promoting resilience. However, online CBT programs targeting stress in healthcare workers are lacking.Objective: The aim of our study is to evaluate the feasibility (...) and acceptability of an internet-based CBT intervention, the My Health Too program we developed during the first COVID-19 epidemic peak in France.Methods: We recruited 10 participants among Alsace region hospital staff during the first peak of the pandemic in France. They were given 1 week to test the website and were then asked to answer an internet survey and a semi-structured phone interview.Results: We conducted a thematic analysis of the content from the phone interviews. Major themes were identified, discussed and coded: the technical aspects, the content of the website and its impact on participants’ emotions and everyday life. Overall, the participants reported finding the website easy to use and interactive. They described the resources as easy to understand, readily usable, and useful in inducing calm and in helping them practice self-compassion.Conclusion: Our results suggest that the My Health Too online CBT program is highly feasible and acceptable to healthcare workers during the highly stressful times of the pandemic peak. The feedback provided helped to improve the program whose efficacy is to be tested. (shrink)

IntroductionThe rapid development of technology has led to the transfer of entertainment to the virtual world. Many games and multimedia applications use the so-called augmented reality. With the development of a new technological branch, a new health problem has emerged, which is infoholic addiction, attracting people with the specific functionality that is cyberspace and the virtual world.ObjectiveThe study aimed to assess health behaviors and the risk of addiction among users of urban multimedia games. Research methodology. The study was (...) conducted among players 1,134 of urban multimedia games—Pokemon GO, in the period March–June 2021. A 990 correctly completed questionnaires were included in the final analyses. The author’s questionnaire was used in the study, which included two standardized measurement scales in the Polish abbreviated version: a questionnaire of emotions and sensations associated with electronic entertainment and a questionnaire on addiction to electronic forms of entertainment. Statistica 13.0 program was used for statistical processing of the data. The probability level was p < 0.05.ResultsThe profile of the gamer was identified as male, aged 18–30 years, with secondary education, not in a relationship, living in a city of more than 100 thousand inhabitants—60.1% of gamers met these criteria. Respondents played urban multimedia games daily. About 26.3% of respondents played this type of game 2–3 h a day. In terms of physical fitness, 64.3% of respondents felt that physical fitness had improved as a result of playing multimedia urban games. In terms of mental condition, most of the respondents said that nothing had changed. It was observed that 72.3% of respondents had some risk of addiction to urban multimedia games.ConclusionUsers of urban multimedia games were usually adult men living in big cities. It was also shown that the defined profile of the player was characterized by a higher risk of addiction to electronic forms of entertainment. It was observed that the respondents most often played urban multimedia games every day in a maximum of two-hour sessions. Based on the tools used, it can be concluded that the study group was characterized by a certain risk of addiction to urban multimedia games. (shrink)

Psychological observations are by now well integrated into economics, especially in the theory of finance, as can also be seen in the Nobel Prize awarded to Thaler. On the contrary, Simon’s attempt to reforge economic theory on the paradigm of bounded rationality failed. Starting from the birth of the neoclassical paradigm, we’ll describe the attempt to give it psychological foundations with a direct measurement of utility, then the axiomatic turn of the paradigm and its first anomalies. We’ll then sum up (...) the debate on rationality, taking place in the group of economists led by Simon, which brought to the rational expectations hypothesis. Finally, we’ll discuss the development of behavioral economics and its progressive acceptance in economic theory. This historical reconstruction allows us to understand the actual hard core of the neoclassical paradigm and the growing need of the paradigm for practical flexibility that determines how to choose arguments, methods and evidence that can be useful to its development, including psychological ones. (shrink)

Concepts and experimental results taken frombehavioral pharmacology, functional brain imaging,brain physiology, and behavioral neuroscience, wereused to develop the hypothesis that behavioraltolerance can, in part, be attributed to cellulartolerance. It is argued that task specific activationof circumscribed neuronal populations gives rise tocorresponding increases in regional cerebral bloodflow such that neurons related to task performance areexposed to higher effective doses of blood-borne drugthan neuronal groups not highly activated by thebehavioral task. Through this cerebral hemodynamicregulatory mechanism cellular tolerance phenomena canat least partially (...) account for behavioral tolerance(i.e., tolerance conferred through drugged practice). (shrink)

This paper reviews the debate about behavioral modernity in our species, listing counterexamples to the thesis that there was a dramatic change to the minds of Cro-Magnon sapiens in Europe in the Upper Paleolithic. It is argued that we were probably behaviorally modern from about 150,000 years ago, and that aspects of this mentality were apparent in developments in tool technologies and hunting practices across the prior Homo lineage. Key behaviors expressive of behavioral modernity include practical reasoning about (...) the past and future and role-differentiated rights-based cooperation, which are more obvious in their effects than is the vague but much-used notion of symbolic thinking. Behavioral modernity leads to technological innovation but is not sufficient to maintain such innovations in face of population loss and environmental instability, which along with the vagaries of preservation explains why the archaeological record of behavioral modernity in our species is patchy until the Upper Paleolithic. (shrink)

Although there is no in-principle impediment to an EvoDevo of behavior, such an endeavor is not as straightforward as one might think; many of the key terms and concepts used in EvoDevo are tailored to suit its traditional focus on morphology, and are consequently difficult to apply to behavior. In this light, the application of the EvoDevo conceptual toolkit to the behavioral domain requires the establishment of a set of tractable concepts that are readily applicable to behavioral characters. (...) Here, I begin the type of theoretical work that needs to be undertaken in order to achieve this, focusing in particular on the key concept of “novelty.” Building on existing criteria used for the identification of behavioral homology from behavioral ecology, I develop a set of operational criteria for identifying novelty in the behavioral domain. These criteria provide a conceptual foundation for the study of novelty in behavioral traits. (shrink)

Different applications of synthetic biology are alike in that their possible negative consequences are highly uncertain, potentially catastrophic, and perhaps irreversible; therefore, they are also alike in that public attitudes about them are fertile ground for behavioral economic phenomena. Findings from behavioral economics suggest that people may not respond to such applications according to the normal rules of economic evaluation, by which the value of an outcome is multiplied by the mathematical probability that the outcome will occur. Possibly, (...) then, synthetic biology applications challenge the normative postulates of the standard approach, too.I want to first consider how some of the phenomena described by behavioral economists—and behavioral scientists more broadly—might affect people's perceptions of the uncertainties associated with synthetic biology. My analysis will be far from complete, however, because behavioral economics is essentially the study of human behavior, and thus its reach is potentially vast and its development longstanding and ongoing. Nonetheless, I hope to give an indicative perspective on how some aspects of behavioral economics might affect the assessment and perceived acceptability of synthetic biology. I will then consider the issue of agency. Should policy‐makers respect people's reactions to synthetic biology when those reactions are known to be driven by behavioral economic phenomena rather than following the normative postulates of rational choice theory? Or should policy‐makers dismiss these reactions as inherently biased? I will argue that the normative force of these human reactions (probably) depends on phenomenon and context. (shrink)

Research on behavioral ethics is thriving and intends to offer advice that can be used by practitioners to improve the practice of ethics management. However, three barriers prevent this research from generating genuinely useful advice. It does not sufficiently focus on interventions that can be directly designed by management. The typical research designs used in behavioral ethics research require such a reduction of complexity that the resulting findings are not very useful for practitioners. Worse still, attempts to make (...) behavioral ethics research more useful by formulating simple recommendations are potentially very damaging. In response to these limitations, this article proposes to complement the current behavioral ethics research agenda that takes an ‘explanatory science’ approach with a research agenda that uses a ‘design science’ approach. Proposed by Joan van Aken and building on earlier work by Herbert Simon, this approach aims to develop field-tested ‘design propositions’ that present often complex but useful recommendations for practitioners. Using a ‘CIMO-logic’, these propositions specify how an ‘intervention’ can generate very different ‘outcomes’ through various ‘mechanisms’, depending on the ‘context’. An illustration and a discussion of the contours of this new research agenda for ethics management demonstrate its advantages as well as its feasibility. The article concludes with a reflection on the feasibility of embracing complexity without drowning in a sea of complicated contingencies and without being paralyzed by the awareness that all interventions can have both desirable and undesirable effects. (shrink)

The field of behavioral ethics has seen considerable growth over the last few decades. One of the most significant concerns facing this interdisciplinary field of research is the moral judgment-action gap. The moral judgment-action gap is the inconsistency people display when they know what is right but do what they know is wrong. Much of the research in the field of behavioral ethics is based on early work in moral psychology and American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg’s foundational cognitive model (...) of moral development. However, Kohlberg’s model of moral development lacks a compelling explanation for the judgment-action gap. Yet, it continues to influence theory, research, teaching, and practice in business ethics today. As such, this paper presents a critical review and analysis of the pertinent literature. This paper also reviews modern theories of ethical decision making in business ethics. Gaps in our current understanding and directions for future research in behavioral business ethics are presented. By providing this important theoretical background information, targeted critical analysis, and directions for future research, this paper assists management scholars as they begin to seek a more unified approach, develop newer models of ethical decision making, and conduct business ethics research that examines the moral judgment-action gap. (shrink)

Background:Africa is increasingly becoming an important region for health research, mainly due to its heavy burden of disease, socioeconomic challenges, and inadequate health facilities. Regulatory...

Family planning is the usual modern route to producing a small family. Can human behavioral ecology provide a framework for understanding family planning behavior? Hillard S. Kaplan (Yearb. Phys. Anthropol. 39:91–135) has proposed a general theory of human parental investment based on the importance of skills development in children. As modern, skills-based, competitive market economies are established, parental investment strategies would be predicted to become oriented toward producing increasingly competitive offspring in a pattern of coordinated investment in their (...) embodied capital—in other words, skills training along with good health to ensure their long-term productivity. Parental embodied capital and resources are also expected to be associated with motivation to produce competitive offspring. The basic parental investment trade-off between quality and quantity should predict greater investment in fewer children and the adoption of family planning behavior. Data on family planning in two ethnic groups in Northeast India (Khasi and Bengali) currently experiencing early-phase transition into modern market economies from very different social and ecological baselines are examined within this analytical framework. The results show a mixture of strategies in conjunction with family planning that involve decreased as well as increased investment in the embodied capital of children among Bengali and a divergence of investments in education and health among Khasi. These mixtures of strategies provide some insight into the motivations to use family planning in the face of economic transition, given differing local cultural and ecological conditions and the opportunity structures they provide. (shrink)

I greatly respect the authors of the target article. However, in contrast to the target article's assertion, practitioners of behavioral public policy are indeed involved in developing and promoting systemic solutions. Its “i-frame”/“s-frame” distinction is incoherent, unhelpful, and obscures promising future directions for behavioral public policy. Its content and presentation undermine its stated goals and encourage sweeping dismissals of the field.

Movies and narratives are increasingly utilized as stimuli in functional magnetic resonance imaging, magnetoencephalography, and electroencephalography studies. Emotional reactions of subjects, what they pay attention to, what they memorize, and their cognitive interpretations are all examples of inner experiences that can differ between subjects during watching of movies and listening to narratives inside the scanner. Here, we review literature indicating that behavioral measures of inner experiences play an integral role in this new research paradigm via guiding neuroimaging analysis. We (...) review behavioral methods that have been developed to sample inner experiences during watching of movies and listening to narratives. We also review approaches that allow for joint analyses of the behaviorally sampled inner experiences and neuroimaging data. We suggest that building neurophenomenological frameworks holds potential for solving the interrelationships between inner experiences and their neural underpinnings. Finally, we tentatively suggest that recent developments in machine learning approaches may pave way for inferring different classes of inner experiences directly from the neuroimaging data, thus potentially complementing the behavioral self-reports. (shrink)

In light of the growing interest in "ethically questionable" consumer behavior, this study explores possible explanations of the occurrence of such behaviour, and subsequently develops a theoretical framework. The study is based upon data collected from 72 U.K. consumers, acquired from a projective approach with scenarios. Taking the theory of planned behavior (TPB) as an initial analytical framework, attitude, social influence, opportunity(as perceived behavioral control in TPB) and perceived unfairnessare identified as the antecedents of ethically questionable behavior (EQB). Social (...) influenceis extended to include a broader range of external influences from subjective norm in TPB. Opportunityis considered to represent an aspect of perceived behavioral control as available resource to engage in EQB. Perceived unfairnessis presented as an additional component and refers to the extent to which an actor is motivated to redress an imbalance that is perceived as unfair. Binary logistic models suggest that attitudeand social influenceconsistently impact on EQB, as TPB would predict. Analysis of variance suggests that perceived unfairnessand opportunity, though context specific, also show signs of significant influence on the acceptance and practice of this behavior. Additional to the construct of TPB, this study develops the dimension of perceived unfairnessin the context of EQB decision-making. In the context of TPB, it provides further insight into our understanding of EQB, helping to provide a theoretical framework. (shrink)