The biological basis for behavior rests primarily with two embodied features of the human organism– the nervous system and the endocrine system. The nervous system entails all autonomic functions as well as those functions that are manual and purposeful. The endocrine system is comprised partly of the hormonal system, which regulates a great many body functions, including gender definition, metabolism, and reactions to events/objects in the environment outside the body in order to inform the body of what the appropriate response would be to those external events/objects. So, for example, our thoughts are a result of a kind of nervous system imprinting, initiated by and maintained by cultural experiences, personal experiences, and species experiences. Our manual body system responses to these thoughts are usually in direct proportion to the emotional content of those thoughts, and to the cultural taboos or lack of taboos that govern such behavior. For example, in some cultures (and the meaning of “cultures” in this sentence does not only mean the personal culture within which one was raised, but by also a culture which may have been adopted at some point, such as membership in a gang), killing another human being is not only acceptable but in some cases desirable, if that human being is shown to be a threat to that culture. Even in these complex situations, the behavior is the result of a thought which is the result of a kind of biological neurological imprinting that has occurred as a result of one’s experiences.
The endocrine system directs responses in a much more visceral way, almost always bypassing the function of thought. For example, if one is suddenly frightened, there is an overwhelming desire to either run from what is perceived to be the cause of the fright, or to fight the cause of the fright in order to vanquish it and return the organism to its default state. In neither of these cases is thought required– the response is usually immediate and carried out without any regard to consequences, appropriateness, or other socially acceptable customs that might govern other behavior.
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Behavior in response to a nervous system stimulus (one can think of Pavlov’s (1928) experiment, or of Skinner’s (1948) experiments with stimulus-response efforts) can be trained, though initially it is inborn in the organism. An example might be a scent that has a deeply associated meaning for someone. Upon smelling about aroma, that person then might become deeply emotional and respond in a particularly patterned way to that aroma, just as Pavlov’s dogs responded to a bell ringing by salivating to the expected reward of meat. Training, however, can be undone by the use of reinforcement as a tool for either maintaining the response or extinguishing the response, in what is known as operant conditioning, as Skinner (1938) proved.
Behavior in response to and endocrine systems stimulus cannot be trained. It is automatic, immediate, and appropriate to the situation. Endocrine system, or hormonal system, responses, in fact, override all other responses to any kind of stimulus, even if the response to the hormonal imperative would require the death of the organism. This kind of response is an imperative inherent in the organism. For example, mothers of children would place themselves in the way of danger to their children, even if the danger would prove fatal to the mother. This is true of humans, but even more so in other animal species. The psychology of this behavior is clear– it is the inborn need for survival, but survival of those most likely to benefit the human race, as children are often considered to be.
The 20th century witnessed the rise of psychology as a legitimate scientific endeavor. Luminaries such as Sigmund Freud and later Alfred Adler, Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, and Albert Bandura rose to prominence on the basis of their studies of the human mind, how healthy minds function, and how unhealthy minds function. B.F. Skinner, Edward Thorndike, and John B. Watson, among others, explained human psychology in terms of how human beings function behaviorally. It is the work of these latter men upon which the foundation of behavioral psychology rests, primarily. One could make a reasonable conclusion that not one of them, as pioneering as they were, was completely correct in his or her assumptions and assertions about how the human mind works, but rather, there is something of the truth in all of them that has led us to understand human behavior in terms of psychology more accurately than we could have done by simply following the theories and models of one particular theorist. The behaviorists were among the first to have their say, and their work laid the groundwork for what was to follow in terms of behavior modification, whether it be an intentional change in self-talk (Adler), an attempt to understand the process of self-actualization (Maslow), an attempt to classify behavior based on a continuum of sexual desires and repressions (Freud), or a change in therapeutic orientation that came to understand that the client is the primary focus of therapy, not the therapist (Rogers).
However psychology has come to be understood, however, in this 21st century, the work of the behaviorists can be seen in nearly all of them, however modified the other approaches may be. And so we owe to them a certain gratitude for their pioneering work in creating the biological foundations of psychology.
- Pavlov, I. P. (1928). Lectures on conditioned reflexes.(Translated by W.H. Gantt) London: Allen and Unwin.
- Skinner, B. F. (1938). The behavior of organisms: An experimental analysis. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts
- Skinner, B. F. (1948). Walden two, New York: Macmillan.
