Behaviors {behavior types} include feeding, eating specialized foods, aggressing, fighting, fleeing, performing courtship rituals, mating, caring for young, sleeping, hibernating, sheltering, teaching, communicating, expressing individuality, expressing territoriality, using tools, communicating with signals, using symbols, using language, and having consciousness.
factors
Individual and group behaviors involve reflexes, instincts, goals, emotions, motivations, and learning.
jobs
Jobs can have tension or responsibility. Administrator attitudes and behaviors affect worker psychology most. People can become bored with job. People can have overwork. Perhaps, people change jobs when marginal job-satisfaction rate continues to fall.
Accidents {accident, behavior} happen if information rate is too high or time allowed to process information is too short. Accident frequency inversely relates to ability to control behavior. Accident frequency varies with temperature, lighting, and humidity.
People can feel like they are writing under someone else's control {automatic writing}.
Embarrassment, guilt, or consciousness of another person's thoughts or opinions can cause uncontrollable face reddening {blushing}|. Only humans, who have consciousness, can blush. Women blush more than men. Young children, who do not understand social rules, do not blush. Blind people can blush.
Living in confined environment {confinement}|, such as in space or in submersible, has low privacy, few people, artificial day-night cycles, circadian rhythm shifts, anxiety about mechanical systems and safe return, tiredness from long work schedules, delays in completing assigned tasks, frustration with failure, and boredom.
Only humans cry {crying}|.
Social species try to create false beliefs in other group members by intentionally deceiving them {deception, behavior}| {Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis}. However, it is unlikely that non-human animals have theories of mind. Deception is likely to be association.
Animals select behavior from available behaviors {decision-making}|, to attain or avoid something. Minds decide to act by non-linear process. Excitatory neurons stimulate inhibitory neuron, which inhibits excitatory neurons. Learning builds larger behavior units and so reduces number of decisions that consciousness makes.
Vision and hand motions can link {eye-hand coordination}|. Hand and vision coordination can happen without sight of hand, if another experience links hand motion to seen object.
People can imagine different situation or outcome {fantasizing, behavior}|.
Over time, performance slows, people make more errors, concentration is poor, perception fades, and memory decreases {fatigue, behavior}|. Little sleep typically causes fatigue. Fatigue increases during adverse conditions and anxiety. High motivation can overcome fatigue.
When faced with threat or aggression, animals flee or fight {flight-or-fight response}|. The flight-or-fight response uses aminergic signals in autonomic nervous system.
Interference with goal-directed activity, interference with arousal or desire, choice between two incompatible responses, tension creation, forced activity, or forced withdrawal can cause frustrations {frustration}|. Frustration can cause imagining different situation or outcome {fantasizing, frustration}, committing violence against others or objects {aggression, frustration}, going back to childish behaviors {regression, frustration}, or not thinking about or acting on situation {withdrawal, frustration}.
Emotional arousal causes sweating and lowers skin electrical resistance {galvanic skin response}|.
Body and limb movements {gesture, behavior} can signal intentions, commands, or suggestions. Gestures can evolve from behaviors used for survival. Gestures can be specific to groups.
Imitation is seeing action, remembering it, and then doing it {imitation, behavior}| [Thorndike, 1903] [Thorndike, 1911]. In organisms with voluntary muscles, behavior perception can lead to voluntary independent similar behavior, if organism can already perform the behavior by learning or random exercise, and if perception and memory can form behavior representations that can initiate movements. Imitation is voluntary but is also an automatic response. Sense input sets up motor reaction tendency and/or elicits memory.
facial expressions
Facial imitation involves matching seen faces to felt proprioceptive signals while trying to mimic. Minutes after birth, babies can imitate some facial expressions, without visual feedback.
innate
Ability to imitate body or facial expression probably is innate.
age
Infants imitate sounds, gestures, and body positions. From 12 to 15 months, children can imitate up to week after perceiving action. They also can tell when others are imitating them [Meltzoff, 1996].
animals
Birds can imitate bird songs. Parrots can imitate sounds. However, apparent imitation is usually only accidental learning in same situation.
Whales can imitate whale songs [Reiss, 1998].
Perhaps, chimpanzees do not imitate but only transfer skills by being in same situation or learning to conform [Heyes and Galef, 1996] [Tomasello, 1999].
animals: parrots
Sounds must sound the same to parrot as to people in order for parrot to imitate people.
properties: medium
When recreating perceptions, imitation uses a medium, such as paper. When imitating actions, imitation uses the body as medium.
properties: representation
Imitation uses mental representation to imitate actions, such as yawning, or recreate perceptions, such as drawings and sounds.
properties: voluntary muscles
Action imitation uses voluntary muscles.
factors: behavior
Imitation can happen only if people already can perform the automatic procedure.
effects: emotion
Imitating human expression causes people to have associated emotion. Even infant can imitate expression and can have associated emotion.
copying
Imitation allows copying and variation. In competitions, imitations can have different values, and imitated events can evolve. Events copied more have better copies and are more valuable. Events have groups with levels and rules [Blackmore, 1999] [Schoenauer et al., 2000] [Steels, 2000].
Animals can learn to fixate on another animal {imprinting, behavior}, so they ignore or avoid other individuals.
Animals have automatic behavior patterns {fixed-action pattern} {modal action pattern} that start by stimulus {sign stimulus}. Animals react to external or internal stimuli with inherited related-reflex patterns {innate behavior} {instinct}|.
properties
Fixed-action patterns are hereditary, specific, and complex responses to external or internal stimuli. Innate behaviors happen without training and are more probable the longer the time since the previous one. Animals perform them completely once started.
effects
Fixed-action patterns can remove drive or need.
will
Fixed-action patterns can be partially under voluntary control.
motivation
Instinctive action is its own motivation.
emotion
Instinctive action seems to have emotion.
goals
Instinctive action has no goals or reasons.
behaviors
Most animals never produce new behaviors but only link new stimuli to innate behaviors.
Interviewer needs to obtain and interpret information from interviewee to make decision {interviewing}.
technique
Interview technique {seven-point plan} for defined job obtains information about physique, intelligence, aptitude, attainments, interests, disposition, and circumstances.
properties
Time interviewer talks correlates with probability that candidate receives job offer.
negative information
Job interviewers can want to obtain negative information, to exclude someone.
learning
Interviewing can improve by profiling interviewer's style and providing feedback about good and bad things.
Prolonged isolation {isolation, behavior}| causes anxiety and hallucinations. After isolation, people have strong visual and other illusions.
People can make false statement {lying}| to confuse, mislead, gain, or protect self.
Humans and other mammals can obey {obedience}|. People that obey authority do not feel that they are responsible for their actions but feel that they are only agents for other people. In famous experiment, people kept giving strong electrical shocks to other people, though givers experienced stress and protested to experimenter.
People can engross themselves in activities and lose self or time feelings, with no anxiety or boredom {flow} {optimal state} [Csikszentmihalyi, 1975] [Csikszentmihalyi and Csikszentmihalyi, 1988].
People can persuade others {persuasion}|, because people feel that they should reciprocate, be consistent, and do what other people do {social validation}. People can like persuader, want to follow authority, or want to hedge against scarcity.
Behaviors {play, behavior} can involve role practice, aggression, sex, and exploration.
Humans can choose reading or speaking symbols {reading rate} {speaking rate} at 20 to 40 bits per second.
People can perform organized action sequences {serial chaining}|.
Eyes reflexively close when sneezing {sneezing}|, to prevent damage. Mouth opens to let air out. People can sneeze in bright light {autosomal dominant compelling helio-ophthalmic outburst} (ACHOO).
In zero gravity {weightlessness}|, people learn how to move themselves around using hands and arms, rather than legs. People learn to judge object mass using inertia, rather than weight. Body fluids shift to head. Bones lose calcium. Muscles atrophy. Blood changes composition.
motion sickness
Sensory conflict causes space motion sickness. Semicircular canals operate normally, but otoliths do not. Drugs can reduce motion-sickness symptoms.
effects
Returning astronaut feels heavy and clumsy. Head movements make world seem to move.
Stress can lower aspirations, cause escape to fantasy, or result in not thinking about or acting on situations {withdrawal from life}|.
Human behavior can try to cause physical or psychological injury to other people {aggression, behavior}|. Aggressive behavior is either fear/submission behavior or preparation to fight.
purposes
Aggression exercises or tests power. Aggression is also for defense and self-protection. In animals, aggression settles status, dominance order, and possession of, or access to, objects and territories.
causes
Direct aggression causes include consciously desiring to kill or harm someone, feeling anger, feeling fear, feeling anxiety, feeling inadequate, wanting approval from one's group, being blocked or delayed during goal-directed behavior, being denied gratification, being threatened, facing disrespect, having one's dignity or pride threatened or reduced, having group or personal symbols desecrated, having internal conflicts, committing crime already, and competing with others.
causes: competition
Competition causes aggression. Human males compete for females. Children fight to obtain or retain objects, positions, or activities. Children defend against adult aggression.
causes: frustration
Aggression results from frustration, but frustration can have other results {frustration-aggression hypothesis}. Removing or altering frustration cause can reduce aggression.
causes: arousal
Aggression level relates to activity level. Lowering arousal, acquisitiveness, or assertiveness lowers aggressiveness.
causes: biology
Hormones directly affect aggressive behavior. Aggression level in boys stays constant from age three to adulthood.
responses
Aggressive behavior typically causes withdrawal behavior in people aggressed against.
People can diffuse aggression by diverting attention, leaving people alone, substituting for behavior cause, removing behavior cause, or ignoring behavior.
Coaxing, soothing, reasoning, scolding, and giving up do not lessen aggression. Allowing aggression increases it. Low punishment encourages aggression. Fear of retaliation or punishment inhibits aggression.
Successful aggression causes imitation by others, even if they have no frustration.
aggression between groups
Group aggression against another group depends on member feelings about their group, knowledge of other group, approval from their group, and reinforcement.
aggression in group
In groups with aggressive individuals, stability can happen only at specific proportions of conventional and vicious fighters.
Aggressive acts reduce urge to aggress {catharsis, aggression}|.
People can direct aggression toward something that cannot retaliate or punish them {displacement, aggression}|.
Animals look into each other's eyes {eye contact}| {mutual gaze}, often for aggression. Animals can avert gaze after eye contact, to show submission. Animals can have eyespots, which can be threats.
Postures {threat posture}| can elaborate or ritualize into symbols, to show aggression.
People often make either-or choices, or people compete with other people for rewards {conflict, behavior}. Personal conflicts include whether to accept or give love, choose autonomy or dependence, choose competition or cooperation, and think before acting or express impulse immediately. Sports and business have interpersonal conflicts.
Two desirable, but incompatible, goals can be available simultaneously {approach-approach conflict}.
Goals can have both good and bad attributes {approach-avoidance conflict}.
Two goals can both be undesirable, but people must choose one {avoidance-avoidance conflict}.
Often two available goals have good and bad aspects {double approach-avoidance conflict}.
Animals can perform automatic activities typically performed in standard situations in inappropriate situations {displacement behavior}|. Displacement activities are hurried, stereotyped, or incomplete compared to same behavior in normal context. Displacement activities can reveal animal motivations.
Displacement activities enable animal to resolve conflicts {coping behavior}| and involve inhibition release.
Displacement happens when two behaviors or goals are incompatible {motivational conflict}.
Displacement happens when something prevents actions toward behaviors or goals {thwarting}|.
People can repeat automatic behaviors {habit}. Serial chaining can become habit.
People can have reflex-like, repeated behaviors {functionally autonomous habit}|. They originally are independent of drives. Functionally autonomous habits can associate with drive and thus become drives.
People build and alter habitual behaviors {habit family hierarchy}|.
Only humans laugh {laughter, behavior}| {humor}. Laughter involves mental censors and suppressers.
purposes
Perhaps, laughter is for alliance making.
factors
Humor and laughter can still happen when people suffer, starve, are in pain, or have oppression. Social situation determines laughter quality and quantity. Laughter can interrupt another person's speaking and thinking, and so to take control [Ramachandran, 2004].
animals
Other mammals appear happy. Young chimpanzees puff air when they play, sort of like laughing. Chimpanzees smile when submitting, but not from happiness.
Perhaps, laughter happens if actual situation differs from expected situation {incongruity, laughter}|, but not if situation is too simple or too complex. Expression or perception that deviates from normal thoughts or images, such as something ludicrous, can cause laughter. Laughter happens only if unexpected caused no harm. Perhaps, it only upsets dignity [Ramachandran, 2004].
Perhaps, humor depends on criticizing or disparaging other people and on emotions generated by being in or out of groups {disposition theory}.
Perhaps, laughter happens after relief from physically or psychologically dangerous situation {relief theory}. Most jokes are about possible harm: taboos, injuries, and logical absurdities. Perhaps, laughter happens only if unexpected caused no harm [Ramachandran, 2004].
People seek new experiences {novelty, motivation}, probably for stimulation.
New stimuli or environment changes cause most animals first to flee and then to approach and investigate {novelty reaction}|. More novelty causes more fear.
People can like to learn more about new object or event {curiosity}|. Curiosity is thinking about something in new way.
Feeding behaviors involve exploring {exploring behavior}. Following behaviors and searching behaviors develop from exploring behaviors and enhance perception and learning.
Surprise or novelty causes longer looking {preferential looking time procedure}, which can test for surprising features.
People can gain sexual pleasure by inflicting pain or cruelty on others {sadism}|.
Pleasure, especially sexual pleasure, can come from subjection to pain or cruelty {masochism}|.
Habituation to stimulus can stop {dishabituation}| suddenly or gradually. Habituation to stimulus immediately ends if another stimulus begins. Sensitization affects same synapses affected by habituation.
Animal behavior has unchanging action programs {fixed sequence}|, which can combine.
Exposure to stimulus {mere exposure} makes people favor stimulus.
Stereotyped behavior distributes spatiotemporal signals to target neurons {motor routine}| in response to stimulus or brain signal. The same motor routine can distribute signals to different locations and at different spatial scales.
Receptor stimulation can send signal to spinal cord and then to muscle or gland, resulting in involuntary action {reflex, behavior}.
If dangerous or important stimuli happen, escape or fighting reflexes can heighten for several minutes {sensitization, behavior}. Repeated dangerous stimuli make sensitization last days or weeks. Response to other stimuli also increases. Sensitization affects same synapses affected by habituation. Sensitization releases more vesicles by increasing interneuron activity on habituated-reflex sense and motor neurons. Sensitization is not associative.
Fear increases response to startling {startle response, fear}.
Active animal behaviors {ergotropic behavior} involve fighting, fleeing, seeking food, and looking for mate. Pupils dilate, respiration increases, and blood pressure rises.
Animal resting and building-up behaviors {trophotropic behavior} involve sleeping, eating, digesting, eliminating, replenishing glucose, and building cells from protein and fat. Pupils are small, respiration is slow, and alimentary canal glands secrete.
Outline of Knowledge Database Home Page
Description of Outline of Knowledge Database
Date Modified: 2022.0225