Behavior in the Balance

University Of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Minneapolis MN

Investigators

Abstract

The project has two dimensions: a comparative epistemological analysis of four approaches in the sciences of human behavior and an analysis of the social and cultural implications of the work. The point of the epistemological analysis is to understand the kinds of knowledge of human behavior afforded by these approaches by analyzing their methods and presuppositions of inquiry. The point of the socio-cultural analysis is to understand the ways in which the scientific research is responsive to social and cultural preoccupations in the larger context and the ways in which the research is taken up in that context. The study focuses on research directed at understanding the proximate causes of individual behavior and on biological approaches or approaches that are typically contrasted or seen as in competition with biological research. Thus, this study surveys 1) behavior genetics (both classical and molecular), 2) behavioral anatomy and physiology, 3) developmental psychology, and 4) developmental and dynamic systems theories. These are the approaches most closely engaged in contemporary versions of the nature/nurture debate. In addition to identifying immediate social concerns implicated in this research, the study will examine how general philosophical concepts of human behavior and action are reinforced or undermined by scientific research. The empirical studies analyzed address aggression and sexual orientation. In the previous, epistemological, phase of the study, the investigator developed an analytic matrix to tabulate characteristic questions, investigative methodologies, and assumptions characterizing the different approaches. This enabled her to characterize the ways central behavioral concepts are operationalized, the different questions the approaches (can) investigate, the methods and data characteristic of each approach, the distinctive and shared assumptions that support interpretations of the data. The social and cultural analysis she plans to undertake in the second phase, consists of studying explicit and implicit valuations of the behavior and the philosophical concepts of human action and volition embedded in the research. These can be found in summations and review articles that indicate the perceived significance of the work and the presentation of behaviors as targets of control or encouragement. They are also discernable in choice of journals in which to publish and the institutions funding the work. By looking both at how the researchers represent their research to a larger public and how it is taken up, the investigator will identify 1) the social interests served by the kind of knowledge sought in the research and 2) the more general conceptions of human action and responsibility that are implied in particular ways of thinking about the behaviors studied. A central hypothesis of this study is that the salience and the fascination of the nature-nurture debate in connection with behaviors such as those whose investigation it follows keeps attention on the etiology of individual behavior rather than on the phenomena conceived in ways that might different policy implications. This hypothesis will be investigated by examining 1) the continuity of conceptions of behavior through different discursive contexts and 2) how controversies concerning the empirical study of human behavior are represented in those contexts. By then attending to and evaluating the representations of the policy implications articulated by the authors whose work is examined, the author will bring the results of this study to bear on social and political questions concerning behavioral research.