The origins and evolution of human behavior studies (BS) belong to both psychology and sociology, the former on a micro scale and the latter on a macro scale. According to a four-dimensional evolutionary process that is shaped as follows : psychosocial-micro-meso-macro , in ascending order
This course focuses mainly on the macro scale while still considering the evolutionary processo tout court.
Sociology has generated two important spin offs: political science and communication science, both of which have influenced BS. Their applications occur in two specific fields:
global intelligence studies (including terrorism/antiterrorism and military strategies) on the one hand, and the political behavior of the masses on the other, a case in point being campaign planning and manipulation of public opinion.
The micro aspects focus on the behavior of "guinea pigs" in a small and well delineated box, the macro aspects, on the other hand, focus on the design and construction of large and not well delineated boxes in which "guinea pigs" can move around (think, for example, of the legal rules and procedures of elections and the media representation of different parties' campaigns).
Therefore, in this perspective, the sociological evolutionary process meets:
(a) psychology to analyze how the engineering of souls (Chacotin) takes shape at both the micro and macro level
(b) human ethology to study the (not so relevant) differences between animal and human behavior (Eibl Eibelsfeldt)
(c) biology corresponding to sociobiology (Wilson).
How then does behavioral evolution leading to action occur? How does heterodirected, externally manipulated behavior evolve into cognitive, contrite, self-referential, and autopoietic action? A first answer suggests that re indispensable dimensions are involved 1 Behavioral observation ( non intrusive and non participatory ), 2 empathic phenomenological listening ( e.g., through semi-structured interviews with photoelicitation ) 3 the constructivist design of both setting and context , since a properly experimental approach is not possible in the social-political sciences do testing in coeteris paribus.
