What is behavior? No seriously, what is it?
Calhoun, A.; El Hady, A.
Show abstract
Studying behavior lies at the heart of many disciplines. Nevertheless, academics rarely provide an explicit definition of what behavior actually is. What range of definitions do people use, and how does that vary across disciplines? To answer these questions we have developed a survey to probe what constitutes behavior. We find that academics adopt different definitions of behavior according to their academic discipline, animal model that they work with, and level of academic seniority. Using hierarchical clustering, we identify at least six distinct types of behavior which are used in seven distinct operational archetypes of behavior. Individual respondents have clear consistent definitions of behavior, but these definitions are not consistent across the population. Our study is a call for academics to clarify what they mean by behavior wherever they study it, with the hope that this will foster interdisciplinary studies that will improve our understanding of behavioral phenomena.
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