What affects human behavior? This question is important to us because we want to understand our own behavior and that of others. We desire to even understand the behavior of groups of people found in society and culture. Behind the question is that some behavior is seen as being healthy and some is seen as being unhealthy. Some is seen as being moral and some as immoral. We would want to promote sane, stable, and spiritual behavior and limit insane, unstable, and hateful behavior. So what affects human behavior?
There are two root sources of human behavior. One is the physical biology of the human being. The other is the core “faith” or central “beliefs” of that person. These significant beliefs form “Life commandments”, values, principles, and proverbs by which the person lives. This is the “wisdom” of the person. These two factors, the one biological and the other philosophical govern the behavior of the person.
Biology would include genetics which do not so much govern behavior as create tendencies in some direction. However, in some cases such as schizophrenia the actual experience of the person is strongly impacted by the genetic disorder. The body being “unhealthy” can impact our thinking ability and perception of reality. Being bi-polar radically changes how a person feels about life and perceives reality. Knowing that something is biological can help us control it but it still has a great impact. For a practical way of getting our heads around this I would recommend watching the movie “A Beautiful Mind”. This is one reason why the use of medication to help restore normal balance to our bodies is part of what must be considered if we become aware of an biological problem existing.
The “core faith” of a person or what one philosopher calls our “religious ground motives” is the pair of glasses we have chosen and been given, through which we see life. The reason these glasses have both been chosen and been given is that as children our “religious ground motives” or “core faith” is given to us by our family, peers, society, media, and culture. As Dr. Francis Schaeffer said a most people catch their view of the world the same way the catch the common cold. They simply are exposed to it and catch it without much thought on their part.
However, the maturing process by which we move from thinking like children to thinking like adults is designed for us to question the “core faith” we have been given and either confirm it for our own reasons, modify it, or replace it with something new. Some people never do this and lack this process of maturity. There faith remains the faith of a child even though they are adults. The fact is we have a moral responsibility to “know ourselves” and evaluate if our “core beliefs” or “religious ground motives” are true or false. It is out of these heart felt beliefs that we will develop our life style and behavior. Therefore, the choice of these key values is of vital importance in understanding and influencing human behavior.
From these core beliefs we then frame our thinking. Dr. Thomas S. Kuhn in his work on the structure of scientific revolutions has demonstrated that breakthroughs in science are not normally caused by new information but by a change in mental “paradigms” by which the information is interpreted. The same is true for our thinking. Our presuppositions about life determine what we think. We begin to narrate a story about our lives, the lives of others, and society based on these core beliefs.
Our thinking that is expressed in our “self talk” and “life story” create our emotions. If this inner voice is telling a story that is optimistic and noble we feel “happy” and if this voice tells a tragic story about life we become pessimistic and sad. If our story makes us “victims” we can feel defensive and angry. If our inner tale pictures us as noble heroes and heroines then we have a tendency to act out our roles. These stories are very complex and have many sub-plots. But the truth is that the world is a stage and we are actors on it. But not only actors but play writes and directors as well.
All of our actions are governed by our emotions. Mr. Spock in the series “Star Trek” would not act logically except he loved logic. In fact in the development of this character as his beliefs about emotions change and the story he has about life changes, then we see the actions of Mr. Spock changing to include the acceptance of the expression of emotions as a positive good. Emotions are created out of the story we are telling about our lives and about life generally. They can also be created out of our biology. Therefore, these are the two immediate things that affect our behavior. However, ultimately our story is guided by our “core faith” about life. To change the behavior we have to change the script and to change the script one has to change their “core beliefs” that govern that personal script.
So if there is behavior you would want to get rid of as an individual you have to be willing to look at your core beliefs and your biological state. Where is the behavior you want to change coming from? Only by taking a step back and striving to objectively “know ourselves” can we decide to change our beliefs and biology. If we were to hope to change society and culture this could only be done by attempting to impact people at the level of their “core beliefs” or “central values” while encouraging proper use of medication that would produce better behavior.
It is interesting to note that our biology can be impacted by our environment.
A group of scientist have released a report called “Hardwired to Connect:
The Scientific Case for Authoritative Communities” (http://www.americanvalues.org/html/hardwired_-_ex_summary.html)
which suggest that one of the reasons why American youth have to be put on so much medication to control their behavior is due to the lack of healthy social communities in which they are being raised. The study seems to indicate that there is healthy way for society to be structured that helps children biologically to remain balanced and dysfunctional structures of society that actually produces biological problems in governing behavior.
It is also true that in some cases we are using medication when we should be helping people go deeper into their philosophical belief systems which may be the source of their struggles. Dr. Lou Marinoff in his book “Plato, Not Prozac! Applying Philosophy to Everyday Problems” makes a good case that in some cases if we could get our thinking straight that this would do us more good than medication.
What affects our behavior? The short answer is biology and beliefs. How could we change our behavior. We need to know ourselves and rightly determine the source of our feelings so that we know if they are coming from our beliefs or our biology and even how these two may be interacting. Only by being willing to change some of our core beliefs or biology would we be able to make life style changes. This occurs only when we stop justifying our current behavior and are willing to recognize that we have a problem. Only the humble can change.
