Human Behaviour Essay

This essay explores the role of empirical research in understanding human behaviour. It examines key theories of attachment, including Bowlby's attachment theory and Ainsworth's strange situation, and analyzes their significance in explaining human behaviour. The essay also discusses Dollard and Miller's theory of personality, which emphasizes the role of learning in shaping behaviour.

ESSAY

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION:..........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION :..............................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES :..............................................................................................................................6

Title – To what extent does empirical research helps in understanding aspect of human behaviour
INTRODUCTION:
It is very difficult to understand human behaviour. This is because human being change
their behaviour according to situation. Human behaviour is the response of individual to internal
or external stimuli (Hillson and Murray-Webster, 2017). The behaviour of human is influenced
by several factors such as culture, values and beliefs. Besides this, personality and traits is also
an important element in this. There are various mystery involved in understanding human
behaviour. This essay will discuss and evaluated the empirical studies of various theories of
ascertain their significance in explaining human behaviour. Also, it will reflect on evaluating
theories on basis of human aspect.
MAIN BODY
John Bowlby
He gave theory related to children. The theory was based in attachment of children with
their parents. In this theory he observed that children experience distress when they are separated
from their mothers. Also, it showed that attachment can be characterised according to the
behaviour of children (Daly and Wilson, 2017) A child is always connected to her mother in
social, emotional and cognitive way. This creates a link between them. He further developed
stages of development. Pre attachment in which infants acts in such a way that attracts adults
such as crying, smiling,, etc. (John Bowlby, 2018). Attachment in making means They began to
develop sense of trust in their mothers. Clear cut attachment is a stage in which attachment is
established. Infant prefers to be with mother than anyone else. Formation of reciprocal
relationship in which infant understands about situation. A sense of security is developed in them
when their mother is not around.
The attachment theory was developed by bowlby. In this he suggested that attachment is
a set of learned behaviour. But the base for this is food. Children will always get attached first to
the person who will feed him. Usually it includes mother that feed child. Then, infant learn to get
associate with mother ( Blake, McAuliffe and Wrangham, 2015) This will begin the process of
classical conditioning. In addition to this, there are certain changes that occurs in behaviour such

as crying, smiling, etc. It brings responses from others. Thus, by going through the process of
operant conditioning infant learn to repeat those behaviours. Besides this there are three
attachment styles that are secure, anxious avoidant insecure and anxious resistant insecure. This
shows how attachment is formed at different levels.
In this a child is developed in following sequence that is as follows :-
Asocial 0-6 weeks – a child develop various kinds of stimuli and give a reaction by smiling.
Indiscriminate attachment 6 weeks to 7 months- child gets upset when an individual ceases to
interact with them (Carter, 2017)
Specific attachment7-9 months – the child start looking for people for security, comfort and
protection.
Multiple attachment 10 months and onward- the child becomes independent and several
attachments are formed within child
But on the other hand, other theory of attachment states that children come into this world
to form attachments. They are already prepared for this. Infant build social relation to develop
behaviour such as crying and smiling. So it is concluded that attachment is developed by care not
by food. Bowlby also stated that child only form one attachment and that help in exploring the
world and surviving (Rodríguez and Calvo-Flores, 2014) This one attachment acts as prototype
for all social relationship in the future. So if this attachment is disrupted it can lead to major
consequences. At last it shows that there is a specific period for forming this attachment that is 0-
5 years. The child may have reduced intelligence if attachment is not developed in this period.
Mary Ainsworth- Strange situation
Mary ainsworth designed a structure to measure the quality of attachment. In this 8 stages
was included that described showed relationship between mother and child (Mary ainsworth,
2016) The 8 stages are given below :-
Stage 1 – Mother and child enter the playroom Stage 2 – The child is encouraged to explore
Stage 3 – Stranger enters and attempts to interact Stage 4 – Mothers leaves while the stranger is

present Stage 5 – Mother enters and the stranger leaves Stage 6 – Mothers leaves Stage 7 –
Stranger returns Stage 8 – Mother returns and interacts with child
From the above it was found that there are three attachment styles. These are secure,
insecure avoidant and insecure ambivalent. These styles description is as follows :-
Secure attachment in which children are full of confidence and highly attached to their
mothers. This helps in fulfilling their needs (Koelsch, Jacobs and Gebauer, 2015) In this infants
develops a strong attachment when their needs are fulfilled. Insecure avoidant in which children
are independent both physically and emotionally. They do not seek to have contact with
attachment figure when distressed. These types of children are very insensitive and their needs
are rejected by parents. Due to this they highly get emotionally distressed. Insecure resistant
shows child develops an uncertain behaviour towards the attachment. This is because of the
surroundings. When they are in distress they are not comfortable in interacting. This behaviour
results in inconsistent level of response to their needs.
The procedure is known as strange method. It this there are several elements that are as follows :-
Scoring – in this there are four interaction behaviour directed towards mother (Greene, 2017).
They are proximity, contact maintaining, avoidance and resistance.
This is concluded from strange situation that child attachment will be depend on how
their mothers react or behave with them (Almeida, Rossetti and Coelho, 2017) Also, it
depends on mother behaviour. There are two points in this :- First sensitive mother will respond
in smooth way. They are more likely to have a very close attachment to children. There will be
secure attachment between them. Child will develop positive thinking and will be helpful to
others. On the contrary, mother who are less sensitive will respond in negative way. Their child
will be impatient. There will be an insecure attachment between them. In this there will be risk of
social or emotional behavioural problems.
Dollard and Miller
They both developed theory related to personality of human. It was based on Clark L.
hull learning theory (Gwynne and Hulse, 2017) They showed learning process by using a S- R

model of mental processes. According to Dollard and Miller human behaviour occurs in cues. A
cue may be any stimuli. Response hierarchy and learning means change in response due to
learning. In this learning occurs in four way that are drive, cue, response and reinforcement. A
drive may be stimulus such as hunger. If drive is reduced the reinforcement will occur.
Reinforcement is the connection between cue and response (Dollard and Miller, 2018). It
concludes that drive will force people to learn. The cue must lead to get some reward as
reinforcement. Role of drives in which there are some primary drives such as hunger, thirst, etc.
that are inborn. They occur naturally and force to learn. For example- a person may feel hungry
when he sees his favourite food even he has already eaten (Safa and Herawan, 2015) These
drives are known as secondary drives. Another example is pain. It encourages person to act, thus
any response that will reduce this will be reinforced. Cue responses- A cue may result in
occurrence of new cue. It means that what one learn in a situation will occur in similar situation.
It is known as stimulus generalisation. Social role of learning showed how to understand human
behaviour. For this they must know the process of learning. This will help in finding out social
conditions under which learning was gained (Grossmann, Brienza and Bobocel, 2017). Also,
human learning can vary from social to inter personnel context. One example is limitation. It
means copying of other behaviour. Psychoanalytic approach to neurosis in which S R model was
applied. It showed that how neurosis is characterised into three categories that is misery,
stupidity and symptoms. Misery is related to conflicts. Stupidity refers to fact that conflicts that
results in misery are unconscious. At last symptoms are phobias, hysteria, etc. that arise when is
in state of conflict produced misery. This creates a feeling of fear among them. Therapeutic
techniques uses S R model that leads to new learning. It is because in order to solve conflict new
learning are required (Daly and Wilson, 2017). Therefore, one technique that is available for
this is psychoanalysis. In this associations are directly instructs patients to their consciousness.
Another technique that is available is transference. In this patients express their feelings to
therapist (Zipf, 2016). Behavioural approach concludes from S R theory that mental process
arises by associating cues and responses.

CONCLUSION :
The empirical research of human behaviour explains that the behaviour of human is
influenced by several factors such as culture, values and beliefs. However, it is limited to change
in mental health. From research on theory of Mary Ainsworth , it explains that there are 8 stages
that describes relationship between mother and child. Human behaviour depends on relationship
between child and mother. Also, it is said that child is always connected to her mother in social,
emotional and cognitive way. A child attachment will be depend on how their mothers react or
behave with them. From research of theory of Dollard and Miller it explains that human
behaviour occurs in cues. A cue may be any stimuli.

REFERENCES :
Books and Journals :
Almeida, J.E., Rossetti, R.J., and Coelho, A.L., 2017. Serious games for the human behaviour
analysis in emergency evacuation scenarios. Cluster Computing, 20(1), pp.707-720.
Blake, P.R., McAuliffe, K., and Wrangham, R., 2015. The ontogeny of fairness in seven
societies. Nature, 528(7581), p.258.
Carter, I., 2017. Human behavior in the social environment: A social systems approach.
Routledge.
Daly, M. and Wilson, M., 2017. Homicide: Foundations of human behavior. Routledge.
Greene, R.R., 2017. Human Behavior Theory and Professional Social Work Practice. In Human
Behavior Theory and Social Work Practice (pp. 31-62). Routledge.
Grossmann, I., Brienza, J.P. and Bobocel, D.R., 2017. Wise deliberation sustains cooperation.
Nature Human Behaviour, 1(3), p.0061.
Gwynne, S.M.V., and Hulse, L.M., 2017. Modelling and influencing human behaviour in fire.
Fire and Materials, 41(5), pp.412-430.
Hillson, D. and Murray-Webster, R., 2017. Understanding and managing risk attitude.
Routledge.
Koelsch, S., Jacobs, A.M., and Gebauer, G., 2015. The quartet theory of human emotions: an
integrative and neurofunctional model. Physics of life reviews, 13, pp.1-27.
Rodríguez, N.D., and Calvo-Flores, M.D., 2014. A fuzzy ontology for semantic modelling and
recognition of human behaviour. Knowledge-Based Systems, 66, pp.46-60.
Safa, N.S., and Herawan, T., 2015. Information security conscious care behaviour formation in
organizations. Computers & Security, 53, pp.65-78.
Zipf, G.K., 2016. Human behavior and the principle of least effort: An introduction to human
ecology. Ravenio Books.

Online:
Dollard and Miller, 2018. [Online] Available through: <https://www.enotes.com/homework-
help/what-neal-e-miller-john-dollards-s-r-theory-673863>
John Bowlby, 2018. [Online] Available through :
<https://www.simplypsychology.org/attachment.html >
Mary ainsworth, 2016. [Online] Available through: <
https://www.simplypsychology.org/mary-ainsworth.html>