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Culture/Behavior

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History informs us that every religion known to, and practiced by man has a set of principles and rules to follow. Whether God created man or man invented gods, religious beliefs have for centuries impacted on society, and so, on human behavior. No doubt the rules were designed to encourage ethical and moral behavior, but as always, these have been bent, altered and misinterpreted so that goodness has not always been the outcome of religious beliefs. Some behaviors run contrary to the ethics of the religion, with disastrous effects.

That has always been so, those interpretations that lead to extreme behaviors in the name of religion. The Spanish Inquisition, Bloody Mary Tudor executing Protestants, the Salem Witch Hunts, the Holocaust, right up to the Islamic Jihads of today - all manifestations of the impact of religion on human behavior. But the true purpose of any religious system is not to murder and destroy "un-believers," but to provide a set of tenets to live by that will make the individual a better person, thus helping society to improve, as each person contributes to the common good. When this happens, the positive impact of religion is felt.

For many, the Christian tenets laid down in the Bible and the Ten Commandments provide an ethical and moral frame-work. These are designed to help the individual to achieve goodness and so behave well. As mentioned previously, similar rules apply throughout any faith. If we consider Buddhism, then we understand how our behavior would be driven never to hurt another creature, to do good and never evil. In Taoism, we find a "letting go" of all that is self-serving or damaging to ourselves or others. So if a person is a true believer, adhering to the rules of their chosen faith, then the end result should ideally be behavior that is morally good and beneficial to all fellow creatures.

Sadly, not all religious believers stick to the true meaning of the rules, preferring to bend them to their own ends. But it has to be said that most people are basically good, with only a very few seeking to do damage in the name of a faith or god. If the majority are good people, just striving to do the right thing, according to their religion, then this positive approach impacts on their behavior. It then goes further by encouraging others, even non-believers, to try to work from a moral standpoint. The outcome is a better society for all. Or so we can hope.

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History informs us that every religion known to, and practiced by man has a set of principles and rules to follow. Whether God created man or man invented gods, religious beliefs have for centuries impacted on society, and so, on human behavior.

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Notes over the biology chapter on animal behavior, specifally covering patterns of behavior such as migration, circadian rhythms, courtship and territoriality.

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Relations: Nesting, Pack Mentality, Migration, Courtship, Territory (Through behavior or Speech Instincts, focus on one.

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A summary of Groups in 's Social Psychology. Learn exactly what happened in this chapter, scene, or section of Social Psychology and what it means. Perfect for acing essays, tests, and quizzes, as well as for writing lesson plans.

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A few days before my younger son was born I found myself, immensely pregnant, sitting on the family room floor and sorting my older son's stuffed toys by size and color. Then I moved on to the drawer full of onesies and stacked them by size and color too. It felt urgent and important that this be done before the baby arrived. It also made absolutely no sense, which I knew even as I continued to do it.

I understood that I was "nesting" -- the pregnancy books told me so. It was one more reminder that we are all, at our core, just mammals, ruled by hormones and electrolytes as much as personality and free will.

A study of nesting in this month's issue of the journal Evolution and Human Behavior attempts to apply a scientific lens to what every woman who has ever been pregnant already knows -- that we can't help ourselves. Using both an online survey and a longitudinal tracking study comparing women who were pregnant with those who weren't, researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada found: that nesting peaks in the third trimester; that the behaviors involved are more often ones of organizing and sorting rather than cleaning and disinfecting; and that it includes the sorting of people as well as things, as seen in a tendency to retreat to the comfort of home and the company of familiar people.

And WHY do we do all this? Because that's what our ancestors did, the authors theorize. Back when there were caves to be readied with soft moss and animal skins, back when wild predators could outrun a very pregnant woman should she stray too far from home, this was nature's way of telling us it was time to ready the roost and circle the support.

Of course, the particulars have changed, and now we have so many more ways to nest than just cozying up the corner of a cave. As described in the study, women report some rather odd behaviors and birth nears -- things like dismantling the hardware on kitchen cabinets to disinfect the screws and knobs; cleaning the house top to bottom with a toothbrush; throwing out all the "old" bed and bath linens because only fresh, new ones will do.

Once the baby arrives, these urges seem to stop, either because the triggering hormones recede or the post-partum mother is just too busy and tired to clean anything with a toothbrush, often including her own teeth.

What is the craziest thing you did while nesting?

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Have You Ever Had The Urge To Scrub The House With A Toothbrush?

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A few days before my younger son was born I found myself, immensely pregnant, sitting on the family room floor and sorting my older son's stuffed toys by size and color. Then I moved on to the drawer full of onesies and stacked them by size and color too.

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Humans do reign supreme in the arena of language (as far as we know), but even elephants can figure out how to make the same sounds we do. According to researchers, an Asian elephant living in a South Korean zoo has learned to use its trunk and throat to mimic human words. The elephant can say "hello," "good," "no," "sit down" and "lie down," all in Korean, of course.

The elephant doesn't appear to know what these words mean. Scientists think he may have picked up the sounds because he was the only elephant at the zoo from when he was 5 to when he turned 12, leaving him to bond with humans instead.

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Humans do reign supreme in the arena of language (as far as we know), but even elephants can figure out how to make the same sounds we do. According to researchers, an Asian elephant living in a South Korean zoo has learned to use its trunk and throat to mimic human words.

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Molecular biologist Nathan Lents' new book called ​Not So Different: Finding Human Nature in Animals is a most interesting and wide-ranging book that focuses on similarities in the behavior and cognitive capacities of nonhuman animals (animals) and human animals (humans). I read it in draft form and truly enjoyed it. The book's description reads as follows.

Animals fall in love, establish rules for fair play, exchange valued goods and services, hold "funerals" for fallen comrades, deploy sex as a weapon, and communicate with one another using rich vocabularies. Animals also get jealous and violent or greedy and callous and develop irrational phobias and prejudices, just like us. Monkeys address inequality, wolves miss each other, elephants grieve for their dead, and prairie dogs name the humans they encounter. Human and animal behavior is not as different as once believed.

In Not So Different, the biologist Nathan H. Lents argues that the same evolutionary forces of cooperation and competition have shaped both humans and animals. Identical emotional and instinctual drives govern our actions. By acknowledging this shared programming, the human experience no longer seems unique, but in that loss we gain a fuller understanding of such phenomena as sibling rivalry and the biological basis of grief, helping us lead more grounded, moral lives among animals, our closest kin. Through a mix of colorful reporting and rigorous scientific research, Lents describes the exciting strides scientists have made in decoding animal behavior and bringing the evolutionary paths of humans and animals closer together. He marshals evidence from psychology, evolutionary biology, cognitive science, anthropology, and ethology to further advance this work and to drive home the truth that we are distinguished from animals only in degree, not in kind.

Why did you write Not So Different?
I wrote Not So Different because, outside of the specialists in animal emotion and cognition, most people know little or nothing about the inner experience of animals. Most people imagine a vast gulf between the behavior of humans and that of other animals, when in reality, our behaviors spring from the same basic programming that manifests as drives and instincts. This goes for the vast majority of scientists as well -- even biologists and psychologists rarely appreciate how human behaviors are really just more culturally complex versions of behaviors seen in other animals.
What's your major take-home message?
The big take-home message is that the emotional drives and instincts of humans and other animals are remarkably similar. Where things become very different -- and we have to admit that modern humans live very differently than other animals -- is when those drives and instincts interact with the social environment to create behavior. Since humans have an exceedingly complex cultural history that is additive over the generations, that is a very different social milieu in which our drives give rise to behaviors. But the drives themselves are not so different.
Why is this topic so important in what some call the anthropocene -- "the age of humanity" -- that I call "the rage of humanity"?
I deliberately shied away from pushing an agenda with my book because I wanted readers of all persuasions to read it so that, hopefully, the data speak for themselves. Many excellent books have been written with the express purpose of waking people up to certain things that we now know about animals, whether it is about their suffering, the destruction of their habitat, or their imminent extinction. Because those books don't always end up in the hands of the people who most need to read them, I am hoping that a book like mine might be a first step in convincing the people that don't already know it, that animals have richer inner lives. I am humble about any role my book might actually play, but if I convince just one person to think about animals differently, then I'll consider this a success.
What are your future writing plans?
I am already two-thirds through with the first draft of my next book called Not So Perfect: Big Design Flaws in the Human Form. This is the second part of what I hope will be a series of books that examines modern humanity through the lens of biology. When I'm not working on that book, I blog at The Human Evolution Blog and will soon join the contributors at Psychology Today as a blogger on human evolution. I am most excited about this fall when I will work with bright young students in the Macaulay Honors College at John Jay College to cultivate their skills in analyzing and writing about science. We're going to focus on human evolution and I plan to host some of their work on my blog.
Is there anything else you'd like to tell your audience?
Even though Not So Different appears to be all about animals, it's really all about us. Of course I believe that animals should be appreciated and understood on their own terms, something that you, Marc, are terrific at doing. However, this book is about seeing the humanity in animals, and seeing ourselves as animals. In my view, the best way to understand why we behave as we do is to appreciate our evolutionary history as social animals. As I write in the introduction to the book, "Understanding where sibling rivalry comes from can help us disarm it and thus get along with our siblings better. Understanding the biological basis of grief can help us recover from our own grief as well as help others to do so. Understanding that humans have a moral foundation built into us through our history as social mammals can help us discover ways to build a more moral society, regardless of religious, national, and ethnic differences. In short, there is a lot to gain by understanding where our behaviors come from." I guess I would say, the truth that I hope comes out of this book is that, perhaps ironically, seeing ourselves as animals can allow us to be better people.

I highly recommend Not So Different for a broad audience. It's an easy read absent a lot of disciplinary jargon. In my endorsement for this book I wrote, "As someone who has studied animal behavior and cognitive ethology and animal emotions for many decades, I've always been fascinated by the similarities and differences between humans and other animals. In Not So Different, Nathan Lents focuses on the similarities and readers will discover that humans and nonhumans share numerous traits, some of which might seem rather surprising, but the existence of which can be readily explained by well-accepted evolutionary arguments and considerations of the social worlds of the animals involved, something Dr. Lents does very well."

Marc Bekoff's latest books are Jasper's Story: Saving Moon Bears (with Jill Robinson), Ignoring Nature No More: The Case for Compassionate Conservation, Why Dogs Hump and Bees Get Depressed: The Fascinating Science of Animal Intelligence, Emotions, Friendship, and Conservation, Rewilding Our Hearts: Building Pathways of Compassion and Coexistence, and The Jane Effect: Celebrating Jane Goodall (edited with Dale Peterson). (Homepage: marcbekoff.com; @MarcBekoff)

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Not So Different: Finding Human Nature in Animal Nature

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Molecular biologist Nathan Lents' new book called ​Not So Different: Finding Human Nature in Animals is a most interesting and wide-ranging book that focuses on similarities in the behavior and cognitive capacities of nonhuman animals (animals) and human animals (humans). I read it in draft form and truly enjoyed it.

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Psychodynamic Theory In psychology, a psychodynamic theory is a view that explains personality in terms of conscious and uncon...

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System Theory

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Social Work and System Theory | The British Journal of Social Work | Oxford Academic

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The contribution of general system theory to the understanding of social work method in a generic situation is considered. An account of general system theory is given indicating how human systems differ from other systems, taking their place in a larger continuum.

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Social work theories are general explanations that are supported by evidence obtained through the scientific method. A theory may explain human behavior, for example, by describing how humans interact or how humans react to certain stimuli.

Social work practice models describe how social workers can implement theories. Practice models provide social workers with a blueprint of how to help others based on the underlying social work theory. While a theory explains why something happens, a practice model shows how to use a theory to create change.
Social Work Theories
There are many social work theories that guide social work practice. Here are some of the major theories that are generally accepted in the field of social work:

Systems theory describes human behavior in terms of complex systems. It is premised on the idea that an effective system is based on individual needs, rewards, expectations, and attributes of the people living in the system. According to this theory, families, couples, and organization members are directly involved in resolving a problem even if it is an individual issue.

Social learning theory is based on Albert Bandura's idea that learning occurs through observation and imitation. New behavior will continue if it is reinforced. According to this theory, rather than simply hearing a new concept and applying it, the learning process is made more efficient if the new behavior is modeled as well.

Psychosocial development theory is an eight-stage theory of identity and psychosocial development articulated by Erik Erikson. Erikson believed everyone must pass through eight stages of development over the life cycle: hope, will, purpose, competence, fidelity, love, care, and wisdom. Each stage is divided into age ranges from infancy to older adults.

Psychodynamic theory was developed by Freud, and it explains personality in terms of conscious and unconscious forces. This social work theory describes the personality as consisting of the id (responsible for following basic instincts), the superego (attempts to follow rules and behave morally), and the ego (mediates between the id and the ego).

Transpersonal theory proposes additional stages beyond the adult ego. In healthy individuals, these stages contribute to creativity, wisdom, and altruism. In people lacking healthy ego development, experiences can lead to psychosis.

Rational choice theory is based on the idea that all action is fundamentally rational in character, and people calculate the risks and benefits of any action before making decisions.
Social Work Practice Models
There are many different practice models that influence the way social workers choose to help people meet their goals. Here are some of the major social work practice models used in various roles, such as case managers and therapists:

Problem solving assists people with the problem solving process. Rather than tell clients what to do, social workers teach clients how to apply a problem solving method so they can develop their own solutions.

Task-centered practice is a short-term treatment where clients establish specific, measurable goals. Social workers and clients collaborate together and create specific strategies and steps to begin reaching those goals.

Narrative therapy externalizes a person's problem by examining the story of the person's life. In the story, the client is not defined by the problem, and the problem exists as a separate entity. Instead of focusing on a client's depression, in this social work practice model, a client would be encouraged to fight against the depression by looking at the skills and abilities that may have previously been taken for granted.

Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on the relationship between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Social workers assist clients in identifying patterns of irrational and self-destructive thoughts and behaviors that influence emotions.

Crisis intervention model is used when someone is dealing with an acute crisis. The model includes seven stages: assess safety and lethality, rapport building, problem identification, address feelings, generate alternatives, develop an action plan, and follow up. This social work practice model is commonly used with clients who are expressing suicidal ideation.

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Theories Used in Social Work Practice & Practice Models

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Social work theories are general explanations that are supported by evidence obtained through the scientific method. A theory may explain human behavior, for example, by describing how humans interact or how humans react to certain stimuli. Social work practice models describe how social workers can implement theories.