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June 13, 2009, 6:55 am • Tags: , ,

icon_06Behavior refers to the actions and reactions of an object or organism, usually in relation to the environment. Behavior can be conscious or unconscious, and voluntary or involuntary. The complexity of the behavior of an organism is related to the complexity of its nervous system. Generally, organisms with complex nervous systems have a greater capacity to learn new responses and thus adjust their behavior. Behaviors can be either innate or learned.

Human behavior can be common, unusual, acceptable, or unacceptable. Humans evaluate the acceptability of behavior using social norms and regulate behavior by means of social control. In sociology, behavior is considered as having no meaning, being not directed at other people, and thus is the most basic human action. Animal behavior is studied in comparative psychology, ethology, behavioral ecology and sociobiology.

Behavior became an important construct in early 20th century psychology with the advent of the paradigm known subsequently as behaviorism. Behaviorism was a reaction against so-called faculty psychology which purported to see into or understand the mind without the benefit of scientific testing. Behaviorism insisted on working only with what can be seen or manipulated.

Behavior as used in computer science is an anthropomorphic construct that assigns life to the activities carried out by a computer in response to stimuli, such as user input. Also, a behavior is a reusable block of computer code or script that, when applied to an object, especially a graphical one, causes it to respond to user input in meaningful patterns or to operate independently.

In environmental modeling and especially in hydrology, a behavioral model means a model that is acceptably consistent with observed natural processes. It is a key concept of the so-called Generalized Likelihood Uncertainty Estimation (GLUE) methodology to quantify how uncertain environmental predictions are.