In order to answer this question you'd have to study the literature on the psychology of personality, psychology of motivation, psychology of affect, and more. What's the question behind your question? To answer it would require reading an advanced introductory psychology textbook at the very least. Why not check out a good text, such as the Introductory text by David G Myers?

This question is effectively unanswerable due to the scope of it. You are asking fundamental questions of a number of fields as Hendrika mentioned above. I would recommend taking a social psychology class to get at a couple of your questions.

Dear Anatoly,

I agree with the answers offered by Hendrika and Alexander. A good introductory psychology course/textbook should cover a lot of the topics you ask about.

Best,

Stephen

Origins of Human Behaviour (Online)

Overview

What makes the human species different from other primates? When did we become human? This course examines these questions by reviewing the archaeological and fossil evidence for the development of human behaviour from six million years ago to the end of the last ice age.

For information on how the courses work, and a link to our course demonstration site, please click here.

In The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin laid down his theory of evolution by natural selection. At the time, no generally recognised fossil evidence of early humans was available, and his hypothesis that humans had evolved from an ancestral ape was purely conjectural. In the 150 years since these works were published, numerous fossils have been discovered which provide us with direct evidence for human evolution having occurred and for the path it has taken. This course introduces students to past and present theories of human evolution through themes such as the origins of bipedal locomotion, the evolution of the brain and intelligence, technology, diet and subsistence, language, social organisation, and the emergence of art, symbolism and religion. Students will explore the major questions asked about the origins of human behaviour, and the various methods which scientists can use to search for answers.

https://www.conted.ox.ac.uk/courses/origins-of-human-behaviour-online

Dear Sirs,

Thank you for your reply. Could you please specify free books, reviews, courses at Internet? The below is just a small question about the behavior in which I am interested.

I am staying at the crossroads. I would like to cross the street, but am seeing red light of traffic light. WHY AM I STAYING? It is not conditional reflex. What is it?

Can we explain it as my brain ASSOCIATES my THOUGHT/MEANING  "I could be injured by moving cars" with unconditional reflex of self-preservation?

Prior to your staying at the Crossroads, you were exposed to someone telling you not to cross the street when the light is red and to cross it when it is green. You watched others cross, safely and perhaps unsafely. You may has seen someone or something (e.g. a dog) get hit when they crossed during a red light. You may have been spanked for stepping in the street when the light was red or praised for waiting for a green light to cross. You may have a positive experience "listening" to those providing the instructions, increasing the probability that you listen and follow instructions in the future. Your brain is an organ, one that sends signals across a synapse. Your experiences and in particular moving toward good things and avoiding bad things keeps you alive and safe. Here is an easy read that I recommend:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55988.About_Behaviorism

I believe Scott hit the nail on the head - it's more about learning than reflex. Over the course of your experiences, you have learned about the consequences regarding crossing the street against the light. As a very young child, you probably didn't know that was a bad idea, and very likely would have crossed the street without regard for the potential for disaster. As you matured and became more experienced, you learned to understand the consequences of your actions.

Hi, Scott!

But I can freely go at red light! In Russia everybody do it:).

Maybe I badly formulate it. I consider cases when we feel some fear, anxiety ASSOCIATED with our thoughts/meaning and so on (car is near, the tree is falling, the hole is around my feets). How is it called in psychology?

For example some anxiety appears when the car is approaching to me very near. I understand it hits me and I run to the other street side. So seems to me the brain associates my thought "the car surely hits me" with unconditioned reflex.  What do you think?

The fact that "everybody" crosses the light when it is red is an interesting observation. There are cultural differences, which is your point. In Reno, Nevada it is common too, but only when cars aren't approaching. I visited Vancouver, BC (Canada) and nobody would cross the street when it was red, everybody waited, even with no cars coming. They are more "rule governed" than Reno and Russia. In Seattle, Washington a police man told me I would get a ticket for jay-walking (crossing when I shouldn't) BEFORE I'd get a ticket for smoking marijuana in the street. Your example is not one understood via "unconditioned reflex" which is Classical Conditioning (i.e., Pavlov), but rather one of Operant Conditioning (i.e., B.F. Skinner), which is why I recommended About Behaviorism.

Here are two good resources for you:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning

I still recommend you read the book though.

I read Wikipedia. I did not understood "punishment, rewarding"

1. Punishment and rewarding are real events or they just in my head, in thoughts?

2. Punishment and rewarding should repeat several times in order the operant conditioning works?

Anatoly, those are all really good questions! I agree with Scott, in that you should read more about Behavioral Psychology, but I'll try to explain what behaviorism is all about.

I think before we start defining what punishment and reinforcement (rewards) is you need to understand the definition of learning. Learning itself means to change. Learning is a relative change in behavior due to experience. You are different after you learn something. During learning, something in your behavior has now changed because of an experience that occurred within the environment. You have an experience and your behavior changes because of it = this is learning! 

Second, you asked what is behavior. Behavior is anything that an organism does that can be measured. At present, the only reliable measure of learning is measuring a change in behavior. For example, we can measure the number of questions you get right on an exam = measuring your test-taking behavior. If you learned something, you should get more questions right…therefore we are measuring a change in your behavior from one test to the next.

Second, what kind of experience must you have in order for behavior to change? When we use the term, “experience” we refer to exposure to events that affect or are capable of affecting behavior. These events are called stimuli. Stimuli are physical events in the environment. They can include anything you can touch, see, smell, hear, etc. Stimuli are the lights, the temperature in the room, the noises you hear, me speaking out loud to you, the pencil your holding, the scratching of the chalk on the board…etc. So any of these stimuli can affect your behavior (either increase the probability of the behavior occurring or decrease it). For example, if you raise your hand and I call on you and praise you for answering a question, my praise is a stimulus that will affect your behavior. So in the future, you will probably be more likely to raise your hand again to be called on.

Basically, when we talk about learning, we talk about 2 different types of behavior: Operant behaviors and respondent behaviors. Operant Behaviors – are behaviors that we do and how we operate on the world around us - like walking, talking, moving our bodies…these behaviors are controlled by our somatic nervous system (voluntary muscles). Respondent Behaviors – these behaviors are responses to stimuli in the worlds that are controlled by our autonomic system (involuntary muscles). For example, these behaviors are reflexes (i.e. a relationship between a specific event and a simple response to that event) like heartbeat increase, pupils dilate, we get startled when we hear a loud noise. Sometimes operant and respondent behaviors can overlap…but its first easiest to understand if we can make this distinction. 

I'll focus on operant behaviors (hence operant conditioning) because that's what you are asking about:

There are 4 types of operant learning. Two strengthen behavior and two weaken it. Let's start by talking about experiences that strengthen behavior – reinforcement. Reinforcement = an increase in the strength of a behavior due to its consequence. The interesting part about reinforcement and the strengthening of behavior is that you are not necessarily aware of what is going on. There is no awareness of, “If I do “X” then I will get “Y”’ instead what you learn from reinforcement is to simply do “X.” You might actually learn that yes if I do X then I get Y but only if your tendency to do X has been strengthened then reinforcement has occurred whether you are aware of it or not. For example, balancing on a bicycle- you have to learn how to do this when you learn to ride a bike. But do you know exactly how you maintain your balance on a bicycle? You learned to maintain your balance by means of reinforcement – but were you aware that this was happening? Probably not!

There are two kinds of reinforcement: Positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement and they both strengthen behavior. In positive reinforcement, the behavior is usually followed by a 'pleasant stimulus' (something is considered rewarding praise, success, approval, junk food, money, special privileges, etc.) For example, you put money into a vending machine and get the bag of chips you wanted, you’re likely to put money into the vending machine again. BUT keep in mind, only those rewards that strengthen the occurrence of a behavior are considered reinforcers. Something can be a reward but not strengthen the future tendency of you to emit the behavior and then that reward would not be considered a positive reinforcer. Negative reinforcement, a behavior is strengthened by the removal of, or a decrease in the intensity of a stimulus. This stimulus, is generally something an individual tries to escape or avoid. Suppose you go and turn on your car and suddenly loud, raucous music that your brother or boyfriend left on starts blasting in your ears. You immediately turn down the music – this escaping the loud sound. This turning down of the music is a behavior that is strengthened by the fact that you are no longer cringing from the blasting music, and that there is a reduction in sound. This reduction in sound reinforces your behavior of turning down the volume in the future. It may work so much so that the next time you get in your car, before you even start the car, you immediately turn down the volume so that you can avoid the blasting noise before it even begins.

Just like reinforcement is an increase in the strength of a behavior due to its consequences, punishment is a DECREASE in the strength of a behavior due to it’s consequences. The consequences that are involved in punishment are often referred to as “punishers”. General punishers that we can think of include things like, reprimands, fines (parking, speeding tickets), physical blows (spanking, punching). When we think of punishers, we think of things that are aversive, that we want to avoid at all costs. Like with reinforcement, we have 2 kinds of punishment. In the first kind of punishment, something is added to the situation, this is called, positive punishment. So for example, if you go for a walk in the park and get mugged, you will probably be less likely to walk in the park again in the future because the aversive event of getting mugged was added to the situation and thus decreased the future occurrence of you walking in the park. Similarly, if a child has a temper tantrum and gets a spanking for it, the spanking is something aversive that is added to the situation = a positive punisher. So the child will (hopefully) be less likely to have a temper tantrum again in the future. Or if a teacher takes away his/her student’s recess time because the student was disrespectful= taking away something that the student wanted and thus reducing/decreasing the strength of the behavior of being disrespectful in the future.

There are a lot of factors that come into play that determine the way we behave (Extinction, schedules of reinforcement...factors that influence reinforcement and punishment, and choice making etc.. I just explained the basics of Psychology of learning and behavior analysis). I agree you should definitely read what Scott suggested. Even better if you can get a hold of B.F. Skinner's book Science and Human Behavior, it's a good read. 

Hope this helps! 

Dear Theresa!

I thank you very much for very comprehensive explanation of operant behavior.

The case I suggest is as follows. I am crossing the street at red light and I suddenly see the car which is very near to me. After it I stop or make a step backward to escape my injury. Could you please give any example of rewarding or punishment stimuli which helped me to escape the accident?

The Origin of Behavior∗

Thomas J. Brennan† and Andrew W. Lo‡

Abstract

We propose a single evolutionary explanation for the origin of several behaviors that have been observed in organisms ranging from ants to human subjects, including risk-sensitive foraging, risk aversion, loss aversion, probability matching, randomization, and diversification. Given an initial population of individuals, each assigned a purely arbitrary behavior with respect to a binary choice problem, and assuming that offspring behave identically to their parents, only those behaviors linked to reproductive success will survive, and less reproductively successful behaviors will disappear at exponential rates. This framework generates a surprisingly rich set of behaviors, and the simplicity and generality of our model suggest that these behaviors are primitive and universal.

Dear Ali A R Aldallal,

Thank you very much for your work! 

Dear Sirs,

Could anybody from psychology community here explain me my case in psychology terms? I repeat the case again below.

I am crossing the street at red light and I suddenly see the car which is very near to me. After it I stop or make a step backward to escape my injury. Could you please give any example of rewarding or punishment stimuli or any other psychology theory which helped me to escape the accident?

Thank you for an advance!!

 Anatoly, 

This has to do with Stimulus control -- in that the context signals the availability of reinforcement or the availability of some other consequence. One stimulus (signified by S+ or SD) typically indicates that a behavior will have reinforcing consequences and another stimulus (S- or S∆) that indicates that the behavior will NOT have reinforcing consequences. S+ or SD are called discriminative stimuli = stimuli that are associated with different consequences for behavior. For example, a rat in a Skinner box. If the light in the chamber is on (S+) then the rat can push the lever and receive food. However if the light is off (S-), the rat will not receive any food even if it presses the lever and will ultimately learn to discriminate in pushing the lever between whether the light is on or off. A discriminative stimulus means that there is an environmental context that has been followed my reinforcement and now when you see it it signals that a reinforcement is there if I do that behavior. 

To put it in your context: You are walking down the street and you see a red light (which is an SD for stopping, because if you stop you avoid or escape an accident (reinforcement), and also an S∆ for walking because if you cross the street on a red light, you may be hit by cars, get a ticket for jaywalking, be yelled at by your mother, or get honked at by cars who are about to get into that street (punishment)). So you stop. Why do some people cross anyways?  There are many different reasons and it really depends on their history of reinforcement. for example, they have never seen someone get hit by a car, or a car is very far away they can cross without getting hit. so there are many environmental factors that contribute to you behaving the way you do. Why don't you just stand up on the conference table and start dancing? (becasue when you are at a conference, with your peers (all signaling an S∆ for dancing because of the punishing consequences that follow, and and SD for acting professionally because of the rewarding consequences that follow). So Crossing a street when there is a red light already signals an S∆ for crossing, on top of that, having a car that is near to you is also an S∆ for crossing, so you take a step back to avoid an accident. 

I'm really simplifying this, but the world is a very complex place, each one of us has a totally different history with different stimuli... For example, if you see a police officer you are going to act differently.. you act differently with your parents than with your friends, you act differently at home than at school, those are all environmental stimuli that affect the way we behave based on previous reinforcing or punishing consequences. 

Best, 

Theresa

Hi, Theresa,

I am very grateful for your very detailed explanations. You wrote:

 "So Crossing a street when there is a red light already signals an S∆ for crossing, on top of that, having a car that is near to you is also an S∆ for crossing, so you take a step back to avoid an accident. "

As I understood you (I understand very slowly, need to repeat many times :) :). So I could be wrong) there are some stimuli (red light, approaching car) which tell me to stop before the car. These stimuli tell me that my behavior will be reinforced. This negative reinforcement means I will be alive. That is all?

If it is so what is huge difference in your theory and my following suggestion? The reason of my stop is as follows. The brain associate my thought/meaning "I will be hit by a car" with unconditioned reflex/process of self-preservation.

You say about stimuli. I talk about my reflection (that is a thought) of these stimuli. Without understanding of the two facts (what red line means, what approaching car means) any human will not stop!!! Remember a dog, cat or other animal crossing the street which is full of cars. We see at them with thrilling.

Hi Anatoly.

You raise a general question -- What is an origin of our behavior, actions? – and four  specific questions: 

1. Are there (origins) instincts, other stuff which is programmed in us?

2. What is our very complicated knowledge (our language, mathematics, physics, ability to drive a car, to dance, to play piano, to sing an aria, to paint a picture, etc.)? How is it related to the instincts or other biologically programmed behavior?

3. What is an influence of other people (community, family, school, friends, TV programs, books, Internet) on our behavior? Do we really choose ourselves our behavior like a profession, hobbies, etc. or we follow some "social programs" (like to be a rich physician, a banker, etc.)?

4. What is a role of our moods? For instance if I am in bad mood I am not doing physics, I am doing nothing).

Let me start by saying that a reasonable answer to your questions would imply to write a book, or even several books on psychology of personality (see, for instance, Eysenck’s work on one’s personality traits: Extraversion-Introversion; Neuroticism-Stability; Psychoticism-Socialization); psychology of motivation (see, for example, Deci’s theory of self-determination and intrinsic and extrinsic motivation), attributional psychology [see, to cite an attribution researcher, Weimer’s work on one’s attribution of causes (stable-unstable; internal-external; controllable-uncontrollable) to his/her own and others’ behaviors]; learning psychology (see, for example, Bandura’s work on social and cognitive learning and on one’s self-efficacy); developmental psychology (see, for instance, Piaget’s constructivist theory on four stages of cognitive development). For the sake of simplicity, I only refer to five types of psychological approaches that are related to your questions. As you certainly know, other psychological accounts for one’s psychological functioning (e.g., Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory) are also related to your questions.

As you certainly know, any answer to your questions greatly depends upon the theoretical framework one espouses. With this caveat in mind, I give a tentative and highly incomplete answer to each of your specific question, and then pass on to your general question – “What is an origin of our behavior, actions?”

(1) “Are there (origins) instincts, other stuff which is programmed in us?” This is a complex and highly debated issue. For example, the idea of innate and prewired modules (e.g., the cheater detection module) is a central idea in contemporary evolutionary psychology (e.g., Cosmides & Tooby, 1992; Van Lier, Revlin, & De Neys, 2013) or psychology that tries to identify which human psychological characteristics are evolved adaptations. It is certainly the case that every individual has a distinct biological heritage and genes, and that, for example, some of infants’ behaviors (e.g., grasping reflex; suction reflex, and so on) are pre-wired or programed in his/her brain and nervous system. Note, however, that Piaget (see his book on the origins of intelligence in children) was able to see that such reflexes become, as they function, more complex and enriched, and thus, subject to modification. Piaget noted that, with increasing age, the child begins to suck, for instance, a doll or a pillow. Surely, to suck a doll is not programmed in the child’s brain and nervous system. This is the reason why Piaget, for example, speak about reflexive exercises or behaviors, not merely simple reflexes or instincts when speaking about practical intelligence and his sensorimotor stage. Note also that the famous Dutch biologist and ornithologist Nikolaas Tinbergen (1907-1988) admitted himself that animals’ innate behaviours or instincts are, to an extent, subject to some kind of learning and development. For example, he observed that, as they grow, certain birds make their nests in a better or more adapted way. In a nutshell, the idea of instinct as a pre-wired and unchanged behavior seems now not to be a “nothing-or-all"phenomenon. Of course, we need, so to say, an intact or a non-damaged brain in order to be creative and innovators. Creativity and innovation, however, go well beyond our genes, molecules, and the like. Suffice it to say that one is entitled to win a Nobel Prize if s/he lives in a scientific atmosphere wherein there are several Nobel laureates rather than in an uncultivated social milieu. When referring to what brings about one’s cognitive development, Piaget, for example recognized that biological maturation plays a role, namely in the invariant sequence of his cognitive stages. For instance, on his book on play, dreams and imitation (1968) he observed that “… the coordination between vision and prehension is effectuated at around four and a half months [because of the] myelination of the pyramidal fissure.” (p. 119).Even so, Piaget cogently remarked that maturation of the nervous system and one’s genes simply open up a series of possibilities but without giving rise to an immediate actualization of these possibilities. More to the point, biological maturation is undoubtedly never independent of a certain functional exercise where experience plays a role.

(2) “What is our very complicated knowledge (our language, mathematics, physics, ability to drive a car, to dance, to play piano, to sing an aria, to paint a picture, etc.)? How is it related to the instincts or other biologically programmed behavior?” Although all these behaviors involve complicated knowledge, I would say that some of them (e.g,, to paint a picture in a creative way) are more complex than other ones (e.g., ability to drive a car). I would also say that creative behaviors, that is, a new and original way of thinking/acting are the most complex of all behaviors you mention in terms, for example, of cognitive energy, mental effort, and differentiation and integration of different perspectives, dimensions, and viewpoints. Suffice it to say that it is creativity that lies at the heart and mind of famous painters (e.g., Picasso), musicians (e.g., Mozart), mathematicians (e.g., Gauss), singers (e.g., Pavarotti), physicists (e.g., Feynman) and so forth. As mentioned in the previuos point, neural maturation, namely what one might call “good genes”, is a necessary, albeit not sufficient condition for all of these creative behaviors and thoughts to appear.  However, as also referred to above, neural maturation and “good genes” simply open up a series of possibilities but without giving rise to an immediate actualization of such possibilities. It is alleged that A. Einstein once remarked that it is only in dictionaries that “success” (and creativity) appears first than “work” (and even hard work). I think that the majority, if not all scientists, consider, for example, that Jean Piaget was a highly creative developmental psychologist. However, it is said that Piaget [see Bringuier, J. (1980). Conversations with Jean Piaget. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press] was so creatively engaged with his scientific interests (e.g., to know how new forms of thinking and intelligence emerge, evolve, and attain full maturity as development goes and how these forms of thinking/knowing become necessary once constructed) that he only went to the cinema three times in all his life, and made a promise to himself, when he was about 18-years-old, to write about 12 pages every day during his scientific carrier.

To my understanding, the concept of creativity has given rise, among others, to four misunderstandings. First, it is often said that creativity is an innate ability, or, in other words, “a given of nature” that some people have and others do not possess. Even though we need, say, a normal and  intact brain in order to be creators and innovators, creativity goes well beyond our  genes, brains, electrical firings, connections among neurons, and the like. Although there is not an algorithm or a formula to develop one’s creativity, it can be fostered and promoted. For example, teachers enhance their pupils’ creativity when they confront them, as it were, with problems rather than exercises. For example, if a teacher obliges a pupil to write several times a word the pupil had written in a wrong way, then the pupil is being confronted , say, with an exercise, not a problem. Exercises of this type are boring and do not foster pupils’ creative acts and thoughts. A problem is at issue when a teacher, for example, asks an 8-year-old child to explain why a drop of water on a table disappears some minutes later. Piagetian developmental tasks, for example, are clear examples of oriented-problem tasks, not oriented-exercise tasks. It is more than natural to think that problems, rather than exercises, are of help to foster pupils’ creative thinking and acting. Teachers can also enhance the creativity of their pupils/students whenever, for example, they organize their classrooms and learning situations more in terms of a person-oriented environment than in terms a of position-oriented context. Person-oriented teachers, classrooms, schools or families value persons in themselves, not because of their socio-economic status or position, gender, ethnicity, and the like. Contrary to position-oriented environments, person-oriented atmospheres are not, as it were, conventional settings. Needless to say, non-conventional settings are to creativity, autonomy, and divergent thinking as conventional settings are to conformity, heteronomy and convergent thinking. So, the more teachers teach their pupils/students according to a person-oriented perspective, the more they are likely to enhance their pupils’ or students’ creativity, autonomy and divergent thinking.

Second, creativity is not a “nothing-or-all phenomenon, that is, there are degrees and degrees of creativity, and even ordinary people can exhibit at times some creative activities. Third, There are many educators, who inspired by the French educator and philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), think that the child’s creativity stops once s/he enters school.  Romantic as this idea may be, it relies on a myth. Suffice it to say that (a) creative figures, such as I. Newton, G. Galileo, F. Bacon, L. Beethoven. I. Kant, C. Darwin, R., K. Gauss, and J. Piaget, were highly cultivated in terms of educational level and cultural background; (b) the Wild Child, a French film by director F. Truffaut, tells the true story of a child who spent the first eleven or twelve years of his life with little or no human contact. As a result, he was not capable of writing, speaking, and even walking; and (3) only education, not ignorance, can save countries, societies, and even individuals from possible collapse, be it violent or gradual. Of course, education is costly, but it is far less costly than its alternative, ignorance. Thus, to think that schools hinder the child’s creativity deifies our imagination. It is the opposite that it is generally the case. Indeed, creativity is more than simply dreaming about certain possibilities. Finally, contrary to what is often assumed, creativity generally requires hard work, not simply inspiration. As mentioned above,  it is alleged that A. Einstein once remarked that it is only in dictionaries that “success” (and creativity) appears first than “work” (and even hard work).

(3).“What is an influence of other people (community, family, school, friends, TV programs, books, Internet) on our behavior? Do we really choose ourselves our behavior like a profession, hobbies, etc. or we follow some ‘social programs’ (like to be a rich physician, a banker, etc.)?” It is empirically evident that our behaviors greatly depend on others’ behaviors, namely upon the type of family wherein we live, the type of schools/universities we attend, the type of books we read, the TV programs we watch, and, of course, on Internet. To elaborate on all of this is also beyond the scope of my answer to your questions. For the sake of illustration, let me speak a about Martin Hoffman’s classical thinking about the discipline strategies parents use when dealing with misdeeds of several types committed by their children in their everyday life, namely at home. More precisely, Hoffman [see Hoffman, M. (1970). Moral development. In P. Mussen (Ed.), Carmichael's manual of child psychology (Vol. 2. pp. 261-360). New York: Wiley] studied children’s moral reasoning, development and behavior as a function of the type of discipline strategies parents employ while dealing with misbehavior committed by their children in their everyday life.  As you certainly know, Hoffman conceptualized three types of such discipline strategies: Power assertion, withdrawal of love and inductive or explanatory practices. There is power assertion when parents “… try to control the child’s behavior by appealing to their physical power or their control over certain resources…” such as toys, fruit-gums, and the like (Hoffman, 1970, p. 285). (e.g., “if you do that, to lie, for instance, you won’t have toys anymore”). Withdrawal of love is a kind of blackmail in that parents try to control the child’s behavior by threatening him/her with unpleasant psychological consequences, such as, “if you do that -- to hit your sister, for example -- mom does not like you anymore”. Thus, in the withdrawal of love strategy “… parents give a direct, albeit not physical expression of their disapproval of the child’s transgressions.” (p. 285). Contrary to what happens with power assertion and withdrawal of love disciplines or practices, when inductive or explanatory practices are used, parents try to get the child’s adherence by explaining to him/her the negative effects of his/her misdeeds on others (e.g.,” if you hit your sister she will be hurt”). Among other things, Hoffman found that such discipline strategies or practices were related to different levels of children’s moral development. For example, he found (see p.292) that the frequent use of power assertion on the part of the mother was consistently associated with a low level of children’s moral development, such as is the case of moral heteronomy. In contradistinction, inductive practices were positively associated with the child’s moral autonomy. In a nutshell, discipline strategies a la Hoffman are a good predictor of children’s moral development. As there is mounting evidence that shows that one’s cognitive and social development is a necessary, albeit not sufficient condition of one’s moral development, Hoffman’s parenting strategies are also, to an extent, a predictor of children’s cognitive and social  development. Note that, along with the beautiful, the true and the good are universal categories, regardless of how they are understood in different times and at different places.

Bandura’s (1977) social learning and social cognitive learning theory (Bandura, 1986) is a telling example of how many of our behaviors are learnt from what we observe in others. Leaning by observing and imitating others generally implies, according to Badura, four main cognitive/behavioral processes or steps. Attentional processes, that is, if one wants to learn from the behavior of, say, a model, then we should pay attention to what s/he does. The more we pay due attention to the model, the more we are likely to learn from his/her behavior. Retentional processes, that is, if one wants to learn from the behavior of others, then a retention or storage of the newly learned behavioral is necessary. If this were not the case, then one needed to go back to observing the focal behavior. Reproductional processes, that is, after paying due attention and retaining relevant information, the next step – reproduction – requires that one is able to demonstrate the focal behavior or behaviors. Motivational processes, that is, after due attention, retention, and reproduction, one has to feel motivated to repeat the behavior at issue. 

Vygotsky’s (1978) socio-cultural theory is another example of how our behaviors greatly depend on others. As he put it. “Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual; first, between people (interpsychological), and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relations between human individuals.” (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 57; italics in original). In a nutshell, according Vygotsky we become ourselves through others and often stand up on the shoulders of those who have gone before. This Vygotskian idea is well documented in his famous notion of zone of proximal development. What we call “…the zone of proximal development…is the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers.” (p. 86, italics in original).  To recognize others’ influence on our way of feeling, thinking and acting is not tantamount to saying that, as we behave, we are only following, so to say, “a social program” and hence, we do not choose our behaviors, profession, hobbies, and the like. If this were the case, then we would have no moral responsibility for our behaviors. Deci’s theory of self-determination clearly shows that this is not the case. As he demonstrated, as times goes by, we are generally more intrinsically than extrinsically motivated, and hence greatly responsible for most of our behaviors. In the same vein, Piaget argued and showed that however much social factors have an influence on our development and education, we are the main responsible for our thinking and acting. As he often remarked, the social factor is a factor to be explained, not a fact to be invoked only as an explanatory factor. In other words, although accepting the influence of what he called the three traditional factors of development – biological maturation, psychical experience, and social experience, including language, one’s development, education, and behaviors are mainly due to complex processes, such as equilibration and self-regulation [see, for example, Piaget’s (1985) book on the equilibration of cognitive structures: The central problem of intellectual development]. Equilibration is a kind of balance between assimilation, to take something from the environment into the self, and accommodation, to put something from the self into the environment, which leads to an optimizing equilibration (équilibration majorante) or an ever increasing active adaptation to the environment.

(4). “What is a role of our moods? For instance if I am in bad mood I am not doing physics, I am doing nothing)”. There is also an abundant literature that speaks in favor of the influence of one’s (positive, negative, or neutral) mood on one’s behavior. A review of such literature is also beyond the scope of my answer to your questions. As you say, when we are in a negative mood, it is likely that we are inclined to do, say, nothing. I only point to a line of research by Robert Ciladini and his colleagues (1982). They have found that children and adults are far less prosocial when they are in a negative rather than positive mood.  This means that our moods may be considered an origin of some of our behaviors.

I turn now to your general question “What is an origin of our behavior, actions?” What follows only intends to show how you can deal with your broad question.

According to the empiricist tradition, associative learning mechanisms, such as association between stimuli and responses or classical conditioning a la Watson, positive and negative reinforcements or operant conditioning a la Skinner are the main origins of our behavior and action. More precisely, for John Watson the origin of our behavior results from one’s response to the physical and social stimuli through the learning mechanism called Pavlovian, respondent or classical conditioning. The importance Watson gave to the environment where we live in is well illustrated in his following statement:  "Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select - doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations and the race of his ancestors” (Watson, 1924, p. 104; italics added). Suffice to think of resilient children to show that such a statement is far from being always the case. Also, if our behavior only resulted from the environment where we live, there was, for example, no moral responsibility. Although Skinner has argued that the variables of which human (and animal) behavior is a function lie out there, he emphasized that one’s behavior is more a result of the consequence it brings about – operant conditioning  -- than a simple response to stimuli of several type. Accordingly, one’s behavior is acquired, maintained and modified via leaning mechanisms, such as negative or positive reinforcement (not to confound with rewarding), punishment, and the like. Needless to say, to refuse an appeal to internal psychological processes and structures as partly responsible for our actions and behaviors deifies our imagination. 

On the contrary, if one is a Piagetian-oriented theorist and researcher, then one’s type of intelligence (i.e., sensorimotor or practical intelligence, preoperational intelligence, concrete operational intelligence, and formal operational intelligence ) depends on what he called the three traditional factors of development (i.e., biological maturation, physical experience, and social experience, including language) but mainly on developmental psychological processes such one’s power of assimilation, accommodation, equilibration, self-regulation, reflecting abstraction and the like. Accordingly, contrary to Watson’s or Skinner’s views, in a Piagetian framework we are the main responsible for our development, learning, and behaviors.

If you adopt a Freudian perspective, then you will tend to explain one’s behaviors by appealing to what Freud called one’s psychic apparatus, that is, a structural model of the mind that includes three entities: The id, the ego and the superego. These entities do not exist in any region within one’s brain, but they are rather hypothetical constructs of relevant mental and libidinal functions.  Freud judged that his “id” operates at an unconscious level according to the pleasure principle. The ego develops from the id during infancy, and its main goal is to satisfy the demands of the id in a socially acceptable way. In contrast with the id, the ego is guided by the reality principle as it operates in both the conscious and unconscious mind. The superego develops during early childhood, namely when the child tries to identify with the same gender parent. It operates according to the principle of morality and leads us to behave in a morally and socially responsible and acceptable manner. Note than Freudian theory has been faulted, among other things, for giving too much an emphasis to libidinal or sexual issues as factors determining one’s actions and behaviors.  

Let us suppose that you are a cognitive psychologist, namely an information-processing theorist. Information-processing approaches appeal, for example, to speed and strategies of information-processing, working memory, and mental operations upon symbols, and the like, to explain one’s actions and behaviors. For information-processing theorists, the mind is seen as a computer working in a serial or parallel manner. Thus, the more the mind receives, codes, stores, retrieves and transforms inputs and generates outputs, the more likely a certain action (e.g. to solve a mathematical problem) is likely to appear. More precisely, the information-processing approach is mainly based on the following four assumptions (1) Information from the environment is processed by a set of processing systems, such as perception, attention, retention, short-memory, and the like; (2) such processing systems transform the information in a systematic way; (3) the goal of information-processing research is to specify the processes and structures that underlie one’s  cognitive performance, (4)  Information-processing in humans resembles that in computers. Note that cognitive psychology appeared in the mid1950s as a reaction against behaviorism and its denial of internal mental processes, as an appeal to better experimental methods, and, as mentioned above, to the idea that the mind, like a computer, is a processing-information “machine”. As I see it, cognitive psychologists fall prey to the fallacy of, say, circularity. When reading, for example, a handbook on cognitive psychology, I often get the impression of (a) circularity, for example, that we think, intend, or remember because of our mind, and that we have mind because we are capable of thinking, intending, or remembering); (b) of ill-defined or under-defined concepts. For instance, it is often said that a child does not solve, for example, an arithmetical operation because s/he is not yet capable of forming a cognitive map of the focal problem. We may wonder whether there are cognitive maps in our mind. Literally, there is no cognitive map in our mind in the sense that there is a road map in our pocket. Thus, to speak of internal cognitive maps in literal terms is gibberish. Metaphorically, the idea of internal cognitive maps can give us an illusion of explanation, when none is being provided.    

If you espouse an ecological approach a la Urie Bronfenbrenner, you will sustain that our behaviors greatly depend upon the several contexts or systems within one lives and develop. Bronfenbrenner thought that the individual’s behaviors are affected by his/her surrounding environments. These range from the microsystem, which refers to the relationship between a developing child and the immediate environment, such as family and school, to the chronosystem, which encompasses change or consistence over time not only in the characteristics of the person but also of the environment in which that person lives (see Bronfenbrenner, 1993, pp. 37-40). A more recent extension, the bio-ecological model (see Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, 1994), further proposes that genetic heritage plays an important role in one’s behaviors and actions. Note that the role of genetic heritage in the individual’s actions and behaviors is also stressed, for example, by contemporary evolutionary psychologists, such as L. Cosmides and J. Tooby /1992), neuroscientists such as Antonio Damasio (1999) and Michael Gazanniga (2005), and modularity theorists, such as Jerry Fodor (1983). Bronfenbrenner’s ecological approach to human development has been praised for its ecological validity. He rightly noted “… that much of [developmental] psychology is the science of the strange behavior of children in strange situations with strange adults for the briefest possible periods of time” (1977, p. 513). In terms of human development, however, ecological Bronfenbrenner’s approach has been faulted for making no appeal to developmental stages or other marks of developmental progress.

 If you were a dynamic systems theorist and researcher a la Esther Thelen and Linda Smith (1994), then you would say that the main source of our actions, be they physical or mental, is self-organization or interaction among the components of a complex system without explicit instructions coming from within the individual's organism or from the external environment. Because of this, dynamic systems theorists distance from either the Piagetian idea of internal cognitive structures or the behaviorist idea that the variables of which human is a function lie in the external environment. However, as noted earlier, the idea of equilibration or self-organization lies at the heart of Piaget’s views on the origin of our way of thinking. Thelen and Smith’s idea that the main source of our actions is self-organization or interaction among the components of a complex system without explicit instructions coming from within the individual's organism or from the external environment echoes in Fischer and Rose’s (2001) proposal of “[a]n alternative framework for understanding learning and development [as] a dynamic approach that moves beyond the static one-dimensional ladder and builds on the concept of a constructive web of skills” (p. 6), and lies also at the heart of the emergent sciences of complexity or sciences that deal with complex systems, for instance, a double pendulum that moves in the gravitational field ( see Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991).

 Let’s imagine that you are a neuroscientist (e.g, Bjorklund & Pellegrini, 2002; Damasio, 1999; Gazanigga, 2005). According to neuroscientists, the origin of our action lies in our brain. We can even say that brain is for neuroscientists as mind (and computer) is for cognitive psychologists. The main goal of neuroscientists is to locate the origin of our actions and behaviors in the brain in general and in certain regions of it in particular. This is the reason why neuroscientists often speak, for example, of a moral, social, or civilized brain. Of course, different things or activity (e.g., electrical firings, connection among neurons) happen in our brain when we think/act, for example, in a moral or immoral way, and it is certainly important to look for such activity. As you know, there is now a plethora of neural techniques (e.g., functional magnetic resonance imaging) to measure the brain's activity when one feels, thinks or acts in a certain way. Note, however, that it is not our brain that determines what is moral/immoral, prosocial/antisocial. It is individuals and theorists as a whole -- immersed in a certain context or language-game a la Wittgenstein and with an intact brain -- who conceptualize and define what is moral or immoral, social or antisocial, ethical or non-ethical, and the like. In other words, it makes good sense to say of an individual that s/he thinks or acts in a moral or immoral way. It is misleading and even nonsensical to say that our brain is moral, immoral, civilized, and the like. As cogently argued by and Bennett and Hacker (2003): “Psychological predicates are predicates that apply essentially to the whole living animal, not to its parts. It is not the eye (let alone the brain) that sees, but we see with our eyes (and we do not see with our brains), although without a brain functioning normally in respect of the visual system, we would not see (pp. 72-73).

 As you certainly know, I could refer to other psychological approaches (e.g., life-span developmental psychology) to give an answer to your questions. Moreover, if progress in science was assessed by the number of theories and approaches it gives rise, then psychology could be considered the queen of sciences, which is not the case.

Be that at it may, my considerations about your questions are nothing more than examples that show that answers to your questions greatly depend on the theoretical framework we espouse.

 I hope that I have got your questions and that this helps.    

 Best regards

 Orlando

Dear Dr. Orlando M Lourenço,

I am very grateful for your very detailed story on my broad questions. Thank you very much for that you spent so much time and attention to my problems. I will study your references and researchers you mentioned.

Sincerely yours,

good luck in your research!!!

Anatoly

Hi Anatoly,

Since your specialization is physics, I believe you will find Ford's and Lerner's Developmental systems theory an interesting approach. It is an attempt to give a wide overview of the person-in-context functioning and developing. Here's a couple of links for you: Article Developmental systems theory: An integrative approach

https://www.amazon.it/Developmental-Systems-Theory-Integrative-Approach/dp/0803946619

Hope this helps!

Michele