Question: what affects human behaviour?? :)

Damien Hall answered on 20 Jun 2011:

What a huge question! I don’t really know where to start with it, but I’ll have a go …

A two-part comparison that’s often talked about when people try to decide why someone behaves the way they do is ‘nature or nurture’. Nurture is the way people are brought up, so the comparison asks whether someone behaves in a particular way because of their nature (something about their personality, which they were born with and can’t change) or because of something that happened to them as they were growing up. So that’s a major question to ask when you talk about people’s behaviour.

But, if you are talking about things that can change people’s behaviour now, during their life, then there are other factors too. Environment is surely a major one (not meaning the thing you have to take care of otherwise Earth will die, but simply meaning what’s around you in the physical world). So, if you live inland but then you go to live by the sea, your behaviour might change because of that change in your environment: you might leave your windows open more because of the fresh air, and you might close your curtains later at night because the sea is pretty to look at in the dark under the Moon. This is a silly example, but it’s an example of two ways in which a change in environment have affected me recently: three months ago I moved from an inland place to living right on the sea-shore, and these are ways in which my behaviour has been affected by that.

People’s behaviour might also be affected during their life by psychological things – they may start to think about things in a different way, for whatever reason, and their behaviour may change as a result. For example, I used to not really mind when I was driving and someone overtook me on the wrong side (which is dangerous and therefore illegal), because it didn’t happen often, and so when it did I could just let it go. But then I started to drive more for work, and so I was overtaken on the wrong side more, and it started to bother me more. As a result, now I hate it when someone does that, and I beep at them! Again, a silly example, but I hope it makes the point.

Does that help? It was interesting to write!