Behavioural sciences

The behavioural sciences explore the cognitive processes within organisms and the behavioural interactions between organisms in the natural world. It involves the systematic analysis and investigation of human and animal behaviour through naturalistic observation, controlled scientific experimentation and mathematical modeling. It attempts to accomplish legitimate, objective conclusions through rigorous formulations and observation. Examples of behavioural sciences include psychology, psychobiology, anthropology, economics, and cognitive science. Generally, behavioural science primarily seeks to generalise about human behaviour as it relates to society and its impact on society as a whole. Behavioural sciences include two broad categories: neural - Information sciences and social - Relational sciences. Information processing sciences deal with information processing of stimuli from the social environment by cognitive entities in order to engage in decision making, social judgment and social perception for individual functioning and survival of organism in a social environment. These include psychology, cognitive science, behaviour analysis, psychobiology, neural networks, social cognition, social psychology, semantic networks, ethology, and social neuroscience. On the other hand, Relational sciences deal with relationships, interaction, communication networks, associations and relational strategies or dynamics between organisms or cognitive entities in a social system. These include fields like sociological social psychology, social networks, dynamic network analysis, agent-based model, behaviour analysis, and microsimulation. Insights from several pure disciplines across behavioural sciences are explored by various applied disciplines and practiced in the context of everyday life and business. Consumer behaviour, for instance, is the study of the decision making process consumers make when purchasing goods or services. It studies the way consumers recognise problems and discover solutions.