What Causes Human Behavior - Stars, Selves, Or Contingencies?

Making scientific sense of human behavior
Virtually everyone wants to know more about the causes of human behavior. Witness the large number of books related to this topic on the self–help and new–age shelves in stores and online lists, with few if any natural–science books among them. Over the last century, only a handful of books have approached the human–behavior topic with natural science. Emphasizing plain English rather than technical jargon, this book considers human behavior for what natural science has to say about it, the natural science of human behavior. Like other natural sciences, this one investigates human behavior through experimental research, and applies the findings across every behavior related field, from fair–advertising to zoo–keeping, for humanity’s benefit.

What Causes Human Behavior—Stars, Selves, or Contingencies? is written for anyone concerned to understand human behavior in general, or in a wide range of particular areas such as family life and interpersonal relations, education and the workplace, and cultural life and international relations. The scientific understanding of these areas also extends to the part human behavior and its causes play in solving local and global problems such as global warming, pollution, resource depletion, overpopulation and, dare we say it, human survival. For several decades, concerned people around the world, including traditional natural scientists such as physicists, chemists and biologists, have worked to improve and expand solutions to serious and growing global problems. This has led them to point out that both problems and solutions to these issues involve a large component of human behavior. Scientists are now realizing that making significant changes to human behavior, at all levels of society, to help solve such problems, requires that the natural science of human behavior—Behaviorology—be understood and applied to make truly lasting improvements.

Understand the most crucial aspects of Behaviorology:
• Historical accounts of human–behavior causes;
• Scientific causes as principles, methods, concepts, and practices;
• Basic scientific answers to some of humanity’s long–standing questions about topics as diverse as values, rights, ethics, morals, language, consciousness, personhood, life, death and reality;
• The interconnections with other natural sciences that both support our understanding of ordinary, everyday human behavior, and help solve personal, local, and global problems;
• All covered using common, familiar human–behavior examples.

What professionals are saying about What Causes Human Behavior
"Stephen Ledoux’s book, What Causes Human Behavior—Stars, Selves, or Contingencies? is a strong, non–compromising, theoretical and philosophical argument that the answers come from behaviorology, the natural science of behavior, that the answers do not come from astrology, theology, etc., or from psychology, the mentalistic unnatural science of the mind. And he supports his argument with examples of effective, science–based applications of applied behaviorology (applied behavior analysis) and with analyses of human behavior in everyday life, going from simple behaviors, to complex verbal behavior, with suggestions that behaviorology is crucial to the solutions of the world problems of overpopulation, sustainability, and global warming. But also, he’s not afraid to make these complex topics more readable by using an occasional contraction, an informal expression, and even a little humor, i.e. he’s way cool."
Dr. Richard Malott, Ph.D. Behavior Analyst, Professor, Western Michigan University, and author of several best selling books

"This book concisely covers a vast amount of ground in its mere 400 pages, preparing readers well for further, and more in–depth, examination of the discipline. Although the book is primarily written to elucidate human behavior, the laws and principles of behavior are used not only by behaviorologists but also by animal behavior technologists who study the behavior of non–humans. Dr. Ledoux has presented a complex discipline in an accessible format that is reinforcing to read and introduces a natural–science alternative to the various mystical and pseudoscience disciplines so prominent in society today. A natural–science approach brings with it highly effective and efficient engineering strategies and tactics, which are just what our world needs. This timely book deserves a Nobel Prize in my opinion!"
James O’Heare, author of Aggressive Behavior in Dogs and several other best selling books 

“In the prevailing academic order for the 21st-century society, the complex subject of the behavior of organisms, particularly regarding the causes and effects of human behavior, is controlled by the explanatory myths that are inherent to psychology. This book presents a threat to that prevailing academic order. So every person prepared to actually discover why people do what they do must read it.” 
Michael Rauseo, Psy.D. (Faculty, Los Angeles Unified School District)

“Many of the principles of behavior, and their cultural implications threaten received conceptions of behavior, including dearly-held pre-scientific assumptions about the nature and causes of our “selves.” This book gently walks readers through these principles and implications, allowing readers to overcome any attendant threats and to appreciate fully the subject matter at hand. In this primer Ledoux renders it all accessible, inviting, and eminently relevant.”
Bruce Hamm, M.A., BCBA (Director, Blackbird Academy of Childhood Education, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada)

Stephen F. Ledoux served as a Professor of Behaviorology at the State University of New York (SUNY) in Canton, NY for 33 years. His teaching and publishing in the field go back 45 years. Among his previous books you will find The Panda and Monkey King Christmas—A Family’s Year in China (1997), and Origins and Components of Behaviorology—Second Edition (2002), and Running Out of Time—Introducing Behaviorology to Help Solve Global Problems(2014), and Beautiful Sights and Sensations—Small Collections of Native American and Other Arts (2016). Stephen publishes and lectures nationally and internationally on the subject of understanding and applying Behaviorology to solving the human side of local and global problems. He lives in Los Alamos, NM, with his family and pets.