Strange [Definitions of] Behavior

A Different Take on “Defining Experiences”

“Defining experiences” can be ordinary. The usual take on that term is “life-changing events”, but I’m referring to the unnoticed occasions in a typical day when we weave definitions into conversations. Those informal definitions are like grease that keeps social gears shifting smoothly.

Sure, lots of social behavior happens smoothly without defining either the terms of the relationship, or the terms that the behavior is about. You and I can go shopping without defining what shopping is, and without defining whether we are BFF (Best Friends Forever) or just acquaintances who enjoy an outing to Target. (But if you show up seeking Saks and I was targeting Target, we may need to stop and define what shopping means.)

Science versus “Daily Life”

However, defining is crucially important in some specialized arenas, especially the Sciences -- or so we’ve come to believe. Science progresses because researchers can build on each others’ findings, and to do that they must have agreed-upon technical definitions of the key things they are measuring, right? Not necessarily.

Man Bites Dog? Earlier this summer—July 21, 2009 to be precise -- the New York Times ran what amounts to a Science section version of the model mock news story: “Man Bites Dog!” Reporter Natalie Angier got the scoop on the shocking revelation that Behavioral Biologists do not agree on a definition of a truly central term in their specialty: the word is “behavior.” Angier drew her facts from a study in the July 2009 issue of the journal Animal Behaviour, whose main conclusions were:

“biologists don't agree with one another on what a behavior is;”

Indeed, the study compared biologists’ responses in two parts of the surveys they filled out, and found that:

“biologists don't agree with themselves on what a behavior is”! {italics added)

This definitional disarray in a science specialty seems more serious than common differences in daily-life definitions. Who got the idea in the first place to do this bit of investigative research? Was it a renowned scholar secure enough in his or her career to raise this professionally sensitive issue? Surprisingly, no.

The Emperor Has No Clothes? The story fulfilled another model for media interest, since if you recall, it was a naïve and therefore painfully honest little boy who proclaimed the Emperor’s nakedness. Angier saw the irony in noting who sparked the study that revealed the definitional hairy situation that all those Behavioral Biologists were parading around in.

It was a graduate student, Daniel Levitis, who innocently asked his professor for a good technical definition of “behavior.” Finding a mish-mash of definitions when he searched textbooks and glossaries of research reports, Levitis went on to conduct a survey of about 175 researchers, and to be the lead author of the journal article (Levitis DA, Lidicker, Jr WZ, & Freund G, “Behavioural biologists do not agree on what constitutes behaviour.)”

Defining terms: For What, By Whom?

So, we are left wondering: Are shared definitions really needed for cumulative research? Might definitions serve other, more social, functions even in academic Science? Put better, under what conditions are definitions really needed?

Or are definitions in science, as in daily life, at least in part a way that some people pull symbolic power plays over others in attributing meanings, and having their definitions gain wider acceptance? Hot-button questions like those argue for looking more closely at “defining experiences.”

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