Behavioralism

Notes

Claim

Behavioralism is a theory which suggests that the best way of measuring someone's preferences is to look at their behavior. It assumes that Actions and physical states unconsciously shape our beliefs is common in most cases, meaning that our actions reflect our true preferences.

Explanation

The advantages are that it escapes the Understanding others requires attributing mental states like beliefs and intentions to them, no need to get into someone's head in order to understand what motivates them, we can look at their behavior and reverse engineer it.

Why it matters

Examples

Supporters

Opposers

However, it fails to account for cases of Insight Gap, where we know what we should do yet we fail to do so, and ignores cases of intrapersonal conflict. It also undermines the reasons for Environmental design influences behavior through choice architecture, because if people would have wanted a different outcome, they would have said so.

Open questions

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Overview

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