CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES OF

HUMAN BEHAVIOR
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INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN BEHAVIOR
CRIM 203 – Human Behavior & Victimology

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WHAT IS BEHAVIOR?
• Behavior refers to the actions of an organism or system,
usually in relation to its environment, which includes the
other organisms or systems around as well as the physical
environment. It is the response of the organism or system
to various stimuli or inputs, whether internal or external,
conscious or subconscious, overt or covert and voluntary
or involuntary. Behavior can also be defined as anything
that you do that can be directly observed, measured and
repeated. (Ticao, 2004)

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OVERVIEW ON HUMAN BEHAVIOR
• Human behavior refers to a voluntary or involuntary
attitude of a person to adapt and fit society’s values and
ideas of what is right and wrong. It also refers to a range of
actions demonstrated by humans in conjunction with their
environment and in response to various stimuli, whether
conscious or subconscious, internal or external, voluntary
or involuntary and overt or covert.

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OVERVIEW ON HUMAN BEHAVIOR
• Human behaviour refers to the collection of activities
exhibited by human beings including how a person does,
feels, thinks or experiences primarily influenced by culture,
attitudes, emotions, values, ethics, authority, rapport,
persuasion, coercion and/or genetics.

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 HUMAN BEHAVIOR
Human behaviour can be classified as either:
1. Overt – those activities or responses which can be
directly observed by other people.
2. Covert – behaviors that cannot be directly observed
but can be inferred from external actions such as thoughts,
feelings and other emotional expressions.

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 HUMAN BEHAVIOR
• All behaviors are evaluated by the society according to
social norms and usually regulated by various means of
social control such as laws, mores, standards, etc.
• The behaviour of people is studied by the different
academic and scientific disciplines such as psychology,
sociology and economics.

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Factors that Affect Human Behavior
• Heredity – this is determined by genes by which parents
pass on traits to their offspring.
• Environment – these factors consist of the conditions that
surround and influence an individual.
• Learning - this refers to the process by which behaviors
change as a result of experience or practice.

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Under Environmental Factors
1. Social bonds are the factors that make you realize how much you
depend on other people and other people on you.
Four Types of Social Bonds
1. Attachment
2. Commitment
3. Involvement
4. Belief

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Four Types of Social Bonds
• Attachment – reflects the extent to which people feel
connected with and loved by others. A secure family
upbringing is crucial to attachment.
• Commitment – cites the “importance of the social
relationships that people value, which they would not want
to risk jeopardizing by committing criminal or deviant acts”

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Four Types of Social Bonds
• Involvement – is the extent to which your regular social
and professional activities keep you busy.
• Belief – is the degree to which people believe that they
should be law abiding. It is common for individuals with
high levels of social bonds to internalize these convictions.

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Under Environmental Factors
2. Social Norms
• Social norms provide an order in society. Without social
norms, it would be difficult for human society to
function, human beings need norms in order to guide
and direct their behaviors. Norms are used to create
roles in society, which allows people to function properly
in different social class structure. These are some of the
reasons why people, believe that social norms are
crucial to human behaviour.
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Other Factors that Affect or Influence
Behavior Include the Following:
• Attitudes, beliefs, emotions
• Reasoning
• Culture, values, ethics, religion
• Authority, motivation, persuasion and coercion

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 Importance of Studying Human Behavior
• The study of human behaviour will seek to understand and
explain how and why people behave in certain fashion.
• Everything we perform is very much related to or with
human behaviour. The study of behaviour, primarily points
to who and what we are, why we are like that, why we act
and think like that and what we could be as a person.

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 Importance of Studying Human Behavior
• The study of human behavior also contribute a lot of great
help in the way people handle things in life, the way they
face challenges and problems that occurs at an
unexpected time and of course the way they make
decisions in their everyday living.

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Motivations of Human Behavior
The Needs Theory of Human Motivation
This theory states that throughout one’s life, desires, wishes
and drives that are collectively called “needs”, motivate
every individual. When not fulfilled, these needs places an
individual under stress. Thus, to relieve the tensions
created, one has to strive for appropriate satisfaction of
these needs. According to Abraham Maslow, human needs
are arranged in a hierarchy.

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Motivations of Human Behavior
• “It is quite true that man lives by bread alone – when there
is no bread. But what happens to man’s desires when
there is plenty of bread and when his belly is chronically
filled? At once other (and “higher”) needs emerge and
these, rather than physiological hungers, dominate the
organism. And when these in turn are satisfied, again new
(and still “higher”) needs emerge and so on. This is what
we mean by saying that the basic human needs are
organized into a hierarchy or relative prepotency. (Maslow,
1943).
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Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
• Maslow’s hierarchy of needs was proposed by a
humanistic psychologist, Abraham Maslow in 1943. He
proposed this theory in a paper in Psychological Review
entitled “A Theory of Human Motivation”. Further, he
subsequently extended the concept by including the
observation on human behaviour.
• His hierarchy proposes that people are motivated to fulfil
basic needs before moving on to meet higher level growth
needs.
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Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is most often displayed
as a hierarchical pyramid with five levels:

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However, in the 1960s and 1970s, the five-stage model has been
changed during the development of the theory and marked it to
eight-stage model.

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Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
• 1. Physiological Needs: Physiology needs are human basic needs
which are critical for human living. Physiological needs are such
human basic needs as food, water, clothing, shelter
(accommodation or housing), sleep as well as procreation.
• 2. Safety Needs or Security Needs: Safety needs or security needs
deal with protection and survival from chaotic situations, social
disorder, social disturbance and physical dangers in human
environment. Indeed, these situations are characterized by a lot of
uncertainties that threaten peaceful co-existence of people in
various communities in the society.

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Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
• 3. Love and Belonging Needs or Social Needs: Apparently,
when people in various communities feel secured and safe
enough in an environment, the tendency is that they feel
the need to identify and belong to a social organization of
family or community. This psychological aspect of Maslow’s
hierarchy involves emotionally-based relationships in
general, such as friendship, sexual intimacy and having a
supportive and communicative family.

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Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
• 4. Esteem and Prestige Needs. When people achieve their social
needs or love and belonging needs by belonging to a family group,
social group, group of friends, group of colleagues or professional
group among others, they tend to seek for self-respect, recognition,
reputation, status, self-worth among others in their respective
social groups.
• People need to engage themselves to gain recognition and have an
activity or activities that give the person a sense of contribution, to
feel accepted and self-valued, be it in a profession or hobby. This
need if not satisfied leads to feelings of inferiority.
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Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
• 5. Cognitive Needs (Understanding Needs). This reminds
human beings of the urgent need to acquire relevant
knowledge, skills, information and attitude in order to
enable them to function very efficiently and effectively in
various social settings in human environment.
• 6. Aesthetic Needs –Our motivation for beauty and order.

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Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
7. Self-Actualization - deals with the desire of people to
develop their talents and potential that are hidden in them.
Onah (2015) perceives self-actualisation as self fulfillment-
the need to develop a person’s full potential in order to
enable him or her to become the best that he or she is
capable of being in the society.
8. Self-transcendence needs - Being helpful for others. It is
also sometimes referred to as spiritual needs. This need
when fulfilled, leads to feelings of integrity.
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 Classifications of Behavior
Normal Behavior
Abnormal Behavior

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 What is Normal Behavior?
• Normal behavior is commonly known as an adaptive or
adjusted behavior; they are standard behaviors – the
totality accepted behavior because they follow the
standard norms of the society. Atkinson (1993), presented
that understanding criminal behavior includes the idea of
knowing what characterized a normal person from an
abnormal one.

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 Normal Behavior
• A normal person is characterized by having an efficient
perception of reality, self-knowledge, ability to exercise
voluntary control over his behavior; self-esteem and
acceptance, productivity and the ability to form
affectionate relationship with others.

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 What is Abnormal Behavior?
• Abnormal behaviour is something deviating from the normal or
differing from the typical, is a subjectively defined behavioural
characteristics, assigned to those with rare or dysfunctional
conditions. It may be abnormal when it is unusual, socially
unacceptable, self-defeating, dangerous, or suggestive of faulty
interpretation of reality or of personal distress (Rathus, 1991).
• Abnormal Behavior is behaviour that is deviant, maladaptive, or
personally distressful over a long period of time. (King, 2008).

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 What is Abnormal Behavior?
• The American Psychiatric Association (2001, 2006)
defines abnormal behaviour in medical terms as a mental
illness that affects or is manifested in a person’s brain and
can affect the way a person thinks, behaves and interacts
with people.

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How Abnormal Behavior is Identified?
Abnormal behaviour could be recognized through any of the following:

1. Deviation from Statistical Norm – the word abnormal means “away from
the norm”. Many population facts are measured such as height, weight
and intelligence. Most of the people fall within the middle range of
intelligence, but a few are abnormally stupid. But according to this
definition, a person who is extremely intelligent should be classified as
abnormal. Examples are:
a. Intelligence – it is statistically abnormal for a person to get a score
about 145 on an IQ test or to get a score below 55, but only the lower
score is considered abnormal (Wakefield, 1992).
b. Anxiety – a person who is anxious all the time or has a high level of
anxiety and someone who almost never feels anxiety are all considered to
be abnormal.

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How Abnormal Behavior is Identified?
Abnormal behaviour could be recognized through any of the following:

• 2. Deviation from Social Norm – Every culture has certain

standards for acceptable behaviour; behaviour that
deviates from that standard is considered to be abnormal
behaviour. But those standards can change with time and
vary from one society to another.

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How Abnormal Behavior is Identified?
Abnormal behaviour could be recognized through any of the following:

3. Maladaptive Behavior – This third criterion is how the behaviour

affects the well-being of the individual and/or social group. A man
who attempts suicide or a paranoid individual who tries to
assassinate national leaders are illustrations under this criterion.
The two aspects of maladaptive behaviour are:
a. Maladaptive to One’s Self – it refers to the inability of a person to
reach goals or to adapt the demands of life.
b. Maladaptive to Society – it refers to a person’s obstruction or
disruption to social group functioning.

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How Abnormal Behavior is Identified?
Abnormal behaviour could be recognized through any of the following:

4. Personal Distress – The fourth criterion considers

abnormally in terms of the individual’s subjective feelings,
personal distress, rather than his behaviour. Most people
commonly diagnosed as “mentally ill” feel miserable,
anxious, depressed and may suffer from insomnia (Whitford,
et.al, 2006).

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 Symptoms of Abnormal Behavior
The following are signs of abnormal behaviour:
• 1. Long periods of discomfort – this could be anything as
simple as worrying about a calculus test or grieving the
death of a loved one. This distress, however, is related to a
real, related or threatened event and passes with time.
When such distressing feelings, however, persist for an
extended period of time and seem to be unrelated to
events surrounding the person, they would be considered
abnormal and could suggest a psychological disorder.

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 Symptoms of Abnormal Behavior
The following are signs of abnormal behaviour:
• 2. Impaired Functioning – here, a distinction must be
made between simply a passing period of inefficiency and
prolonged inefficiency which seems unexplainable. For
instance, a very brilliant person consistently fails in his
classes or someone who constantly changes his jobs for
no apparent reason.

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 Symptoms of Abnormal Behavior
The following are signs of abnormal behaviour:
3. Bizarre Behavior – Bizarre behaviour that has no rational basis
seems to indicate that the individual is confused. The psychoses
frequently results to hallucinations (baseless sensory perceptions) or
delusions (beliefs which are patently false yet held as true by the
individual).
4. Disruptive Behavior – disruptive behaviour means impulsive,
apparently uncontrollable behaviour that disrupts the lives of others
or deprives them of their human rights on a regular basis. This type
of behaviour is characteristics of a severe psychological disorder.
(Spoor, 1999)

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REFERENCES
• Eduardo, J & Panganoron, C (2015). Human Behavior & Crisis
Management. Wiseman’s Books Trading Inc.
• Castillo Jr. & Gabao (2016). Human Behavior & Crisis Management.
Chapter House Publishing Inc.

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