The origins and evolution of behavior studies (BS) belong to psychology on a micro scale and sociology on a macro one. This course is focused mostly on the macro one also considering some micro aspects where micro and macro meet. Sociology generated two important spin offs: political science and communication science both strongly influencing BS whose key applications were in two specific fields: global intelligence studies including terrorism/counterterrorism strategies but also and specifically military strategies) and political behavior of the masses an exemplary case of which are election campaign planning and public opinion manipulation. The micro aspects are focused on how “guinea pigs “ behave in the box and the macro aspects are focused on how to design and construct the macro boxes in which the “guinea pigs” move (the legal norms and procedures of the elections and the media representation of the different party campaigns, for example). From this perspective, macro-micro sociology met with a) psychology to analyze how the engineering of souls (Chacotin) took shape at the micro and macro levels, with b) human ethology to study the (not so relevant) differences between animal behavior and human one (Eibl Eibelsfeldt) and with c) biology matching into Sociobiology (Wilson).
How does evolution from behavior to action takes place’ How hetero direct, externally manipulated behavior evolves into cognitive, constructed, self referential and autopoietic action?