Table of Contents
Applied behavioral research uses knowledge about animal and human behavior to solve practical problems. Instead of studying behavior only to understand how it works or evolved, applied work asks: “How can this knowledge improve welfare, safety, performance, conservation, or health?”
This chapter focuses on typical application areas, approaches, and ethical considerations. General concepts such as what behavior is, how it is recorded, and how experiments are designed are treated in other chapters.
Key Application Areas
1. Animal Welfare and Husbandry
Behavioral knowledge is used to design environments and procedures that reduce stress, fear, and pain, and allow species-typical behavior.
Typical questions:
- Does a housing system allow natural behaviors (e.g., nesting, foraging, social contact)?
- Which handling methods minimize fear and aggression?
- How can we recognize and measure suffering or positive welfare from behavior?
Examples:
- Farm animals:
- Evaluating group housing of sows versus individual stalls.
- Designing enrichments (e.g., straw, scratching posts) to reduce abnormal behaviors like tail biting in pigs or feather pecking in chickens.
- Laboratory animals:
- Providing hiding places or nesting material for mice to reduce anxiety.
- Using behavioral indicators (grooming, play, exploration) as welfare metrics in toxicity or pharmacological studies.
- Companion animals:
- Behavior-based assessment of stress in dogs and cats in shelters.
- Designing training programs that rely on positive reinforcement instead of punishment.
Applied welfare research often combines behavioral measures (e.g., time spent lying vs. exploring, occurrence of stereotypies) with physiological indicators (e.g., stress hormones, heart rate) to build reliable welfare assessment protocols.
2. Animal Training and Behavioral Therapy
Behavioral principles are the basis for systematic training and modification of behavior.
Applications include:
- Companion animals:
- Treating problem behaviors (aggression, separation anxiety, compulsive behaviors).
- Designing puppy socialization and obedience training based on reinforcement, timing, and stimulus control.
- Working animals:
- Training guide dogs, detection dogs, therapy animals.
- Developing protocols for police or military dogs that ensure high performance and good welfare.
- Zoo animals:
- Training animals to voluntarily participate in medical procedures (blood sampling, injections, hoof trimming) using positive reinforcement, reducing the need for restraint or anesthesia.
Applied behavioral research in this area tests:
- Which learning protocols are most effective and humane.
- How timing, schedule, and type of reinforcement influence success.
- How individual differences (temperament, past experiences) affect trainability and treatment outcomes.
3. Human Health, Psychology, and Psychiatry
Here, behavior is both a target (e.g., reduce symptoms) and an indicator (e.g., early signs of disease).
Behavioral medicine and clinical psychology:
- Development and evaluation of behavioral therapies (e.g., exposure therapy for phobias, behavioral activation for depression).
- Designing behavior change programs to address:
- Substance use.
- Unhealthy eating and physical inactivity.
- Adherence to medical treatments (taking medication, attending appointments).
Neuropsychiatric disorders:
- Creating robust behavioral tests and observation scales for:
- Autism spectrum disorders.
- ADHD.
- Dementia and neurodegenerative diseases (changes in daily activities, wandering, agitation).
- Translational research using animal models of human disorders, where specific behavioral patterns (e.g., anxiety-like behavior, social deficits, motor symptoms) are used to evaluate causes and treatments.
In these contexts, applied behavioral research must carefully distinguish between normal variation and clinically relevant behavior, and ensure measurement methods are reliable and valid.
4. Ergonomics and Human–Technology Interaction
Knowledge about perception, attention, learning, and decision-making is used to improve how humans interact with tools, machines, and digital systems.
Example areas:
- Workplace design:
- Arranging controls and displays in cockpits, control rooms, and factories to minimize human error and fatigue.
- Designing work schedules and breaks to match human circadian rhythms and attention spans.
- User interfaces:
- Testing how people navigate websites, apps, and software to improve usability.
- Adapting technology to typical behavioral patterns (e.g., where users look first, how they search for information).
- Safety and accident prevention:
- Analyzing driver behavior to develop safer road layouts or assistive driving systems.
- Studying how alarms and warnings should be presented so they are noticed and acted upon without causing alarm fatigue.
Behavioral findings are often combined with physiological and performance data (reaction times, error rates, eye tracking) to optimize design.
5. Education, Training, and Organizational Behavior
Behavioral principles are applied to improve learning and collaboration in schools, workplaces, and other institutions.
Education:
- Designing learning environments that support attention, motivation, and memory (e.g., spacing of practice, feedback timing).
- Testing classroom management strategies that encourage pro-social behavior and reduce disruptive behavior.
- Implementing behavioral interventions (reinforcement systems, self-monitoring) for students with learning and behavioral difficulties.
Organizations:
- Studying how reward systems, leadership styles, and group structures influence work behavior, performance, and job satisfaction.
- Applying behavioral insights to:
- Reduce accidents (safety behavior).
- Improve cooperation and communication.
- Support sustainable behaviors (energy saving, waste reduction) in organizations.
Applied research here often uses field experiments and longitudinal studies in real-world environments, not just laboratory tasks.
6. Conservation Biology and Wildlife Management
Behavioral ecology and ethology provide tools to conserve species and manage wild populations.
Key applications:
- Species reintroduction and translocation:
- Assessing whether animals bred in captivity have necessary behaviors (foraging, fear of predators) for survival in the wild.
- Training or “preparing” animals behaviorally before release.
- Human–wildlife conflict mitigation:
- Studying movement patterns and foraging behavior of wild animals (e.g., elephants, large carnivores) to design barriers, corridors, or deterrents.
- Using behavioral knowledge to reduce crop raiding, livestock predation, or dangerous encounters.
- Conservation planning:
- Understanding mating systems, territory sizes, and dispersal behavior for designing protected areas and corridors.
- Optimizing capture and handling protocols to minimize stress and mortality.
Modern tools such as GPS tracking, camera traps, and bio-loggers (recording heart rate, activity, depth) are often integrated with behavioral observations to inform management decisions.
7. Behavioral Insights in Public Policy and Marketing
Behavioral research is also used to influence large-scale human behavior outside clinical and educational settings.
Public policy (“nudging” and behavioral insights):
- Designing “nudges” that alter the choice environment without forbidding options, for example:
- Default options for organ donation or pension savings.
- Arrangement of food in cafeterias to encourage healthier choices.
- Simplifying forms and communication to increase tax compliance or vaccination uptake.
- Testing which messages and formats (text, images, social norms) lead to desired behaviors.
Marketing and consumer behavior:
- Studying how people perceive brands, prices, and advertisements.
- Analyzing shopping behavior (time spent in aisles, response to packaging) to influence purchasing decisions.
These applications raise particular ethical questions about manipulation, transparency, and the autonomy of individuals.
Common Approaches in Applied Behavioral Research
While experimental design and data analysis are discussed elsewhere, applied work often shares some typical features:
- Field studies and naturalistic settings:
Much applied work takes place in farms, schools, workplaces, zoos, hospitals, or natural habitats rather than in highly controlled laboratory conditions. - Intervention and evaluation:
- Baseline measurement of behavior.
- Implementation of an intervention (e.g., environmental change, training program, policy change).
- Follow-up measurements to evaluate effectiveness.
Reversals or multiple-baseline designs are sometimes used to strengthen causal conclusions. - Multidisciplinary collaboration:
Applied projects often involve veterinarians, physicians, engineers, educators, designers, conservationists, or economists alongside behavioral scientists. - Use of objective, quantifiable behavioral indicators:
Because decisions often have legal, economic, or ethical consequences, measurement must be as clear and reproducible as possible (precise definitions of behaviors, standardized observation protocols, automated recording where possible).
Ethical and Societal Considerations
Applied behavioral research directly affects people and animals, so ethical questions are central.
Core issues include:
- Welfare and harm–benefit balance:
Interventions must minimize harm and maximize potential benefits, especially in vulnerable populations (children, patients, captive animals, endangered species). - Consent and autonomy:
For human participants, informed consent, privacy, and the right to withdraw are essential. When behavior is influenced outside of awareness (e.g., subtle nudges), transparency and public debate are important. - Fairness and justice:
Avoiding discrimination and ensuring that benefits of behavioral interventions are not limited to specific groups. - Dual-use and misuse:
Behavioral knowledge can be used for positive purposes (safety, health, conservation) or problematic ones (manipulative advertising, coercive control). Ethical frameworks and regulation aim to guide responsible application.
Applied behavioral research therefore not only seeks effective interventions, but also continually reflects on how and why behavior is being changed, and whose interests are being served.