Scientific goals of behavior analysis

The scientific goals of behavior analysis (i.e., description, prediction and control) are value based. Scientific goals or values contain normative premises. An important concern for normative theories is to derive guidelines for dealing with problems that arise when different objectives are in conflict with each other. Control as a scientific goal seems to invalidate the other goals in behavioral analysis. This makes it difficult to include important non-manipulatable causes in our analyses. The term “behavior” includes, however, both external behavior (which is observable for several people) and private behavior (emotions and thinking). If research on external behavior, in principle, always takes precedence over the study of private behavior, while focusing on strange and narrow behaviors, then it is just a matter of time before we can forget the dream of being a unified behavioral science.