PubMed · 5793965
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1969-06-07. Behavioural science.. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/5793965/
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The behavioural science course for the undergraduate dental curriculum at Liverpool university Dental School is designed to be integrated into the basic science and clinical teaching. The course is taught by a clinical psychologist and social anthropologist. The course has an input to each of the 5 years of the student's training. This paper presents three examples (community dental visits, communication skills training and special symposia) of how the course is being developed, illustrating the strengths and some shortcomings requiring further development.
Since the early twentieth century it has been common in both psychology and behavioral biology to draw a sharp distinction between learned and innate behavior, or elements of behavior. The persistence of this dichotomy may be attributed in part to the fundamental importance of the separation of inherited and acquired characters within neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, one of the essential foundations for the modern study of behavior. A cornerstone of early neo-Darwinian thought was August Weismann's theory of the germ plasm, which proposed a segregation between germinal and somatic cells during development, thus ruling out the possibility that acquired characters could be inherited. This denial of Lamarckian hereditary mechanisms became one of the hallmarks of neo-Darwinism, as opposed to classical Darwinism. Within the neo-Darwinian framework it thus became important, as Weismann himself pointed out, to distinguish sharply between inherited and acquired characters. Although the dichotomy has frequently been criticized it remains tenacious, surfacing in different guises as older versions of it became terminologically unacceptable. The analysis offered here suggests that this tenacity may partly be explained by the implications of Weismann's germ-plasm theory, and its modern incarnation in the central dogma of molecular genetics, and by the central thematic position of those ideas in the neo-Darwinian foundations of modern behavioral biology.
Microbiology and epidemiology have made significant contributions to the field of Infection Control. Most nosocomial infections which can be prevented are related to inappropriate patient care practices. However, it is extremely difficult to implement new infection control policies. To achieve staff compliance, infection control should learn from the behavioural sciences. Three related fields have been shown to be helpful in this respect: social psychology, consumer behaviour and organizational behaviour. Basic concepts from all three fields can be applied to the work of infection control for achieving staff compliance; the use of social power and the reasoned action model from the field of social psychology; the use of participatory decision-making from organizational behaviour; and the opinion leaders from consumer behaviour.