Behaviour in the wild: A computational ethology approach to the study of human behaviour

• DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/eyva3
• Publication Date: 2023-05-11T05:02:03Z
• Authors: Disa Sauter; Roza Gizem Kamiloglu; Rui Sun

Predicting and understanding how, when, and why we behave like we do is a perennial challenge for scientists interested in understanding human behaviour, including psychologists, economists, and sociologists. We propose that scientific understanding of human life can be accelerated by large-scale computational studies of behaviour in everyday contexts. Specifically, we propose taking a computational ethology approach. Ethology pioneered the systematic study of behaviour in real-world settings in the early 20th century; recent advances in computational methods allow for such studies to be scaled up by using video and audio recordings to map specific behaviours to ecologically relevant stimuli. To illustrate this approach, we outline a recent study using this method to analyse real-world laughter. We highlight advantages and challenges of this approach for social as well as computational scientists. In sum, we argue that the synthesis of ethology and computational methods offers unique potential for generating insights into the complexities of human behaviour in the wild.