Are Human Behavior Predictable

ITK Human Sciences Journal Michelle Ng 4D (12)

Recently, a group of leading Northeastern University network scientists found out that, human behavior is 93 percent predictable by studying the mobility patterns of anonymous cell-phone users and concluded that, despite the common perception that our actions are random and unpredictable, human mobility follows surprisingly regular patterns. However, some people may argue that everyone is unique. It is very difficult to predict one’s behavior with absolute accuracy.  There are too many variables in the exact interaction of people to chart the step by step or exact results. I think human behavior is predictable in the grand view which is in a big group. However, personal behavior can be random within the group which makes us sometime wrong about others. In other words, there are trends that can be followed fairly accurately, but these trends are not definite and accurate.

If we take a look at a big picture, human behavior is predictable. For instance, people are less likely to help in a crowd than in a small group can be applied to the majority of people as statistics and research show. Also, one common test used by people to prove that human behavior is predictable is that when people are told not to think of a specific object in the next few seconds, 100% of them actually really come up with the object in their mind. Besides, according to Skinner, a famous psychologist, it is believed that every human behavior is due to some sort of conditioning: this means that people behave the way they do because that is the way they are trained and they are conformed to some sorts of social norms. This also suggests that behavior is predictable. 

In a small picture, human behavior can be influenced by many factors with respect to the study done by Lee J Cronbach and Richard Snow in 1977. It suggested that there are many limits on the predictability of human behavior. Individual differences actually affect...