ABSTRACT
The goal of the behavioral sciences is to explain behavior in causal terms. This is one of the most difficult problems in science because the causes of human behavior are complex and operate interactively over many scales of space and time. Some approaches to human behavior attempt to gloss this problem by treating humans like elementary particles whose behavior is governed by relatively simple laws. Economic theories, for example, sometimes treat humans as utility maximizers, assuming that humans will act as if they are maximizing utility when viewed in the aggregate, even though the proximate mechanisms that cause this behavior are unspecified.
