ABSTRACT
Harry Heft proposed Roger Baker's notion of behavior setting as worth exploring and including within the theoretical framework of ecological psychology. Behavior settings are especially relevant for developing social psychology from the ecological standpoint. We are generally sympathetic with Heft's proposal. However, it is still unclear how to characterize the role that behavior settings play in the concrete control of action: are behavior settings perceived? If so, how? Is there ecological information specifying them? Should behavior settings be regarded as landscapes of affordances? To address these and similar questions, we develop a constraints-based understanding of behavior settings that combines work on ecological constraints and enabling constraints and updates the notion of behavior settings for current discussions in ecological psychology and adjacent fields.
