3 - Getting Started

Summary

Research on purpose starts with learning how to look at purposeful behavior as a process of control. This means learning to see behavior as being organized around the control of perceptual variables. The next step is to try to see what these variables might be. Ideas about what these variables might be come from the names we commonly use for various behaviors, as well as from existing research studies. Once you have an idea of what variable or variables an organism is controlling, you can refine that hypothesis by looking at the control process from the point of view of the behaving system itself. The refined hypothesis is then tested using the method of specimens, which involves testing one organism at a time under all experimental conditions. The results of this research are evaluated in terms of scientific rather than statistical significance.