Theories of Human Behavior

In their attempt to understand the mind and behaviors of their people, many European and Euro-American scholars began to develop theories of human behavior. Theories are sets of abstract con- cepts that people assign to a group of facts or events in order to explain them. Theories of personality and/or psychology, then, are organized systems of be- lief that help us understand human nature and make sense out of scientific data and other behavioral phenomena. It is important to realize, however, that theo- ries are based on philosophies, customs, mores, and norms of a given culture. This has certainly been true for those theories that emerged out of the Euro- American frame of reference.

In their attempt to explain what they considered to be “universal human phenomena,” Euro-American psychologists implicitly and explicitly began to es- tablish a normative standard of behavior against which all other cultural groups would be measured. What emerged as normal or abnormal, sane or insane, rel- evant or irrelevant, was always in comparison to how closely a particular thought or behavior paralleled that of White Europeans and/or European Americans. For many White social scientists and psychologists, the word different (differences among people) became synonymous with deficient, rather than simply different.