Behavioural Science Lab

Welcome to the Behavioural Science Lab of Middlesex University.  We are based in the Department of Psychology within the Faculty of Science and Technology.  Here you will find details about the team and their various projects, as well as news and forthcoming events.  The lab is coordinated by Tom Dickins, .

Looking across taxa it is apparent that behaviour is a significant aspect of the overall phenotype.  There is a clear evolutionary story to be told about its origins and function, but also its role in shaping evolutionary trajectories.  It is for this reason that we see the behavioural sciences as falling under biology.   Given this we draw upon paradigms and theories within behavioural ecology and ethology, but we also use the methods of experimental and social psychology where appropriate. 

Given our methodological pluralism we mark ourselves out as behavioural scientists, rather than psychologists.  But we also do this because psychology has become  focused upon particular kinds of accounts of internal, causal mechanisms that will deliver behaviour in humans.  Behaviour is our focus, rather than humans per se, but when we do study humans then, as with any other organism,  we have a clear interest in understanding behaviour within its ecological context. 

[Our  icon is from: Freepik by Flaticon]