The term behavioural sciences encompasses all the disciplines that explore the activities of and interactions among organisms in the natural world. It involves the systematic analysis and investigation of human and animal behaviour through controlled and naturalistic observation, and disciplined scientific experimentation. It attempts to accomplish legitimate, objective conclusions through rigorous formulations and observation (E.D. Klemke, R. Hollinger & A.D. Kline, (eds.) (1980)). Examples of behavioural sciences include psychology, cognitive science, and anthropology.
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The term behavioural sciences is often confused with the term social sciences. Though these two broad areas are interrelated and study systematic processes of behaviour, they differ on their level of scientific analysis of various dimensions of behaviour.
Behavioural sciences abstract empirical data to investigate the decision processes and communication strategies within and between organisms in a social system. This involves fields like psychology and social neuroscience, among others.
In contrast, social sciences provide a perceptive framework to study the processes of a social system through impacts of social organisation on structural adjustment of the individual and of groups. They typically include fields like sociology, economics, history, counselling, public health, anthropology, and political science (E.D. Klemke, R. Hollinger & A.D. Kline, eds., 1988).
Behavioural sciences includes two broad categories: neural—decision sciences—and social—communication sciences. Decision sciences involves those disciplines primarily dealing with the decision processes and individual functioning used in the survival of organisms in a social environment. These include anthropology, psychology, cognitive science, organisation theory, psychobiology, and social neuroscience.
On the other hand, communication sciences include those fields which study the communication strategies used by organisms and its dynamics between organisms in an environment. These include fields like anthropology, organisational behaviour, organisation studies, sociology and social networks.