An “Eight Perspectives” Approach to Describe Complex Psychobehavioral Phenomena

Tinbergen’s Four Questions is a widely used organizing framework for describing animal behavior that has also been applied to complex human psychobehavioral phenomena. However, it can be extended in several useful ways, making it a more comprehensive framework for the human social and behavioral sciences. To this end, we propose an Eight Perspectives approach that extends Tinbergen’s Four Questions by specifying the placement and roles of ecology, emotions, cognitions, and behavior in a broader framework. The approach is designed to be useful, simple, and flexible. We demonstrate its application using the example of physical appearance enhancement, and show that it organizes findings in an easily interpretable manner, identifies gaps in knowledge, and invites collaboration across biology, ecology, psychology, and behavioral science.