A Field Theory of Behavior

Despite progress in neuroscience, psychology, and ethology, no formal, cross-disciplinary equation has unified the biological, motivational, and cultural dimensions of behavior. This paper introduces the ARCH × Φ model: a generative behavioral law expressed as Behavior = Φ × (A × D × C), where A represents evolutionarily conserved archetypes, D denotes drive intensity rooted in neuromodulatory systems, and C encodes culturally transmitted constraints. The novel term Φ (Foundational Activation Field) captures an organism’s baseline behavioral readiness, reflecting stable neurophysiological traits such as tonic dopamine tone, arousal thresholds, and cortical-subcortical equilibrium. This multiplicative, nonlinear structure accounts for threshold effects, trait variance, and cross-species continuity. It supports extensions to vectorial, dynamic, and probabilistic modeling and is empirically grounded in comparative behavior, clinical neuroscience, and cultural cognition. ARCH × Φ offers a biologically plausible, computationally tractable, and theoretically integrative framework—a candidate for a general law of behavior.