Behavioral History: A Brief Introduction to a New Frontier‪.‬

The expansion of social history research over the past several decades provides an exciting opportunity for practitioners that begs for more formal and systematic exploration. The ability to offer serious historical analysis for all major population groups, and even more the growing capacity to cover aspects of life from sleep to the senses, from boredom to courtship, puts social historians in a position to contribute, directly and explicitly, to an understanding of current patterns of behavior. Hence the idea of behavioral history, to focus key aspects of historical analysis on contemporary issues. The idea is to show how a current behavioral pattern has emerged from the past--when the pattern took hold, what caused it, what has reinforced it, and what its prospects are--bringing history more precisely than ever before into a core position in discussing the current human condition. (1) The general claim derives from the conviction that substantial components of contemporary beliefs and actions, in any society, are shaped by developments in the past and cannot be assessed without examining their origin and the factors that have sustained them. Social history's redefinition of the past, to include far more than politics and to recognize the wide range of behaviors susceptible to significant change (and therefore requiring historical analysis), is fundamental to this claim in turn, providing an exciting path to social self-appraisal.