From the lab to the world.
Basic behavioral science earns its keep when it changes behavior and decisions in settings that matter. This line of work carries the fundamentals out of the lab and into the world (e.g., professional ethics, clinical decision-making, autism service delivery, substance use, and even baseball). Two questions drive it: how do the fundamentals get applied, and which of them prove most influential once they leave the controlled conditions of the lab?
What survives contact with the world
A principle earns confidence in the lab, where everything but one variable is held still. It earns its keep somewhere messier. So the work runs in both directions. We take a fundamental we understand well (e.g., discounting, the matching law, reinforcement, or a functional account of behavior) and ask what it buys us in a real setting. The setting answers back, showing which fundamentals still carry weight once the controlled conditions are gone.
The translation map
The map lays both sides out. On the left are the fundamentals we translate, sized by how often we lean on them; on the right, the domains they land in. Each bridge is a body of studies, thicker where we have done more. One pattern stands out: a functional account of ethical behavior carries more of our applied work than any other fundamental, mostly into professional ethics and autism service delivery. Hover a fundamental to trace its reach, and click a bridge to read the studies behind it.
Node size is how often we apply a fundamental; bridge thickness is the number of studies. The two methods (experimental design, and quantitative, computational, and AI modeling) sit at the bottom of the left axis, beneath the principles.
The full body of work
The complete set, grouped by domain and newest first. Each entry notes the fundamental it carries, and links out to the paper.
The open frontier
The thin bridges and the sparser domains are where the next translations live. If you work in one of these settings and want a behavioral-science partner on a question, we would like to hear from you.
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