Behaviorism as a field of psychology developed primarily in the US in the 20th century. It is an attempt to apply strict research methods of natural sciences to the study of the human mind. Assuming that it is impossible to effectively analyze the functioning of the mind, because it is inaccessible to direct observation, behaviorists have decided that research should be limited to measurable, repetitive, clearly defined experiments in which people are subjected to specific stimuli and their reactions are observed. Thesis based on these experiments, according to behaviorists, meet the basic scientific criteria – they are grounded on measurable, repetitive and falsifiable observations.

Behaviorism was created in opposition to two other concepts. Firstly, to the classical economy concept of homo economicus, which is the approximate model of a man guided by „rational” assessments and judgments in order to maximize the benefit he expects to receive from the actions taken. Secondly, to the mannerism used in psychiatry to build unfalsifiable theories describing the functioning of the human mind on the basis of „reliable observations from clinical practice” – the best example of such an approach is the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud and his successors.

The elephant, great, hardly controllable, but solid and providing elementary security represents intuition. The rider is the analytical and logical part, reflective, but very easily devoted to the service for the elephant

The concept of Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize winner in economy, is one of the most interesting concepts formulated on the basis of observations, research and behavioral experiments. While describing (together with Amos Tversky) the functioning of the human mind he introduces the concept of two systems(2) – System 1 and System 2. System 1 operates in an automatic manner, constantly generating various suggestions for System 2 – impressions, intuitions, intentions and emotions. System 2 approves these intuitions; should it perceive, however, events and phenomena as contradictory to them, it begins to analyze the situation by directing the conscious attention to the problem identified as such. System 1 is responsible for automatic reflexes and decisions, but also for intuition, which, for example, tells a chess master passing by amateurs playing a game of chess that it can be completed in three moves. The master sees this solution without any conscious, logical analysis of the chessboard situation. System 2 counts, analyzes, compares and researches. System 1 is susceptible to systemic errors because it simplifies the observed situation to already known schemes accepted as obvious and properly reflecting the actual state. System 2 usually has the final say but there is always the risk that if it does not thoroughly and deeply analyze the issue, it will take over the intuitions of System 1 in an uncritical manner.

Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist of morality, uses a similar scheme comparing the functioning of the mind to the elephant rider(3). The elephant, great, hardly controllable, but solid and providing elementary security represents intuition. The rider is the analytical and logical part, reflective, but very easily devoted to the service for the elephant, namely, looking for justifications for the intuition the elephant generates. Walter Mischel, a psychologist and discoverer of the phenomenon of delay of gratification and its consequences, calls the two systems that animate the human mind a hot and a cool system(4). The first is responsible for the immediate reaction to the stimulus – for example, the consumption of the emerging reward, immediate participation in the fight in response to the alleged assault; the other, the cool one – for reflection, analysis of consequences of the actions proposed by the hot system and for postponing the reward in time, or the idea of explaining the situation instead of immediate and risky, at any rate, fists waving.

Those systems, described above in various ways and responsible for the operation of the human mind, are peculiar lenses through which we perceive the complex reality.

In order for man not to have – as the anthropologist Arnold Gehlen showed it – constantly think about choosing one procedure over the other and to be able to act and react quickly enough in a dangerous world, his mind suggests him certain heuristic of the action. Based on previous observations, experiences, resolved issues, past threats and successes, intuition constantly equips us with situation models, short-term forecasts, estimates of probabilities of success or failure. On the other hand, the analytical and logical element, provided that it does not get interested in, often minor, incompatibilities, imperfections and contradictions, tends to justify for itself, as well as all those willing to listen, proposals suggested by intuition.

Behavioral lenses of cognitive systems working in our minds, observing and analyzing the environment, are our window to the world, but at the same time the gate through which cognitive errors, dangerous simplifications, models of cause-effect dependencies failing to reflect the reality, poor estimations of probabilities of achieving a goal or avoiding troubles penetrate. The mind itself, though non-linear in its reactions building anthropogenic complex systems, easily and willingly constructs linear simplifications of the world around it.