How a 70-year-old theory is being rebooted for the digital age.
Imagine your favourite neighbourhood coffee shop. Now, imagine someone started randomly shouting, doing jumping jacks, or trying to sell you insurance. It would feel jarring, right? There's an unspoken script there: you order, you find a seat, you talk or work quietly. This isn't just about manners; it's a fundamental pattern of human behaviour, and it's governed by what psychologists call a "behaviour setting."
First proposed in the 1950s, Behaviour Settings Theory was a revolutionary way to understand how our environment dictates our actions . But the theory was built for a world of town squares and school halls. Today, our "places" include Zoom meetings, Minecraft servers, and WhatsApp groups. Scientists are now asking: can this classic theory help us navigate our complex, digitally-augmented twenty-first century? The answer is a resounding yes, but it needs an upgrade.
Traditional behaviour settings like coffee shops, libraries, and classrooms with clear physical boundaries.
Modern behaviour settings like social media platforms, video conferences, and online gaming environments.
At its core, a behaviour setting is a small-scale social system where the place, the people, and the routine are inextricably linked. Think of a religious service, a library reading room, or a board meeting.
According to the theory's founders, Roger Barker and Herbert Wright, a true behaviour setting has four key ingredients :
This is the predictable sequence of actions. In a restaurant, it's being seated, ordering, eating, paying, and leaving. This pattern persists regardless of which specific individuals are involved.
This is the physical space and the objects within it that support the behaviour. The tables, chairs, and menus in a restaurant all "tell" you what to do.
This is the crucial "fit" between the behaviour and the place. A swimming pool invites swimming; a lecture hall invites listening. They are shaped for each other.
The setting maintains itself. If someone starts talking loudly in a cinema, others will "shush" them. The setting enforces its own rules to protect the standing pattern.
In the town of Oskaloosa, Kansas, Barker and his team famously identified over 900 distinct behaviour settings, demonstrating that we live our lives moving through these pre-packaged social situations .
"Behaviour settings are the natural units of the environment... They are the reality which is experienced by inhabitants of a town."
The twenty-first century has blurred the lines of the "physical milieu." Where is the "place" of a remote work team that spans three continents? What are the "objects" in a Facebook group?
Researchers are now expanding the theory by redefining its core components :
The milieu is no longer just physical. It's a combination of the physical (your home office), the digital (the Slack interface, the Zoom window), and the social (the shared norms of the group).
The standing patterns of behaviour in digital spaces can change rapidly. A meme trend on TikTok can establish a new "behaviour" that dominates for a week and then vanishes.
In a physical town, you were part of a geographic community. Today, your most important communities might be based on interest, fandom, or professional skill.
Each of these digital environments creates its own behaviour patterns, norms, and self-regulation mechanisms.
To test how behaviour settings theory applies online, a team of contemporary researchers designed a study to analyze a modern equivalent of a town square: a large, public Facebook Group dedicated to a local community.
Researchers identified a large, active Facebook Group (>20,000 members) for a midsized city.
Over six months, the team acted as passive observers, recording all posts, comments, and reactions.
They analyzed data to identify recurring types of posts as distinct digital behaviour settings.
For each sub-setting, they documented the "standing pattern of behaviour" and self-regulation methods.
The study found that the Facebook Group was not a single, chaotic behaviour setting, but a complex ecosystem of many well-defined, smaller settings. Each had its own strong, predictable patterns.
The most significant finding was that self-regulation was the most critical factor for a sub-setting's stability. "Lost Pet" settings were highly stable and supportive because members quickly and uniformly enforced a helpful, empathetic tone. In contrast, "Political Debate" settings were highly unstable, often fracturing because the community could not consistently enforce its own norms, leading to frequent moderator intervention .
This demonstrates that in digital spaces, where physical cues are absent, the social enforcement of norms becomes the primary "wall" that defines the behaviour setting.
| Sub-Setting Type | Core "Standing Pattern" of Behaviour | Stability Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Lost Pet Alert | Post photo/details → Comments of support & shares → "Found!" update post | High |
| Recommendation Request | Ask for a plumber/restaurant/etc. → Comment with suggestions +1s → OP thanks | High |
| Local News Story | Share news link → Comments debating facts → Heated exchanges → Mod locks post | Low |
| Rant/Vent | Emotional post about local issue → Comments of agreement/validation → Alternative views attacked | Low |
| Success Story | Share positive personal news → Flood of "like" and "care" reactions → Congratulatory comments | High |
| Mechanism | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Peer-to-Peer Correction | Members correct off-topic or rule-breaking comments. | "This is a lost dog post, not a place for your political views." |
| Reaction "Voting" | Using emojis (likes, angries) to signal agreement/disagreement. | A rude comment receiving 50 "angry" reactions. |
| Moderator Intervention | Formal enforcement by group admins. | A moderator deleting a comment and issuing a warning. |
| Algorithmic Shaping | The platform's algorithm highlighting popular posts. | A highly-commented post being shown to more users. |
Behaviour Settings Theory is far from obsolete. By expanding it to include digital milieus, dynamic patterns, and fluid communities, it gives us a powerful lens to understand the often-chaotic world of the twenty-first century.
This isn't just an academic exercise. Understanding these patterns can help us design better digital spaces—from less-toxic social media platforms to more productive remote work tools . It helps us see that the "script" for a successful Zoom meeting or a supportive online community doesn't write itself; it's actively created and maintained by us, the participants.
So the next time you log in to your favourite digital "place," take a moment to notice the hidden architecture of behaviour you're stepping into. You might just see your world differently.