It further seeks to encourage research and facilitate communication between and among scientists and professionals from various disciplines and professions at local, regional, national, and international levels.

The society was initiated in 1954 by biologists Ludwig von Bertalanffy and Ralph Gerard, economist Kenneth Boulding, and mathematician Anatol Rapoport at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

[3] The next year Boulding, Gerard and Rapoport started working with James Grier Miller at the Mental Health Research Institute of the University of Michigan.

The statement of the mission of the society was formulated with the following four objectives:[4] In the 1960s local chapters were established in Boston, New York, San Francisco, Washington, D.C, and Florida.

Periodical articles were published in the society's journal Behavioral Science, and additionally "The Bulletin" offered regional and thematic publications.