Behaviorism
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Behaviorism (also called learning perspective) is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things which organisms do — including acting, thinking and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors. The school of psychology maintains that behaviors as such can be described scientifically without recourse either to internal physiological events or to hypothetical constructs such as the mind. Behaviorism comprises the position that all theories should have observational correlates but that there are no philosophical differences between publicly observable processes (such as actions) and privately observable processes (such as thinking and feeling).
From early psychology in the 19th century, the behaviorist school of thought ran concurrently and shared commonalities with the psychoanalytic and Gestalt movements in psychology into the 20th century; but also differed from the mental philosophy of the Gestalt psychologists in critical ways. Its main influences were Ivan Pavlov, who investigated classical conditioning, Edward Lee Thorndike, John B. Watson who rejected introspective methods and sought to restrict psychology to experimental methods, and B.F. Skinner who conducted research on operant conditioning.
See also
- Animal training
- Applied behavior analysis
- Behavior modification
- Behavior therapy
- Behavioral change theories
- Professional practice of behavior analysis
- Behavior analysis of child development
- Classical conditioning
- Cognition
- Cognitive revolution
- Dog behaviorist
- Experimental analysis of behavior
- Important publications in behaviorism
- Models of abnormality
- Psychological behaviorism
