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behaviorism

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A school of psychology that confines itself to the study of observable and quantifiable aspects of behavior and excludes subjective phenomena, such as emotions or motives.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun an approach to psychology that emphasizes observable measurable behavior.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun an approach to psychology focusing on behavior, denying any independent significance for mind and assuming that behavior is determined by the environment

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an approach to psychology that emphasizes observable measurable behavior

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

behavior +‎ -ism

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Examples

  • You and I both know why Skinner's behaviorism is classified as 'failed' – because once upon a time (on the order of years, rather than many decades or centuries) it was popular.

    Bunny and a Book 2008

  • You and I both know why Skinner's behaviorism is classified as 'failed' – because once upon a time (on the order of years, rather than many decades or centuries) it was popular.

    Bunny and a Book 2008

  • The example I mentioned involving the control of mass human behaviorism is already a highly topical one, even though this may appear far-fetched.

    Andrei Sakharov - Nobel Lecture 1975

  • There seem to be only two well-known theories from the history of the philosophy of mind that have not been attributed to him, namely behaviorism and functionalism.

    Descartes and the Pineal Gland Lokhorst, Gert-Jan 2008

  • The study of speech acts is indeed the study of a certain kind of human behavior, but for that reason it is in conflict with any form of behaviorism, which is conceptually incapable of studying human behavior.

    A Special Supplement: Chomsky's Revolution in Linguistics Searle, John R. 1972

  • No. It makes sense that an evolutionary biologist would get it right -- natural selection is an ideal example of a functional contextualist explanation (another is radical behaviorism, which is too often dismissed by those who have ignorantly confused it with methodological behaviorism).

    MachineMachine (formerly 'The Huge Entity') 2010

  • By the 1920s, a new school of psychology called behaviorism suggested that cuddling wailing infants would "condition" them to become lifelong crybabies.

    Slate Magazine Dave Johns 2010

  • And: Pay-for-performance is an outgrowth of behaviorism, which is focused on individual organisms, not systems - and, true to its name, looks only at behaviors, not at reasons and motives and the people who have them.

    Recently Uploaded Slideshows Gebhard_BBTN 2009

  • The real methodological statement of "behaviorism" in economics is not the Friedman essay, but the Stigler/Becker piece "De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum" AER.

    Behaviorism in Economics: A Funeral, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009

  • Another factor was the allure of reductionistic theories such as behaviorism and rational choice theory.

    David Sloan Wilson: EvoS: Coming Soon to a College Near You 2008

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