Behavior or
behaviour (see
spelling differences) refers to the
actions or
reactions of an
object or
organism, usually in
relation to the environment. Behavior can be
conscious or
subconscious,
overt or
covert, and
voluntary or involuntary.
In animals
In animals, behavior is controlled by the
endocrine system and the
nervous system. The complexity of the behavior of an organism is related to the complexity of its nervous system. Generally, organisms with complex nervous systems have a greater capacity to
learn new responses and thus adjust their behavior. Behaviors can be either innate or learned.
In psychology
Human behavior (and that of other
organisms and mechanisms) can be common, unusual, acceptable, or
unacceptable. Humans evaluate the
acceptability of behavior using
social norms and regulate behavior by means of
social control. In
sociology, behavior is considered as having no meaning, being not directed at other people and thus is the most basic human
action, although can play a part in diagnosis of disorders such as
autism. Animal behavior is studied in
comparative psychology,
ethology,
behavioral ecology and
sociobiology.
Behavior became an important construct in early 20th century Psychology with the advent of the paradigm known subsequently as "
behaviorism". Behaviorism was a reaction against so-called "faculty" psychology which purported to see into or understand the mind without the benefit of scientific testing. Behaviorism insisted on working only with what can be seen or manipulated and in the early views of
John B. Watson, a founder of the field, nothing was inferred as to the nature of the entity that produced the behavior. Subsequent modifications of Watson's perspective and that of so-called "
classical conditioning" (see under
Ivan Pavlov) led to the rise of
operant conditioning, a theory advocated by
B.F. Skinner, which took over the academic establishment up through the 1950s and was synonymous with "behaviorism" for many.
For studies on behavior,
ethograms are used.
Outside psychology
Behavior outside of psychology includes
physical property and
chemical reactions.
Behavior as used in
computer science is an anthropomorphic construct that assigns “life” to the activities carried out by a computer, computer application, or computer code in response to stimuli, such as user input. Also, "a behavior" is a reusable block of computer code or script that, when applied to an
object (computer science), especially a graphical one, causes it to respond to user input in meaningful patterns or to operate independently. The term can also be applied to some degree to
functions in mathematics, referring to the anatomy of
curves.
In environmental
modeling and especially in
hydrology, a
behavioral model means a model that is acceptably
consistent with observed natural processes, i.e., that
simulates well, for example, observed
river discharge. It is a key concept of the so-called Generalized Likelihood Uncertainty Estimation
(GLUE) methodology to quantify how uncertain environmental
predictions are.
See also
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