behaviourism

behaviourism, a highly influential academic school of psychology that dominated psychological theory between the two world wars. Classical behaviourism, prevalent in the first third of the 20th century, was concerned exclusively with measurable and observable data and excluded ideas, emotions, and the consideration of inner mental experience and activity in general. In behaviourism, the organism is seen as “responding” to conditions (stimuli) set by the outer environment and by inner biological processes. The previously dominant...