behaviourism
The view that the actions of an individual occur as responses to stimuli. Through constant repetition, the individual learns to make the same, ‘correct’ response to a given stimulus; the ‘classic’ example comes from the experimental work of I. P. Pavlov (trans. and ed. G. V. Anrep, 1927), who rang a bell before he fed his dogs. He was thus able to condition dogs into salivating when they heard the sound of a bell, even when the food was no longer provided.
Thus, some psychologists claimed, it should be possible to predict the learned behaviour that the individual would act out for each stimulus. This is the stimulus-response model.
Behaviourism has been widely rejected by social scientists who note that it over-simplifies human behaviour and takes no account of the mental processes involved in the perception of, and response to, a stimulus; it neglects all the aspects of human behaviour which cannot easily be observed.






