Behaviorist

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A specialist in psychology who prioritizes observable actions over mental processes while examining the influence of environmental factors on behavior
2. An expert who analyzes and explains behavior through the lens of external stimuli, often applying principles of conditioning and reinforcement
3. A professional who studies how actions can be explained without considering internal thoughts or feelings

Etymology: The name behaviorist was coined in 1913 in a manifesto of the new American school of psychology, and it works as a compound on purpose: the word "behavior" was joined to "-ist," the suffix that marks someone who follows a doctrine or practises a discipline. The word "behavior" itself has a surprisingly tangled ancestry. It descends from Old English "behabban," meaning to restrain or hold oneself in a certain way, built from "be-" and "habban," "to have." Through Middle English "behaven," it came to mean how someone conducts or carries themselves, which is why the sense of physical conduct is so old in the word. The noun "behavior" then took a detour through Old French "avoir" and Latin "habere," both meaning "to have," in ways that tie it to a whole family of words about possession and holding. By the time the word reached American English, its sense had narrowed from a person's bearing to observable actions, and that narrowing made it a natural base for a new scientific label.

Synonyms: behavioral psychologist