Behavioralism

Behavioralism is an approach in the philosophy of science, describing the scope of the fields now collectively called the behavioral sciences; this approach dominated the field until the late 20th century. Behavioralism attempts to explain human behavior from an unbiased, neutral point of view, focusing only on what can be verified by direct observation, preferably using statistical and quantitative methods. In doing so, it rejects attempts to study internal human phenomena such as thoughts, subjective experiences, or human well-being. The rejection of this paradigm as overly-restrictive would lead to the rise of cognitive approaches in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.