BEHAVIOR. — This may be defined as the practical attitude assumed by the soul and by man in concrete life situations. It therefore consists of a cognitive moment, by which the agent recognizes himself in a given situation, and an active-operative moment through which he responds to that situation and achieves a new state of equilibrium which, in man, reaches the level of free actions, involving moral responsibility and personality.
In modern psychology, theories on behavior reflect the philosophical orientation of their respective proponents. The “behaviorist” school (behaviorum = behavior) of Watson, elevating Pavlov’s reflexology to the status of a psychological method, sought to explain behavior through simple reflexes, disregarding any reference to the existence of consciousness and conscious processes, and limiting itself to the objective analysis of the physiological processes of the nervous system in relation to the physical processes of stimuli. The “Gestalt psychology” (Gestalt = form), on the other hand, maintained that behavior arises through a reorganization of the entire perceptual field; the value of the instinct-stimulus, upon which pure associationism of Watson focused, does not exist in itself but is a function of the total situation of the subject. Thus, K. Koffka distinguished a geographical environment from a behavioral environment, just as W. Köhler distinguishes a phenomenal world (which is the object of psychology) from a real world from which stimuli for consciousness originate. A synthesis of behaviorism and Gestalt psychology is found in the purposive behaviorism of E. C. Tolman: the learning of a behavior, as well as its functioning, is subordinate to the knowledge of a specific end, i.e., to an insight that reveals a dynamic principle of behavioral unity, thereby preserving the originality of the psychic process. Also finalistic is the theory of behavior in “hormic psychology” or tendency psychology (ὁρμή = impulse) of W. McDougall, according to which the soul, from its earliest moments, exhibits a well-defined orientation in its actions, which is thus rooted in an original impulse preceding any cognitive process. Human behavior, once the initial infantile stage is surpassed, depends on the development of his higher life.