A school of psychology that studied only unambiguous behavior, which had to be measurable in order to derive scientific laws of human behavior needing only to refer to events that could be objectively defined in physical terms. It left out consciousness and introspection and avoided subjective notions such as imagining. In their place came the claim that learning consists of conditioning. In Russia, it is associated with Ivan P. Pavlov (1849-1936) on conditioned ‘reflexes of the brain’ [as well as with his great rival Vladimir M. Bekhterew (1857-1927), founder of Objective psychology], and in the US with John B. Watson (1878-1958), Clark L. Hull (1884-1952) and Burrhus F. Skinner (1904-1990).
See Classical conditioning, Consciousness, Delay(ed) conditioning, Hixon symposium, Introspective method, Law, Learning, Logical positivism, Monism, Operant (or instrumental) conditioning, Operationalism, Paradigm shift, Parenting, Psychology, Radical behaviorism (or environmentalism)