Behavior (
American English
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lang ...
) or behaviour (
British English
British English is the set of Variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United Kingdom, especially Great Britain. More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadly, to ...
) is the range of actions of
individuals,
organism
An organism is any life, living thing that functions as an individual. Such a definition raises more problems than it solves, not least because the concept of an individual is also difficult. Many criteria, few of them widely accepted, have be ...
s,
systems or
artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as well as the inanimate physical environment. It is the computed response of the system or organism to various stimuli or inputs, whether internal or external,
conscious
Consciousness, at its simplest, is awareness of a state or object, either internal to oneself or in one's external environment. However, its nature has led to millennia of analyses, explanations, and debate among philosophers, scientists, a ...
or
subconscious, overt or covert, and
voluntary or
involuntary. While some behavior is produced in response to an organism's environment (extrinsic motivation), behavior can also be the product of intrinsic motivation, also referred to as "agency" or "free will".
Taking a
behavior informatics perspective, a behavior consists of actor, operation, interactions, and their properties. This can be represented as a behavior
vector.
Models
Biology
Definition
Behavior may be defined as "the internally coordinated responses (actions or inactions) of whole living organisms (individuals or groups) to internal or external stimuli".
A broader definition of behavior, applicable to plants and other organisms, is similar to the concept of
phenotypic plasticity. It describes behavior as a response to an event or environment change during the course of the lifetime of an individual, differing from other physiological or biochemical changes that occur more rapidly, and excluding changes that are a result of development (
ontogeny
Ontogeny (also ontogenesis) is the origination and development of an organism (both physical and psychological, e.g., moral development), usually from the time of fertilization of the ovum, egg to adult. The term can also be used to refer to t ...
).
Behaviour can be regarded as any action of an organism that changes its relationship to its environment. Behavior provides outputs from the organism to the environment.
Determination by genetics or the environment
Behaviors can be either