The Decade of Behavior is the

American Psychological Association The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It has ...

's nickname for the 2000s. The name represents a public education campaign to bring attention to the importance of

behavioral Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems or artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as we ...

and

social research Social research is a research conducted by social scientists following a systematic plan. Social research methodologies can be classified as quantitative and qualitative. * Quantitative designs approach social phenomena through quantifiable ...

. The initiative has been endorsed by more than 70 professional associations across a variety of disciplines. The campaign was first championed in 1998 by Richard C. McCarty, then-Executive Director of Science of the APA. It is the successor to the 1990s' "

Decade of the Brain The Decade of the Brain was a designation for 1990–1999 by U.S. president George H. W. Bush as part of a larger effort involving the Library of Congress and the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health "to enhance ...

Criticisms

Since the 1980s, the study of observed or ''actual'' behavior has gone down as research in personality and social psychology shifted focus to introspective self reports and to hypothetical behaviors in imagined situations. This is problematic as actual and hypothetical behaviors have been found to differ dramatically.

References

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External links

American Psychological Association
History of psychology