Behavior

This article is part of the SM-201 Macropedia

Behavior (British spelling: behaviour) is a general term for a person's deeds, including actions, reactions and speech. Behavior can be conscious or unconscious, overt or covert, and voluntary or involuntary.

Human behavior (and that of other organisms and mechanisms) can be common, unusual, acceptable, or unacceptable. Humans evaluate the acceptability of behavior using social norms and regulate behavior by means of social control. People have always had opinions of what constitutes "good" and "bad" behavior, and have tried and established various systems to facilitate the first and to discourage the latter. Among these are:

• training and educating children about good and bad behavior
• following religions that teach about right and wrong behavior
• defining laws and establishing judicial systems to punish lawbreakers (termed criminals)

An act of "bad" behavior is also often called an offense. A child that shows bad behavior is said to misbehave.

Thesaurus

• Conduct
• Attitude

See also

More information is available at [ Wikipedia:Behavior ]

More information is available at [ Wikipedia:Social behavior ]

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