Final answer:
Behaviorism was introduced by John B. Watson, who is often considered the father of behaviorism, a movement that emphasized the study of observable behavior over internal mental states.
Step-by-step explanation:
The term behaviorism was introduced by American psychologist John B. Watson. Behaviorism is a theoretical approach that focuses on studying behaviors that can be observed and measured. It arose as a reaction against the introspective psychology of the time, which Watson deemed to be too subjective and not truly scientific. In contrast to researchers like Freud, who focused on the unconscious mind, or structuralists who analyzed internal experiences, behaviorists like Watson and later B.F. Skinner argued that the study of psychology should emphasize external, observable behaviors and the processes by which these behaviors are learned.
Watson's formative work laid the groundwork for behaviorism and influenced later psychologists such as Skinner, who further developed the concept with his theory of operant conditioning. This focus on objective methods and the exclusion of internal mental states was a significant shift in the field of psychology, leading to more empirically based studies. Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov also contributed to behavioral psychology with his research on classical conditioning, often studied alongside Watson and Skinner's work in behaviorism.