behavioral
Americanadjective
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relating to a person’s manner of behaving or acting.
The program provides academic and behavioral supports for students of concern.
Most of our biggest health risks are largely preventable with behavioral change.
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Psychology, Animal Behavior. relating to or studying observable activity in a human or animal, often thought of as the aggregate of responses to external and internal stimuli.
This psychiatry textbook offers a thorough discussion of both the behavioral sciences and clinical psychiatry.
Harassment of wild marine mammals has disrupted their behavioral patterns, including migration, breeding, and feeding.
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of behavioral
First recorded in 1925–30; behavior ( def. ) + -al 1 ( def. )
Vocabulary lists containing behavioral
Evolutionary Biology - Natural Selection - Middle School
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Evolutionary Biology - Adaptation
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Evolutionary Biology - Natural Selection - High School
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Despite these improvements, established behavioral risk factors were still associated with a substantial proportion of cancer cases.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 14, 2026
Replacing real consumption with digital simulation might sound unusual, but behavioral scientists say substitution mechanisms like this can help.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 13, 2026
In the same way that cognitive behavioral therapy teaches patients to recontextualize their thoughts and feelings to produce different behaviors, writing stand-up requires people to reexamine their struggles and recontextualize them into punch lines.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 8, 2026
Dogs are the result of thousands of years of behavioral engineering.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 5, 2026
But not before she put in a formal request for me to see a behavioral counselor at the district main offices.
From "Counting by 7s" by Holly Goldberg Sloan
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
