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
Derived 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.
Among them is the disposition effect, a behavioral investing phenomenon that causes people to sell their winners too early and hold onto losers for too long.
From MarketWatch • Jun. 3, 2026
AI agents are basically insiders that operate at machine speed, said Leeron Walter, vice president of strategy at Teramind, an insider-risk-management and behavioral analytics firm.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 2, 2026
"Our study shows that the gut is not simply a digestive organ, but an active sensory system that continuously monitors nutritional state and directly guides behavioral decisions," said Director SUH Seong-Bae.
From Science Daily • May 28, 2026
In law and social science, we call this impact a chilling effect – the behavioral tendency for people in face of a threat to self-censor and restrain their activities for self-protection.
From Salon • May 28, 2026
Donald Moine, a behavioral psychologist who has written widely on the subject of persuasion, told me to look up Gau because Gau is “mesmerizing.”
From "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell
Definitions 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.
