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Cognitive Revolution, The

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Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science

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Introduction

The cognitive revolution was an intellectual movement that began in the 1950s and exerted deep influence on psychology, linguistics, computer science, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and philosophy. It was a reaction against the radical empiricist ways of behaviorism that had dominated the study of human and animal behavior since the early twentieth century.

Background

In the early twentieth century, psychology had wandered a long way from being the “study of mind” that William James had envisioned it to be. Quite the contrary, psychologists had all but given up on issues concerning the mind and the mental, focusing instead on behavior as responses to physical stimuli. The behaviorists argued that mental events, such as beliefs and representations, were not publicly observable. Since my internal beliefs, say “I like red cars,” are not objectively available to others for observation, independently of my introspective recollections, behaviorists argued that such...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Concordia University, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Sayantan Mandal

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  1. Sayantan Mandal
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Correspondence to Sayantan Mandal .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

  2. Rochester, MI, USA

    Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Penn State Worthington Scranton, Scranton, USA

    Douglas Sellers

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Mandal, S. (2020). Cognitive Revolution, The. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1309-1

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