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Twentieth century research in the field of human behavior has emanated from behavior and learning theory, field and gestalt studies of perception, and motivational studies based on psychoanalysis. The functionalism of the twenties investigated the mind as an organ of adaptation. Behavioral research was concerned with acts rather than structure or-as in early psychoanalytic research-content more than structure. In modern behavioral research, particularly that done by learning theorists, introspection has been reintroduced into studies on the modifiability of habits, unlearning through reward-punishment systems, and other extinction studies. In the studies by Mowrer (1960), and Dollard and Miller (1950), we see an increasing dependence on psychoanalytic insights in investigations of intervening emotional variables (e. g. fear) as motivating factors. By the 1950s modern behavioral research, learning studies, and field theory studies were concerned with internal (cognitive, affective and physiological) states and how they affect perceptual or behavioral acts.
Early Gestalt theory explained mental activity as the result of an