Overt Vs Covert Behavior

The human behavior is anything a human being can do. It includes physical actions, thinking, and emotions. An individual’s behavior determines his or her overall persona. Although there is a myriad of human behaviors that can be analyzed in the fields of psychology, however, there is one behavior that can be found in every human being, the behavior of sleeping. According to guardian.co.uk an average human being spends approximately one-third of his her life sleeping. Therefore, sleep is a fundamental prerequisite for the human body to function properly. The process of sleeping transpires from the “body clock” within all human beings. The body clock typically has a 24-hour repeating rhythm referred to as the circadian rhythm. Two processes

According to the National Institutes of Health. “Covert behavior is behavior that is not seen or observed.” Forms of covert behaviors comprise of thoughts and emotions. Covert behaviors are categorized as either positive or negative. Negative covert behavior comprises negative thoughts and emotions, whereas positive covert behavior comprises positive thoughts and emotions. As a result, it makes difficult for psychologists to observe such forms of behavior. However, covert behavior can be can only be distinguished by inference or through the use of special techniques and devices (“Module 1-The Science of Psychology”). An example of a covert behavior is deception, which involves an individual to behave in a manner that leads another person to believe something that might not be true. The reason why deception is deemed a form of covert behavior is due to the fact that when an individual is deceiving someone it cannot be directly observed. For instance, individual A shakes the hand of individual B, and gives a smile to show signs of being amiable, however, in actuality, individual A is not very fond of individual B. This deception towards individual B is a form of covert behavior that cannot be directly observed by both psychologists and individual B. The only person that is aware of the behavior he or she is committing is individual A, which transpires this type of behavior to be covert. The second form of recognized behavior in human beings is overt behavior, which denotes to actions that can be directly observed. There are copious types of overt behaviors some of which include, aggression, helping, and even sleeping. These recognizable behaviors are caused by the unobservable psychological process that takes place within the brain. For instance, mental processes such as thinking, reasoning, dreaming etc., leads to actions such as walking, answering, and working.