Psychology is generally regarded as the science of human behavior. Behaviourism is the psychological theory which holds that behaviour can be fully understood in terms of conditioning, without actually considering thoughts or feelings. The theory holds that psychological disorders can be aptly handled by simply altering the behavioural patterns of the individual. It involves the study of stimulus and responses.
Cognitive psychology attempts to decipher what is going on in people's minds. That is, it looks at the mind as a processor of information. Hence we can define cognitive psychology as the study of the internal mental processes. This according to behaviorists, cannot be studied in measurable terms as in behaviourism (stimulus response approach) even though mental processes are known to influence human behavior significantly.
Hence, both behaviourism and cognitive psychology attempt to study human behavior from different perspectives.
