Association for Behavior Analysis International

The field of behaviour analysis has seen recent exponential growth however we are surrounded by punishment, inequality, injustice, and anti-science rhetoric. For our science to realize its far-reaching impact, we must conceptualize a society, like Walden 2, as our terminal goal and shape societal responses to that achievement. This panel discussion will discuss current systemic problems within culture and how we, as behaviour analysts, can establish systems that are rooted in data and behavioural science. Topics that will be discussed include utopian behaviour society, perspective taking, and compassion.

Advance ~ BCBAs and BCBA-Ds. Complex concepts that go beyond introductory literature or the course sequence.

The Behaviorists for Social Responsibility Special Interest Group (BFSR SIG) is interested in addressing B.F. Skinner’s question, “Why are we not acting to save the world?”. The mission of BFSR is to expand applications of behavior analysis and cultural analysis addressing global issues such as social justice, environmental justice, and human rights. The primary focus of BFSR has been on expanding the work of Biglan (1995) and Mattaini (2013), using a matrix analysis to identify the practices that support, oppose, motivate, and select the development and utilization of scientific behavioral systems to address social issues. The work of the Matrix Project has resulted in the identification of 28 societal sectors. Working groups, informed by the larger Matrix Project, further develop these sectors, apply the matrix analyses to important issues, and develop resources to affect change. This symposium will highlight the work of several of these working groups. The first presentation will provide an overview of the BFSR Matrix Project and will describe the development of an online training system to support BFSR Matrix Project volunteers. The remaining presentations will highlight the work that is being conducted by three BFSR working groups: sustainability; education, diversity, equity, and inclusion; and community resilience.

In this symposium, we will explore multiple layers of a nested model of behavior that impacts earth’s climate. The model expands from solutions at the level of the individual (i.e., individualistic responsibility) to challenges that persist at the level of small (i.e., interrelated dynamic contingencies) and large (i.e., social policies) groups. First, we describe an experimental program to reduce individual carbon emission through a functional assessment of green behavior and an embedded shaping procedure. Second, we will discuss a series of basic experiments that model resource depletion as a function of competition that influences contingencies at the level of the individual and small groups. Third, we will describe how policies at a social level can impose constraints of collective behavior - but that preference for these policies can be successfully modelled within a delay discounting paradigm. Finally, we will move beyond discussing individuals’ context-specific behavior to propose a mathematical model that profiles individuals’ environmental choices across multiple circumstances and domains.

Behavior Analysts

In recent years, concerns relating to global warming and the need for reducing carbon emissions has increased. An effective approach for reducing overall carbon emissions is to increase sustainability related behaviors. While such an approach affords this utility, an underlying factor that potentially limits the extent to which individuals engage in sustainable behavior is limited knowledge or information as to what specific behaviors are considered to be sustainable. As such, there is a need for a methodology to identify deficits as they relate to sustainability behavior. The current symposium discusses the development of an assessment designed to provide a measure of an individual’s sustainability behavior. In addition, researchers sought to evaluate the validity of the assessment by determining the extent to which assessment scores were related to carbon output. Scores for the sustainability assessment as well as carbon footprint measures were collected, and a Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was obtained between the two measures. The results showed a moderate, negative correlation between scores on the sustainability assessment and carbon footprint measures. These findings suggest the sustainability assessment is a valid tool which has good correspondence with other sustainability measures, and it can be used to identify sustainability related behavior deficits.

Policies provide shared social and economic contingencies that can influence the behavior of large groups, representing the outermost layer of our nested model. We will discuss data collected within multiple delay discounting tasks that have been adjusted to capture policy preferences and willingness to forego high emission commodities to delay the climate point of no return. Results suggest that participants discount climate change similar to catastrophic monetary losses, and that policy manipulations (group versus individual contingencies) can influence willingness to forego emission commodities. Behavior analysts may therefore play a role by quantitatively evaluating preference for policies that target high emission behavior. Research collected during and throughout COVID-19 will also be reviewed as an approximate model to the climate crisis showing that perceived probability of a catastrophic outcome and grouped versus individual contingencies can have a considerable impact on participants’ willingness to alter or adjust behavior to delay or avoid future hardship. Finally, the talk will conclude with an analysis of how the policy layer may conceptually interact with lower layers of the nested model.

Traditionally, discounting data is analyzed between-subjects in the form of indifference points. Separate curves are fit for each combination of conditions, and a curve-fitting parameter, k, is compared across conditions with a t-test or ANOVA. However, it is also possible to analyze this data in a repeated-measures analysis that treats responses as individually related cases. This talk will compare and contrast approaches using environmental discounting data and discuss how a multi-level approach allows researchers to model contingencies that occur on a geographic or partisan level, while preserving and studying relationships that unfold on the level of the individual. The talk will be practically-oriented, with R-markdown text provided as supplemental material.

BFSR is the oldest SIG in ABAI. BFSR members engage in theoretical, conceptual, and empirical analyses of significant social issues related sustainability, economic and social justice, violence, health and wellness, political systems, culture, among others. In the business meeting, the BFSR planners will report on our active projects, including (a) the Matrix Project which is oriented toward increasing preparation and opportunities for behavior analysts to engage in work related to major social issues, (b) international outreach, (c) social media presence, (d) education initiatives, and (e) sustainability initiatives. Discussion of opportunities for participation will follow these brief reports.