Association for Behavior Analysis International

Social change agents must deal with behavior as it occurs in everyday environments. The principles that account for human behavior may be simple, but the particular behavior-environment relations that characterize human repertoires are very complex. Of particular importance for humans is the role of the social environment, i.e., the behavior of other people. Because operant behavior is behavior that operates on the environment, it may alter the environment of others as well as produce consequences for the behaver herself. When many people behave similarly due to similarity in the reinforcement contingencies, the similar behaviors are designated a cultural practice. The aggregate effect of those similar behaviors may be a changed environment for many other people. The relation between the behavior constituting a cultural practice and the aggregate change in the environment of others has been called a macrocontingency. Cultural change can be accomplished by system-wide altering of the environment that supports the practice, for example by changes in law or dissemination of medical or environmental information. Individual behavior plays a different role when it participates in a metacontingecy: repetitions of interlocking operant contingencies that produce outcomes that can be repeated only if the contingencies remain interlocked. Cultural intervention in metacontingencies requires identifying and altering those elements of the interlocking contingencies that are affecting the cumulative outcomes while maintaining the integrity and continuation of the interlocking operant contingencies.