Association for Behavior Analysis International

This symposium presents three experiments that uses games in order to strengthen cultural practices and the transmission and recurrence of interlocking behavior contingencies and aggregated products. The first study investigated the effect of metacontingencies on altruistic punishment. Children in pairs should agree on punish distributions of tokens made by fictional characters. The results showed effects of individual and cultural consequences on altruistic behavior, and justice judgments. The second study investigated the effects of bonus and penalties on choices related to the use of common-pool resources in Commons Dilemma Game. The results suggest that penalties favor optimal consumption early in the game, while in control and bonuses conditions the participants adopted a competitive strategy. In the third study, the board game “Nossa Turma Contra a Dengue” (Our gangue against Dengue) was developed to strengthen verbal and nonverbal dengue prevention behaviors. The results indicate that the championship was effective in promoting dengue prevention behaviors.

Altruistic Punishment is a social phenomenon that selects and maintains cooperation between genetically unrelated people in single interactions, therefore without possibility of reciprocity and minimal or absent reputation gains. Metacontingency is a unit of analysis of cultural phenomena, and describes a functional relationship between recurring interlocking behavioral contingencies resulting in an aggregate product and a selecting environment. This study aimed to investigate metacontingencies in the game of altruistic punishment with 20 pairs of children between 9 and 11, who evaluated fictional characters’ behaviors. Experimental design was ABCBAC, and communication was allowed during sessions. Conditions A were baseline. In Conditions B, points were given to the punishment of equal distributions between characters or non-punishment of unequal distributions. Conversely, in Conditions C, to the punishment of unequal distributions and non-punishment of equal ones. Verbal behaviors were recorded in order to identify accurate contingency descriptions and mythology. The main results indicated that accurate rules and communication contributed to the selection of distinct aggregated products in Conditions B and C. Moreover, some children refused to punish equal distributions.

Previous research using a video game preparation for investigating the effects of differential consequences on the use of common-pool resources revealed promising results. The game simulates an ocean fishery in which participants need to catch fish to stay “alive,” while it is necessary to save resources shared with two non-playable characters (NPCs). Participants who received extra points following moderate consumption (Bonuses condition) and participants who lost points following overconsumption (Penalties condition) needed fewer attempts than control participants to acquire optimal consumption strategies and complete the game successfully. For the present study, participants and NPCs could explicitly compete for the same resource, and participants were able to grab and release fish back into the ocean to avoid competitors’ responses. Participants were 78 college students, distributed in the same three conditions than previous research (i.e., Control, Bonuses, and Penalties). Unlike the previous study, results did not reveal a differential effect of the consequences on the number of attempts to complete the game. A detailed analysis showed that participants in Penalties conditions reached an optimal consumption early in the game, while participants in Control and Bonuses conditions readily adopted a competitive strategy, performing an increased rate of release responses.