Association for Behavior Analysis International

Our actions often seem spontaneous. Motivation for action seems to come mysteriously from within. But B.F. Skinner argued that social behavior is in fact not spontaneous (Skinner, 1938). We are in reality products of our lived experiences. But what happens when we derive fixed rules about other people in the present based on experiences in the past? Skinner was committed to understanding the relationship between the learned categories we deploy in social interactions and the different social contexts that produce meaning (contingencies of reinforcement). Sociologists have detailed how social encounters are taking place within racialized spaces (Lewis 2003; Haynes 2006; Anderson) that marginalize (Eberhardt 2019) and stigmatize (Hughes 1963; Wacquant 2008; Anderson 2011) Black Americans who are widely perceived to be associated with poverty (Duneier 2016)), crime and criminalization (Muhammad 2019), and cultural and social dysfunction (Moynihan 1965). Stigmatization and marginalization leads to a “deficit of credibility” that devalues black voices (Anderson 2011). In this talk, I will link a functional contextual approach (Hayes 1993) to a fuller understanding of the historical context of racial classification and scripted racial differences, and offer behavioral psychologists new ways to better identify contingencies of reinforcement in a social context. This approach is parsimonious and consistent with a radical behavioral world view.

Behavioral Analysis, Psychologists, Social Workers, Clinical Psychologists, School Counselors, Teachers