Association for Behavior Analysis International

Our verbal behaviour is an essential skill for navigating our social world and our inability to understand the value of the words we use can contribute to social conflicts, aggression, racial bias, prejudice, discrimination, and many other social issues. In an effort to combat these societal limitations and move towards an inclusive culture in which everyone’s individuality is championed; our language must be explored and compassion, perspective-taking, and empathy must be promoted. In this panel we will discuss a behavior-analytic description of perspective-taking and its role in establishing compassion skills and utility in social justice, overcome the deeply ingrained societal gender binary system in favour of a compassionate, gender expansive society, and how our language establishes and can topple societal prejudice. Behaviour analysis can replace current behaviours around social relations and replace them with compassion. The anticipated result would lead to impactful acquisition of social justice rights for those from marginalized populations.

Intermediate - BCBAs and BCBA-Ds ~ A discussion on verbal behaviour and ways in which our language informs our social world and the need to see the value of the words we use as it relates to social conflicts (e.g., aggression, racial bias, prejudice, discrimination, and many other social issues).