Association for Behavior Analysis International

Arthur Staats made many important contributions to behavioral psychology. He persuasively argued that the environment is the primary determinant of a person’s behavioral repertoire. Staats referred to our society’s emphasis on genetic/biological influence in human behavior as “The Great Scientific Error.” This error, according to Staats, has had many detrimental consequences, including the neglect of the study of the environment on human behavior, resulting in poor progress in education, child development, and the study of abnormal behavior. In the 1960s, Staats, along with Jack Michael and Lee Meyerson, helped found one of the earliest behavior analysis training programs at Arizona State University. Staats created or was one of the earliest implementers of several behavioral interventions, such as time-out and the token economy. Staats was also interested in creating a unifying framework in psychology, Psychological Behaviorism, that would “behavioralize psychology” and “psychologize behaviorism.” Some of his most important research and theoretical work included a number of behavioral and educational interventions, the respondent conditioning of emotions (including prejudice), the concepts of cumulative-hierarchical learning and basic behavioral repertoires, and his behavioral analyses of personality and psychological testing.

Many behavior analysts consider behavioral pharmacology to be another name for psychopharmacology as applied to the use of psychotropic medication when it is part of a behavior analytic treatment approach. However, this presentation will clarify the significant differences between these distinct approaches to the scientific study and clinical use of medication to effect behavior change, as seen through the lens of their parallel development, beginning with the birth of modern pharmacology in the post-WWII era. Whereas psychopharmacology focuses on the biological mechanisms of action and observable clinical effects (and side effects) of medications that are most likely to be used in a psychiatric context, behavioral pharmacology focuses on the predictable effects on behavioral mechanisms that influence an organism’s actions under specific environmental conditions. This is typically accomplished by using the methods of the experimental analysis of behavior. Behavioral pharmacology developed as an offshoot of the development of the early anti psychotic, antidepressant, and anti-anxiety medications in the 1950, and was the result of the collaboration between B. F. Skinner, Peter Dews, and several other key figures in the history of our discipline.