Behaviorology

Description of the Strategy

Behaviorology is the science of contingent relations between actions and other events. It does not focus on the action, which by itself is mere movement. Neither does it emphasize the stimulus event, for that would make the analysis physicalistic. Behaviorology's unit of analysis is the relation between action and event. The functionality of the controls over this relation—including the placement of terms in time—gives it its meaning. For example, with respect to two-term relations, an action and a postcedent event that changes the future probability of the class of behavior to which the action belongs defines this relation as operant, whereas an action and an antecedent event that changes the future probability of the class of behavior to which the action belongs may define this relation as respondent. In addition, in two or three or n-term contingency relations, controls may ensue from either inside or outside the organism, and the meaning of the relational terms change according to the source of the control—physical, biological, or cultural. No hardand-fast boundary exists between these relationships and their controls. They blend into one another. Furthermore, they are subsets of one another: Twoterm relations occur within three-term, three-term within four-term, and so on, in a widening array of subsystem relationships. The properties of these behavioral relationships constitute the focus of analysis, a contingency analysis, with the individual or group as a locus of observation. Such an analysis and framework of explanation make irrelevant the explanatory term embedded in typical theories of behavior, an agency with dispositional traits such as rationality in economics, free will in theology, and consciousness in psychology.

Though a contingency analysis sorts out properties of behavior relations that are invariant across species (e.g., the similarity of reinforcement-schedule effects in human and pigeon), certain classes of actions specific to a species call for a special analysis, such as echolocation in dolphins, waggle dancing in bees, and verbal behavior in humans. Classes of behavior may be designated by the type of control over them. In human beings, control by direct contact with events both inside and outside the body constitutes one large class. The other large class, verbal behavior, is controlled by that contact being mediated by other people's behavior. B. F. Skinner's theory of verbal behavior, from which a behaviorological analysis of sociocultural behavior derives, drew its concepts from contingency relations discovered in the laboratory, supplemented by observations of everyday cultural events. In the clinical setting, two considerations particularly pertain. First, the therapist does not typically encounter the episodes responsible for the actions that produce emotional and social difficulties, but relies instead on what the client says about past and present events, from which inferences must be made about their continuing effects. Inference creates a number of difficulties, especially epistemological ones. The typography of verbal behavior—mere statement, for example—does not define its meaning; controls do. (The meaning of “I love my job” depends on whether it is said to keep from being fired or as a heartfelt sentiment expressed to a coworker.) Plausible inferences over the controls that lead to particular verbalizations provide direction to effective therapeutic procedures.

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