Contextualism and Behavior Analysis

Contextualism as a Worldview

In the 1940s, Stephen Pepper described ways in which people organized their understanding of the world as world hypotheses. Each world hypothesis is accompanied by a “root metaphor,” a commonsense perspective linking the abstract and universally applicable hypothesis to people's concrete, everyday experiences. Pepper identified four primary world hypotheses: mechanism, formism, organicism, and contextualism. These world hypotheses, their root metaphors, scientific goals, and criteria for truth appear in Table 1.

Each of Pepper's world hypotheses has a different focus. Formism focuses on discovery and classification of recurring categories of objects or events; organicism focuses on processes occurring with organisms and their evolution; mechanism emphasizes discovery of elements or parts of an event, phenomenon, or action and the interrelationship of the parts; and contextualism centers on the meaning of events, actions, or phenomena relative to their context. With regard to the study of behavior, a formist perspective may be reflected in the observation and classification of animal or human behavior. An organistic approach may focus on the study of animal or human development integrated in ecological or organizational systems. A mechanistic perspective may emphasize the analysis of elements or parts of a behavioral unit and their working relationship. A contextualistic approach focuses on the analysis of environmental features or social systems and their association with behavior.

Using Pepper's terminology, contextualism separates features of a phenomenon into the quality or total nature of an act and textures or parts of an act or event that make up the quality. However, understanding only the textures in isolation will not lead to an understanding of the quality. Using an example from William James, lemon juice, sugar, and water are all textures that in isolation are very different from the quality that exists when they are put together to produce lemonade. Also, from a contextualistic perspective, the frame of reference of an analysis may shift from quality to textures. For example, an observer may shift from focusing on lemonade to focusing on [Page 1234]the lemon. The lemon then becomes the quality, and its color, shape, fragrance, and juiciness become the textures. Shifting the focus in another direction, lemonade may be one texture of an individual's relaxing summer afternoon, with other textures possibly being shade from a tree, a cool breeze, and a comfortable chair.

The ultimate criterion for the success of a contextualistic worldview is successful working, or purposeful functioning, meaning evidence that the conceptualization of a problem, phenomenon, or event has successfully met the goal for the analysis. In this way, contextualism is tied very directly to the pragmatists' philosophical positions of the 19th and early 20th centuries (e.g., George Herbert Mead, John Dewey, Charles Peirce).

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