RESUMEN
The elaborated account of the metacontingency explicitly incorporated the role of antecedent events (with the concept of cultural milieu or cultural-organizational milieu) and verbal behavior (clearly related to what was termed group-rule generation). We argue that the cultural milieu encompasses two functionally distinct entities: antecedent environmental variables affecting the culturant (the organization members' activities)-what we termed cultural antecedents; and variables affecting the selecting environment or the consumer practices (members external to the organization responsible for producing cultural consequences)-what we termed selecting environment variables. Besides that, we propose that group-rule generation is not an element of a metacontingency distinct from the culturant, but that it describes verbal components of the interlocking behavioral contingencies; and that these verbal components are not present in all culturants but are especially important in more complex ones. We illustrate this conceptual analysis with reference to a COVID-19 psychological support project undertaken at a public university in Brazil and conclude by suggesting theoretical and methodological implications.
RESUMEN
Ardila-Sánchez and Hayes (2023, this issue) discuss how differing philosophical assumptions might reflect on differing metacontingency terminology and debate some of the arguments presented by Sampaio and Haydu (2023). We respond by restating the urgent need to clarify the definition of cultural milieu, which is illustrated by an argument about discriminative stimuli as components of the cultural milieu. We clarify that the differences in metacontingency terminology that we did not emphasize were related to interlocking behavioral contingencies (IBCs) and cultural consequences, and not to cultural milieu and group-rule generation. We question any rigid separations of "Skinnerian" and "Kantorian views" of cultural phenomena, insisting that we focus on a unified culturo-behavior science. We elucidate that verbal responses and stimuli may participate in IBCs, cultural antecendents, or selecting environment variables; answer some questions about the latter two concepts; and clarify that the we presented a COVID-19 psychological support project not to empirically validate the concept, but to illustrate and test the conceptual coherence of the terms and theory.
RESUMEN
A police stop must be based on founded suspicion: an officer's ability to correctly discriminate suspicious behavior. However, police stops can be influenced by negative attitudes toward Black individuals. We conducted a systematic review of empirical articles published from 2014 to 2019 that investigated the relationship between racial prejudice and police stops on PsycInfo using keywords such as "race," "ethnic," "police stop," "traffic stop," and "stop and frisk." Results included 16 studies conducted in the United States, England, Wales, and the Netherlands and showed that Black men were the most frequent targets of police stops; that many individuals who have been stopped by the police reported negative perceptions of the police force; that the Stop, Question, and Frisk strategy used by some U.S. police departments proved to be a type of stop that favors racial selectivity; and that traffic stops were favorable environments for racially biased actions by officers. We conclude that institutional racism in police stops proves to be a problem shared by several countries, including Brazil. We suggest more investigations to characterize institutional racism in the police force and in other settings and interventions aimed at reducing individual biases and collective racist practices.
RESUMEN
To comprehensively understand the processes involved in social issues such as corruption, a behavior science has to rely on rigorous experimentation, interdisciplinary dialogue, and the use of diverse units of analysis. The present article proposes a behavioral analysis of corruption, highlighting how different units of analysis (operant behavior, culturobehavioral lineage, culturant, and macrobehavior) account for different facets of this social phenomenon. We propose that corrupt behavior involves relations in which there is a conflict between consequences for the individual and effects for the group-a concept similar to that of an ethical self-controlled response. This response can occur independently or in coordination with responses by other individuals. In addition, verbal control, as well as social reinforcement and punishment, plays an important role in the maintenance and transmission of this behavioral pattern. After presenting examples of how the theme has been experimentally studied in recent years, we conclude by suggesting that experimental studies on ethical self-control may fruitfully contribute to a behavioral analysis of corruption in its multiple dimensions.
