Activism, Advocacy, and Accompaniment

Abstract

Behavior analysts, as Skinner (Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Knopf/Random House, New York, NY, 1971) implied, can play an important role in promoting progressive social change but they will need to acquire additional competencies, such as those encompassed by three key social action behavioral repertories: activism, advocacy, and accompaniment (AAA). We examine how behavioral scientists can become activists, advocates, and accompaniers who are prepared to foster changes at multiple levels of analysis and thereby increase their impact in society. We contend that because scientific activities do not occur in a social and cultural vacuum, but rather, within a complex system of interlocked behaviors, a basic understanding of behavior principles, methodology, and interventions is insufficient to achieve the ambitious goal of promoting meaningful change. Behavior analysts also must acquire the knowledge and skills that provide them with a deep understanding of the cultural milieu within which a social change intervention is to occur. These competencies are not taught in most graduate programs yet are essential if behavior analysts are to effectively promote the kind of cultural change that Skinner envisioned and inspired others to pursue and embody in their work. The AAAs discussed in this chapter suggest specific strategies and behavioral repertoires that are likely to enhance the impact behavior analytic work can have in the larger system of interlocked behaviors. We also propose analytic tools to identify feasible pathways toward systemic changes and offer two recommendations that aim to alter the milieu of the behavior analytic community in order to promote training in AAAs.

Introduction

A wide array of populations and communities are trapped in complex, multilevel systems of interlocked behaviors that offer no clear path toward dignity and social justice. Even though thorny social and cultural problems resist simple answers, the obvious contribution of the environment to systemic dysfunctions has not escaped the notice of behavior analysts. In fact, the discipline has a heritage of extending its analytic efforts to the social and cultural levels—from its inception with Watson’s “behaviorist manifesto” in 1913 (Rakos, 2013) through its philosophical growth with Skinner’s cultural design writings (Rakos, 1992). In fact, Skinner (1971) aptly argued “if your culture has not convinced you [to work on its behalf], so much the worse for that culture” (p. 137), implying that an ethical behavior science of culture requires attention to the most pressing social problems by working with disadvantaged communities and persons. Individuals face disadvantage when their circumstances restrain access to all sorts of resources, such as medical, economic, educational, and institutional. One example in which behavior analysts (among others, perhaps most notably the parents of individuals with autism spectrum disorders [ASDs]) have been instrumental in achieving significant social change is in the advocacy efforts in the United States that have resulted in inclusive education programs and insurance coverage for treatment for individuals with ASDs. These efforts required the allocation of significant resources toward cultural research and the expansion of our science to social and systems-level intervention; for example, autism insurance legislation was passed partly because the values of an organization of behavior analysts included allocating resources to improving the human condition through behavior change (BACB^®, n.d.).

The impact behavior analysts can have with progressive social change also can be enhanced through the acquisition of three key repertoires: activism, advocacy, and accompaniment (AAA, see Mattaini, Holtschneider, & Williams, 2016). Mattaini et al. (2016) discuss these concepts as horizontally aligned roles that sometimes overlap; however, a hierarchical relationship with activism as the superordinate concept that encompasses advocacy, accompaniment, and a third peaceful option, nonviolent resistance, may better reflect the interdependence of these repertoires (see Fig. 17.1).

Fig. 17.1

Hierarchical structure of activism with its subcategories and range of feasible practices

From this vertical perspective, activist actions are typically directed at broad, ongoing change rather than concrete behavioral goals, and are therefore maintained primarily by values, or verbally constructed consequences. Advocacy and accompaniment actions, however, are functionally related to goals, which are specific, operationalized outcomes. An activist action would be to join a “sustainability movement” that targets a range of desirable outcomes, including decreased use of fossil fuels. An advocacy action would be to work on the movement’s specific task force that is promoting a state legislative initiative to fund an incentive-based program designed to decrease home use of fossil fuel.¹ An accompaniment action would be to join the Board of Advisors of a local organization in the movement in the hopes of using behavior analytic expertise to improve the efficacy of the organization. Activist actions that are expressed as advocacy and accompaniment efforts are maintained by both values and goal attainment because the goals embody and exemplify the underlying values. These three AAA concepts will be examined in detail shortly.²

In each category of activism, four distinct activist practices will be more or less feasible depending on the degree of organizational constraints such as the available resources upon which the individual may draw (Fig. 17.1, lower level). In general, work with institutions and clients limits activist actions to advocacy and accompaniment; in these contexts, behavior is a function of competing contingencies and the most feasible activist practices likely will be persuasion and protest. For instance, working for a governmental institution may limit advocacy actions to persuasion strategies, while nongovernmental institutions may permit protest as a strategy. Persuasion and protest manipulate setting factors to obtain compliance, such as using incentives when persuading or aversive stimuli when protesting (Mattaini, 2013). The effectiveness of these two strategies relies on identifying strong contingent consequences to use as leverage to obtain the desired results.

Skinner (1987) argued that those individuals uncommitted to governments, religion, and capital would be integral to solving a host of serious issues facing humanity. In fact however, individuals who have been or who potentially could be activists––scientists, teachers, writers, artists, therapists, social workers––may also be committed (belong to) to one or more of these institutions. Successful AAA efforts have been carried out by collectives of individuals with work constraints who share a myriad of personal values and cultural backgrounds. A key to such activism is to recognize institutional constraints and, to the greatest extent possible, overcome or circumvent them in the search for feasible practices to achieve social change. Behavior analysts, for example, can pursue meaningful societal change by recognizing institutional constraints and through the achievement of scientific goals (Mattaini & Aspholm, 2015).

But promoting cultural change is difficult, even on a relatively simple level such as with one institution, as it involves multiple factors and varying levels of analyses. Reppucci (2018), a pioneer in the behavioral community psychology movement that began in the 1960s, noted that the growing use of then-new behavior modification techniques was embedded in empirical data and in “the predominant societal events of the 1960s and 1970s (which) were the Civil Rights Movement and the ever-expanding involvement in the Vietnam War...these events provided the societal backdrop for changes in public policy, especially related to social justice” (p. 1224–1225).³ His implementation of behavior modification (e.g., token economies) in a residential boys’ school had the goal to not only change the boys’ behavior but “unlike other projects at the time (and) more importantly, to change the institutional culture...from punishment to rehabilitation while simultaneously reducing the number of boys incarcerated” (Reppucci, 2018, p. 1226). The outcome data were impressively strong in terms of desired individual and institutional changes, but implementation was impacted by external conditions and resource issues “that would always be present in some form, but which neither we, nor any other interventionists, could control with the specificity that Skinner’s operant conditioning formulations implied” (Reppucci, 2018, p. 1227). This was a stark lesson learned early through his institutional-change experiences:

We are nowhere near a technological capacity or sophistication for Skinner’s utopian notions, and Skinner’s theory, as currently elaborated, is of demonstrated insufficiency to provide for that technology. This is simply recognizing that behavior modification was never intended to be the basis for describing, understanding, or changing natural settings. (Reppucci & Saunders, 1974, p. 660)

Reppucci’s (2018) experiences suggest that behavior analysts need significant knowledge and skills beyond technical expertise if they are to address cultural problems effectively. Fortunately, the field has made tremendous progress in the last 45 years in addressing some of the structural constraints on implementation, including incorporating theoretical advances such as the metacontingency, developing relevant interdisciplinary competencies and relationships, and utilizing new and emerging technologies. In other words, behavior analysts who desire to effect change on a systems-level will have to develop a professional and interpersonal behavioral repertoire that is much more extensive than expertise in the discipline. In this chapter, we address some of these competencies. First, we review the formative process of our discipline in dealing with social issues and how these efforts guide current developments in systems-level work from a behavior analytic perspective. Then we discuss AAA at both the individual and systems-levels of analysis.

Behaviorists for Social Responsibility

The evolution of behavior analysis to encompass systems-level conceptualizations, research, and practice did not occur in a vacuum. Organization of behavior analysts sharing an interest in addressing social issues dates back to the first Midwestern Association of Behavior Analysis (MABA) conference in 1974, where a discussion of how behavior analysis could help identify the antecedent stimuli, the positive and negative reinforcers, and the controlling economic and political systems that perpetuate societal injustices occurred during a symposium called “Radical Political Behaviorism” (Behaviorists for Social Action [BFSA], 1978). It ignited the interest of behavior analysts around the United States, resulting in the organization of more symposia, meetings, and in 1978, the creation of BFSA, the first Special Interest Group (SIG) of the Association for Behavior Analysis,⁴ the successor organization to MABA (BFSA, 1978). BFSA offered behavior analysts a community with whom to examine the causes of and potential solutions to the most pressing issues facing humanity.⁵

BFSA was created because of the perceived need among its members to encourage active political participation by behavior analysts in the struggle against injustice and to promote the science of behavior as a social change partner to other disciplines. Since its inception, BFSA, which changed its name to Behaviorists for Social Responsibility (BFSR) in 1996, has published the academic journal Behavior and Social Issues (Luke, Roose, Rakos, & Mattaini, 2017), which has become a leading platform disseminating knowledge about the analysis of and intervention in pressing social problems.⁶ Dissemination convinced many behavior analysts to expand their horizons to address social issues, but aligning the goals of science and the goals of social action is not necessarily straightforward. Behavior analysts initially studied animal behavior, mainly in experimental settings emphasizing prediction and control (Skinner, 1953). Social and empirical goals can be complementary––for example, Skinner’s (1971) notion that cultural survival is the ultimate value for decision-making benefits from adopting a pragmatist feminist perspective that emphasizes pluralism and inclusive communities for building consensus (Ruiz, 2013). Others have proposed multidisciplinary approaches to social intervention (Mattaini, 2013; Rakos, 1983), suggesting social action can be guided by scientific knowledge when the latter is intended to advance our understanding of social issues and not just to pursue experimental control.

Thus, a comprehensive behavior analysis of social issues needs to consider variables outside the three-term contingency, such as insights from all those who participate in the problem situations (Ruiz, 2013), an analysis of the interrelationship of various institutions, and limitations inherent in the current sociocultural environment (Rakos, 1983). Building from the experiences compiled over the course of 45 years of research and application, behavior analytic approaches to cultural analysis attempt an integration of science and systems-level work. The options include ecobehavioral science (Lutzker, Bigelow, Doctor, Gershater, & Greene, 1998; Mattaini, 2013), a constructional approach (Goldiamond, 1974/2002), interbehavioral psychology (Hayes & Fryling, 2009; Kantor, 1982), and the metacontingency (Glenn & Malott, 2004; Houmanfar, Rodrigues, & Ward, 2010). The latter concept integrates complementary sources of knowledge to study cultural processes from a behavior analytic perspective, such as cultural materialism (e.g., Glenn, 1988), organizational behavior management (e.g., Houmanfar, Alavosius, Morford, Herbest, & Reimer, 2015), and behavioral systems analysis (Houmanfar, Rodrigues, & Smith, 2009). Seen as a systems-level unit of analysis, the metacontingency offers one resource for tackling the complexity of social issues.

The Metacontingency

The metacontingency, introduced by Glenn (1986), has emerged as the leading behavior analytic mechanism to address the interacting elements inherent in cultural systems. Over the years, the metacontingency has been theoretically refined (Glenn, 2004; Glenn & Malott, 2004; Houmanfar et al., 2010) including a recent effort to develop a consensus on the varying terminology employed in different models (Glenn et al., 2016, reprinted in Chap. 2 in this volume). These latter authors suggest that the metacontingency be defined as: (a) interlocking-behavioral contingencies producing an aggregate product and (b) the selecting environment. This 2-term metacontingency offers a conceptualization of the “third-level of selection” (i.e., cultural, see Skinner, 1981); it stands in contrast to the 5-term metacontingency proposed by Houmanfar et al. (2010) which provides an analysis of contextual and antecedent factors influencing the acquisition and maintenance of interlocking patterns of behaviors. Although several conceptual assumptions remain empirically unconfirmed in these two models (for a comprehensive review see Zilio, 2019), the scope and complexity of the 5-term metacontingency make it a useful analytic tool to study social issues and identify potential points of contact where specific environmental manipulations may occur to produce change within the given system. The elaborated 5-term account of the metacontingency captures cultural, sociological, and ecological factors influencing the interaction of multiple individuals’ behaviors in organized groups, and specific organizational roles and cultural milieu that participate in the production of system-level outcomes.⁷ Figure 17.2 illustrates the elaborated account of the metacontingency suggested by Houmanfar et al. (2010), describing a relation among five terms.

Fig. 17.2

Cultural milieu (1); IBs (2); APs (3); consumer practices (4): group-rule generation (5). (Adapted with permission from Houmanfar et al. (2010))

The first element is the cultural milieu, which may include historical, sociological, psychological, and geographical factors. When milieu factors function as institutional antecedent stimuli, they affect collective behavior and individual action. Institutionalized stimulus functions may inhere in any object, person, or event, and act with respect to the behavior of multiple individuals in a collectivity (Kantor, 1982). These stimuli act as antecedent events influencing the second factor—the interlocks among the behaviors of group members or socio-interlocked behaviors (socio-IBs), such as the interactions between individuals in an organization. Socio-IBs result in aggregate products (APs), the third factor, which are the products of the organization. APs may influence consumer practices, which is the fourth factor, and might be exemplified by the communities interacting with organizational products; it is consumer practices that determine the relevance and utility of APs. Finally, when there is feedback between consumer practices and socio-IBs, leaders may modify or formulate new rules, the fifth factor, that adapt and meet consumer practice demands and that are coherent with the overarching cultural milieu (Houmanfar et al., 2009). From this vantage point, interventions can target consumer practices as well as socio-IBs through the establishment of rules and manipulation of cultural milieu factors.

Thus, metacontingency analyses provide a lens through which activism can be examined, including its impact on multiple system-level factors, such as organizational practices (i.e., socio-IBs) or cultural practices (i.e., consumer practices). These elements as well as their interrelation with AAA behavior repertories will be addressed after we consider the contexts and resources that facilitate AAA at the individual level of analysis.

Behaviorists in (Social) Action

The literature suggests that behavior analysts now have the conceptual tools to develop effective interventions at the systems-level—a link between empirical resources and social action that offers behavior analysts an important role as part of the “powerful collective action” through which social transformative changes are achieved (Mattaini et al., 2016, p. 269). To this end, AAA repertories may lead the way in efforts to apply behavior science to find solutions for environmental and social issues.

Activism

The most general form of systems-level intervention, as noted earlier, is activism. Activists engage in a wide range of responses extending “over a long period and generally oriented toward broad goals affecting populations, communities, and institutional systems” (Mattaini et al., 2016, p. 269). Defined functionally, activism consists of value-oriented social actions, or actions oriented toward “broad goals” and toward general shared values. This distinction is useful because goals and values are functionally different: goals are outcomes whereas values are verbally constructed consequences of patterns of activity for which the predominant reinforcer becomes intrinsic to the behavioral process (Wilson & DuFrene, 2009).

Activists achieve significant social change by promoting collective action (Mattaini et al., 2016), which requires strategic and planned efforts such as teaching nonviolent repertoires to collectives. Sharp (2010) identified “three types of knowledge” essential “for persons to develop a competent grand strategy to achieve a successful liberation struggle” through nonviolent means (p. 16): knowledge of the context (conflict situation; opponents; social values, needs, sources of power); knowledge of nonviolent action techniques; and knowledge and skills to think critically, analytically, and strategically.

At the individual level, a direct change in behavior can be designed by employing fundamental behavioral techniques. For example, Killeen (1988) suggested that peacemaker behaviors can be taught like any other behavior and prescribed six points for behavior change: (1) Identify the kind of consequences maintaining current behaviors; (2) Consider reducing the effort of teaching new responses by drawing upon the individual’s existing repertoire; (3) Design a plan of delivering consequences for successive approximations to target behavior; (4) Define multiple intermediate goals along the process; (5) Reinforce various forms of responses within the larger class of target behavior; and (6) Strategically use rate of reinforcement to keep the individual engaged. Killeen’s recommendations are complementary to Sharp’s (2010) strategies; both refer to behavioral process, though from the different vantage points of individual and system levels. Thus, Killeen’s six points are consistent with Sharp’s contention that goals be intermediate and achievable [points 3,4]; that the issues at stake be fully understood in terms of their importance, relationship to other factors, and sources of power [points 1,6]; and that nonviolent protest skills must be well learned through behavioral practice [points 2,5]. Killeen recognized the complex, interactive, and complementary nature of the two analytic levels when he noted that it is unclear whether “the selection of [peacemaker] responses in the individual [would] be good or bad for us at the other levels of selection” (p. 41). In short, activists promote collective action by incorporating both analytic levels in their work.

Behavior analytic graduate students, professors, researchers, private consultants, and other professionals, subject to institutional constraints, can engage in activism in several ways. The academic setting, for example, allows for the application and dissemination of knowledge, particularly through research that embraces community values which produces knowledge relevant to societal issues (see Fawcett, 1991). Relevant behavioral technologies identified through research can be communicated from academic institutions to communities. As non-behavior technicians (e.g., community members) need supervision and training (Couch, Miller, Johnson, & Welsh, 1986; Fawcett et al., 1984), students are an excellent resource to provide this training and supervision. Students might use their academic requirements to work as activists, such as completing practicum responsibilities by working in partnership with public institutions (e.g., Brogan, Richling, Rapp, Thompson, & Burkhart, 2018) and doctoral dissertations that report community interventions (e.g., Aspholm, 2016) or metacontingency analyses of laws and decrees that contribute to the solution of social issues (e.g., Lemos, 2018, see also Chap. 8 in this volume). Researchers, too, can design interventions grounded in behavior science that promote collective prosocial behavior (e.g., Tsipursky, Votta, & Roose, 2018).

Outside academic settings, behavior analysts can perform activist actions in concert with a discipline, as psychologists and the American Psychological Association (APA) demonstrate (Nadal, 2017). APA has a long history of advocating on behalf of vulnerable and marginalized persons and communities as “‘psychologist–activists’ [who] partake in social justice activities through clinical practice, education, research, and training as well as in their personal lives…[to address] systemic barriers to social justice and human rights…[and] advocate for the good of humanity” (Nadal, 2017, p. 936). Nadal (2017) argues that the APA Ethics Code, despite its sole focus on” provid(ing) a common set of principles and standards upon which psychologists build their professional and scientific work” (American Psychological Association (APA), 2017), justifies and even mandates activism; as “neutrality can convey complicity to, and complacency with, injustices toward historically marginalized people...being apolitical or apathetic is detrimental to advancing human rights” (Nadal, 2017, p. 940).

Behavior analysts, similarly, may consider ABAI as their scientific community offering ways to engage in activist practices. ABAI is a nonprofit organization with no requirement to refrain from carrying on propaganda or influencing legislation and thus SIGs are permitted to promote collective action for social change. This kind of activism is represented by BFSR’s Matrix Project—“an evolving document consisting of sector-specific integrated sets of hypotheses, with the goal of identifying practices that support, oppose, motivate, and select the development and utilization of scientific behavioral systems to address social and global issues” (Behaviorists for Social Responsibility (BFSR), n.d.). The general goal of this project is increasing the number of behavior scientists working in areas of social relevance (Luke & Mattaini, 2014; Seniuk et al., 2019).

Initially, BFSR members identified 27 societal sectors to target for systems-level intervention. Next, they began to create resources to arrange the motivating operations for the actors in each sector (Seniuk et al., 2019). Currently, several of these sectors—most notably behavior analytic education and training in general (Ardila et al., 2019; Mattaini et al., 2018) and in environmental sustainability (Seniuk et al., 2019) have made significant progress—while others such as impacting state and federal government have made only beginning steps. Seniuk, Cihon, Benson, and Luke (2019) describe systems-level interventions to promote environmental sustainability in behavior analysts’ research, teaching, practice, and discipline-related professional activities. The education sector has developed several course units and bibliographies that introduce students to the principles of behavior through behavior analytic work in topics of social relevance (Ardila et al., 2019; Cihon, 2018). Thus, from a variety of professional settings and positions, behavior analysts may engage in activism by focusing their studies or research agendas on social issues and/or volunteering their time to projects and organizations promoting progressive social change.

Advocacy

One major subset of activism is advocacy, which are goal-oriented, planned actions that target specific, valued changes for individuals (e.g., access to resources) or groups (e.g., policy change) (Mattaini et al., 2016). An example of the latter is the previously discussed advocacy efforts for the passage of autism insurance legislation as part of the larger BACB^®(n.d.) activist initiative “to improve the human condition through behavior change.” That this instance appears to be a very rare and perhaps unique advocacy endeavor by behavior analysts serves to highlight the enormous potential for constructive change within the discipline.

The goals that guide advocacy actions are appropriate for all levels of complexity within organized cultural groups: behavior analysts can represent individual clients, but also persuade stakeholders who, in turn, can bring changes at the institutional level. However, behavior analysis is very much like psychology in that, as a discipline it has failed to develop “specific training focusing on public policy advocacy...resulting in a lack of familiarity with the types of political advocacy that psychologists can get involved in or the skills that are needed to advocate within particular working environments” (Nadal, 2017, p. 941).⁸ Besides lack of training, there are also antecedent and motivational factors that may constrain advocacy goals. For example, advocating for client-centered goals may align with clinical work demands, but public policy advocacy involves goals that may go well beyond and sometimes even compete with work-related goals, perhaps requiring time and effort that could otherwise be invested in other professional work (Eagleman, 2013).

Indeed, even if advocating for clients’ rights is a common practice for clinicians or applied behavior analysts, policy advocacy still needs further encouragement. Fawcett et al. (1988) suggested that developing information about roles that behavior analysts may take in the policymaking process is warranted, including examining how other sciences with similar advocacy goals promote advocacy actions among their members. For example, biologists in the United States have championed advocacy at many levels of their discipline. Science advocacy is one area in which biologists have become active in raising awareness of the importance of investing in science; for example, Jones-Jamtgaard and Lee (2017) suggest that political impact may be greater when advocacy groups encourage their members to call or write to legislators before an upcoming vote because their staff look for trends in social issues. Effectively communicating science to the public is another advocacy goal for biologists (Eagleman, 2013; Praveen & Motskin, 2016); the Pint of Science project is an example of an organized, long-lasting, and international event for scientific outreach in which citizens approach and learn from current discoveries and knowledge from various areas of scientific research. Advocating through groups and organizations for biomedical research funding also may be a goal (Pollard, 2012). Psychologists also achieved some success in overcoming their lack of training in public policy advocacy—APA and “psychologist-activists” today have taken formal progressive positions on, and a range of systemic interventions with, a myriad of social justice issues including civil rights, immigration, criminal justice, socioeconomic status, gun violence, interpersonal violence, education, health issues, and more. Further, APA promotes “advocacy tools” such as measurement instruments, legislators to contact, and highlighting of current “pressing federal issues” (see www.apa.org/advocacy/index.aspx). A current APA initiative recognized the first thirty “Citizen Psychologists” in an effort to motivate “psychologists to bring their knowledge of the field to improve people’s lives, whether through public service, volunteerism, board membership or other roles that are not directly associated with the psychologists’ day-to-day career” (DeAngelis, 2018, p. 52). These psychologists have engaged in actions, among others, that promoted racial equality in a Montessori school, aided asylum seekers through educating the public and professionals, developed a multiuse community center in an economically depressed area, ended noise pollution that suppressed classroom learning, supported undocumented immigrants and DREAMers, started a charter school in a high-poverty locale, fostered LGBTQ rights and health, promoted inclusion through grassroots groups to address the needs of marginalized youth, aided refugees, advocated for rural clients, empowered environmental action by older adults, promoted volunteerism, and more. An APA-sponsored Summit in December 2018 produced a training curriculum embodying “a detailed series of competencies, learning outcomes, and resources that can be used by educators to help prepare the next generation of psychologists to become Citizen Psychologists and by all psychologists interested in becoming Citizen Psychologist leaders through activities within their communities” (APA Citizen Psychologist, 2018, p. 4).

A general approach to developing a feasible plan of action for engaging in advocacy efforts as an individual behavior analyst can be derived, in part, from a comprehensive advocacy project conducted by Randall, Swenson, and Henggeler (1999) aimed at preventing neighborhood violence.⁹ Next, we identify several steps adapted from Randall et al., in addition to several novel steps that provide useful starting points for a specific advocacy plan that includes a thorough evaluation of the relevant contextual factors.

Identify Stakeholders and Leaders Within the Group Targeted for Advocacy

The first step in developing an advocacy plan is to identify a group of individuals (a) whose goals align with the activist’s own values, (b) that demonstrate a need for advocacy efforts, (c) who would benefit from assistance with resources to better yield their collective power, and (d) for whom the advocate is in a feasible position of influence; the weight of each of these factors will determine where efforts may prove most beneficial. Because individuals are likely to advocate for groups whose values and goals are intimately aligned with their own, they must ensure they prioritize the group’s goals rather than their individual goals. In this way, the behavior analyst engages in behaviors that align with his or her activist values and advocacy goals. It is also important for the behavior analyst to identify leaders or stakeholders within the group who have demonstrated value-based behavior that represent the collective interests of the group over their own goals.

Form a Partnership with Group Stakeholders and Leaders

Once the prospective group and the corresponding stakeholders and leaders are identified, the behavior analyst can begin actively forming a partnership with those individuals. The behavior analyst may establish the initial contact through a variety of actions such as making “cold calls,” establishing rapport through volunteer efforts, or building upon already established relationships. In any case, the behavior analyst can directly express an interest in forming a partnership with the group, demonstrate a willingness to learn more about the unique system and problems to be addressed, describe the position he or she is in to be of assistance, emphasize there are no intentions to exploit or coerce, and be transparent about any potential conflicts of interest. Ultimately, the mutual decision to establish a partnership involves communication between the behavior analyst and the identified leaders, pursued in partnership with the clients or communities involved. These collaborative efforts continue into the determination of the goals of the group.

Determine the Group Goals and Prioritize the Problems Affecting the Group

Advocacy efforts are typically oriented toward a specific change (Mattaini et al., 2016). Several strategies can promote stakeholder involvement in identifying specific actionable concerns of the group (Randall et al., 1999). One approach is to obtain input from the group, as a whole, regarding issues the behavior analysts will address. A second strategy involves the behavior analyst communicating their intervention philosophy (e.g., the time-limited nature of the advocacy, the rules, the ultimate goal to transition change efforts to the group itself, and thus, the necessity for group members to collaborate and be actively involved). With all strategies, the behavior analyst identifies one or more specific, operationalized, feasible changes that can improve the situation of the group and its members (Mattaini et al., 2016), with priority given to change(s) most likely to produce the desired outcomes (see also Watson-Thompson et al., 2015).

Identify Community Stakeholders or Leaders Who Are in a Position to Make Significant Changes at a Social or Institutional Level

In addition to forming a partnership with the group for whom the behavior analyst wishes to advocate, significant efforts must be made to establish and foster connections with individuals who are in a position to influence systemic change, which may include identifying and persuading those individuals who are in a position to persuade those who can make the actual relevant decisions and rules (Mattaini, 2013). Similarly, behavior analysts can advocate at a broader level by first identifying a “chain of influence” within the system and then considering what strategies might be effective with those specific individuals. If the behavior analyst cannot find any significant points of entry into a chain of influence, then efforts should be made toward forming partnerships with relevant stakeholders within that system, such as lobbyists, politicians, professional organizations, and unions (Mattaini et al., 2016).

Select a Feasible Practice for Each Identified Goal and Each Identified Stakeholder or Leader

The specific form of advocacy behavior selected ideally will be based on previous observations of the effectiveness of the feasible practice with each particular individual stakeholder or leader. If such information is not available, behavior analysts can look to empirical research with comparable individuals, populations, and communities or conduct an assessment of the relevant contingencies that (1) influence the identified stakeholder or leader within the specific institutional context and (2) how altering those contingencies and metacontingencies could impact the desired behavior and outcomes. From a systemic vantage point, the relevant establishing operations, abolishing operations, antecedents, and consequences are candidates for manipulation via specific advocacy efforts (see Biglan, 1995).

Types of Feasible Practices

Although there are many specific forms of advocacy, ranging from opening access to resources for a client in need to lobbying for national or international policy change supporting human rights, the general feasible practices (see Fig. 17.1) used in advocacy tend to be limited to persuasion and mild protest (Mattaini et al., 2016). Persuasion is most effective when the values of the individual leader or stakeholder are in alignment with the values of the group, though, even then, external circumstances and contingencies may not support the desired changes. In such situations, protest is an alternative way to incentivize those with power to act under certain conditions (Mattaini et al., 2016).

Persuasion and protest leverage the power of positive and negative reinforcers by clarifying desired changes and the likely outcomes of making or not making the changes (Mattaini, 2013). While persuasion typically manipulates equivalence relations to promote change in decision-making on the part of stakeholders and promises the positive reinforcer of “an improved condition,” protest commonly relies on removing an aversive condition. Clearly, behavior analytic knowledge in goal setting, measurement, and contingency and metacontingency analysis provide important tools to strengthen advocacy efforts.

Accompaniment

One form of activism that only recently has been codified is accompaniment, derived from the Haitian accompagnateur, to describe the work Dr. Paul Farmer and his colleagues did in Haiti (Griffin & Weiss Block, 2013). Mattaini et al. (2016) suggest accompaniment behaviors, which can be applied to issues related to systemic change, “walk with clients and communities through difficult journeys…from beginning to end…being present and staying there” (p. 268–269) through adverse and even violent times, ineffective solutions, and unstable situations. They stress that accompaniment differs markedly from case management and offer numerous examples of how social workers can incorporate accompaniment practice into their overall professional role. Indeed, accompaniment fits comfortably with social worker practice, given the discipline’s emphasis on service, including social action and change in ecologically unstable communities (see NASW Code of Ethics, 2017). However, behavior analysts, in general, do not accompany their clients on social change activities that could be dangerous; if they work in unstable environments, it is more likely to be as a consultant, which like the case manager, is an outsider who generally stays in the interchange for only a limited amount of time.

Accompaniment, however, can be compatible with behavior analytic practice if it is construed in a broader, more generalized manner; from such a perspective, Mattaini et al.’s (2016) discussion suggests that the core features of accompaniment practice are (a) using professional expertise informed by understanding and empathy (b) to help a community achieve specific goals as an ongoing member of that community (c) in an environment that challenges or even threatens the community’s rights (reinforcers) in some way, and (d) that increases the professional’s motivating operations (MOs) relating to nonmaterial reinforcers such as progressive social values and targeted systems change.

Values are likely to assume primary importance in maintaining accompaniment practice. Material reinforcement such as a salary will have lesser potency as accompaniment responses are often unpaid or the increasing response effort associated with sustained accompaniment practices thins the schedule of reinforcement. On the other hand, at least three value-related MOs seem likely to energize synergistic accompaniment practice: receiving social recognition for helping to change an unfair or inequitable situation; producing a progressive environmental change, including systems change, that results in an outcome closer to one’s values; and experiencing positive self-esteem by self-verbalizing the congruency between emission of the helping behaviors and one’s values.

The essential element in accompaniment is that the behavior analyst is “behaviorally with” the client or community in a struggle to effect progressive social change rather than functioning as an outside consultant or case manager. Research, particularly when it addresses cultural systems-level variables, may qualify as accompaniment; as Mattaini (2019) notes, this work can be challenging, as exemplified by Aspholm’s (2016) interview study of violent gang members active in his neighborhood. However, compared to social workers, the consequences identified as at stake for those being helped will be more diverse and thereby expand the definition of “a struggle” by looking beyond the importance of socioeconomic inequity by including attention to a wider range of social and cultural dysfunctions, and support progressive values, such as environmental sustainability. Thus, for example, a behavior analyst engages in value-driven accompaniment practices when joining, say, the Board of Advisors of a local social action non-profit and actively using his or her professional skills on an ongoing basis to enhance the group’s efficiency and effectiveness. Accompaniment is demonstrated also by “large response effort-long duration” volunteering, as exemplified in the environmental sustainability work of one of the authors (MB); note the centrality of goals and values to the initiation and maintenance of the activist behavior:

Becoming employed in sustainability as a behavior analyst/special educator was beyond what I had come to expect, given my educational background. When I realized my sustainability-related goals were loftier than what I could accomplish on my own, I made the decision to team up with an organization whose values aligned with my mine. Maintaining a focus on individual behavior change to reduce our carbon footprint after all, didn’t feel commensurate to the problem of climate change. I had become more interested in small changes to large systems that would result in aggregate change, and utilized a behavioral systems approach to determine where my efforts would be most impactful. Since I was located in NC, a clean tech hub, I sought volunteer work in clean energy. I marketed myself as a professional volunteer/behavior scientist, willing to help in whatever capacity was needed.

Through the interview process, I realized my background, time availability, and ability to leverage relationships, were of greatest value at a local governmental organization, whose funding had been dramatically cut. Their mission, to accelerate our transition to a clean energy economy, and collaborative approach through grant work, signaled to me an opportunity to become involved in large scale change, operating at a systems-level. I volunteered there for the next year, pairing myself with the availability of reinforcement, helping reduce the workload or increase our knowledge base through my assistance and research. This led to increased opportunities helping different groups within the organization. The work I conducted was goals-oriented, and although unpaid and mostly unrecognized, strengthened our interlocked behaviors, and aligned with my values more than any work to date.

To engage in accompaniment as a behavior analyst is to join and strengthen the efforts of a group or person whose mission aligns with progressive values by employing behavioral systems analysis and measurement to improve outcomes and goal attainment. The advent of routine electronic meeting options may permit accompaniment practice to expand even further, raising the question of how far an already broad definition of accompaniment can and should be stretched as technological advances expand behavioral capabilities: Can one be “behaviorally with” a community solely through electronic means—or does one have to have a physical presence in the relevant environment to engage in accompaniment practice? Finally, a behavioral interpretation of accompaniment practice emphasizes function rather than topography: “Struggle with” behaviors that change an oppressive or inadequately reinforcing environment are shaped by powerful nonmaterial reinforcers that derive their potency from progressive value-laden MOs. Nevertheless, while the actual “struggle with” behaviors that are shaped will vary depending on context and circumstance, the behavior analyst emitting accompaniment practice may be more likely than advocacy activists to consider constructive noncooperation and disruptive noncooperation as well as persuasion and protest to be “feasible” options. Furthermore, the behavior analytic impact probably relates to a behavior repertoire that includes three core non-disciplinary skill sets: self-management responses that delay reinforcement, interpersonal and communication behaviors that marshal resources, and problem-solving skills that overcome barriers. These are questions for future research to address.

Activists, Advocates, and Accompaniers in Systems of Interlocked Behaviors

AAA repertoires participate in contingency and metacontingency relations; that is, operate on both the psychological and sociological levels (Houmanfar et al., 2010). On the psychological level, activists interlock their behaviors with multiple members of the organizations to which they belong by participating in local contingencies, with the role of MOs particularly important. At the sociological level, IBs taken as a whole—that is, socio-IBs—result in the collective change of generating APs. When activists, advocates, and accompaniers participate in socio-IBs such as universities, schools, nonprofit and profit organizations the resulting APs are more likely to promote social change (Nadal, 2017).

Socio-IBs

When activists align their values to those of the group in which they operate, they may effectively influence socio-IBs and the associated APs. Shared values can influence the recurrence of these actions over long periods of time; for example, a metacontingency analysis suggests that Sharp’s (2010) three essential knowledges aim to teach a cultural movement how to encourage others to want to learn “liberation” responses, that is, to foster a change in attitude and motivation, rather than to encourage a direct change in behavior. This is because individual behavior must align with collective action for there to be an impact on consumer practices. Goal-oriented actions such as advocacy and accompaniment are directly concerned with consumer practices. For example, advocacy actions target institutional stimuli (e.g., leadership roles, organizational rules) at the socio-IB level in order to impact the generation of APs by fostering organizational change that meets consumer demands (e.g., access to resources, overcoming social constraints or injustice). On the other hand, accompaniment efforts focus mostly on actions within the consumer-end of the system—accompaniers help communities or clients achieve specific goals by being behaviorally with them. In this form of activism, it is essential to identify the best ways to obtain the APs that a community needs to achieve the defined goals. Thus, activism can be performed from multiple vantage points to impact the whole system.

Cultural Milieu

Effective social action requires a range of behavioral competencies, including the ability to acquire knowledge in nonviolent change strategies, use interpretative tools such as the metacontingency that highlight additional areas for change, seek interdisciplinary collaborations and training, and identify individual and collective values. These skill factors are embedded in the cultural milieu influencing organized groups within which activists, advocates, and accompaniers operate. Stimuli in the milieu have shared functions with respect to multiple individuals’ responses, and they can be used for cultural interventions to the extent that their manipulation results in changes to socio-IBs and not just to individual action. Because the cultural milieu is specific to the group, promoting social collective actions begins with identifying the contextual factors that help social activists achieve goals that are consistent with the overarching milieu. The feasibility of AAA practices can be determined only when the milieu factors that promote collective action and social justice are accurately specified.

Future Directions

Activism, advocacy, and accompaniment are practices that behavior analysts can acquire and engage in, particularly if there is support from the behavior analytic community. The understanding of AAA as discrete repertoires suggests that more tailored and refined responses will increase the probability of successful systems-level outcomes. Scientific advances in cultural and behavioral systems analysis hold significant promise for this type of work, and lead to two recommendations for encouraging greater systems-level analysis and intervention by behavior analysts. In effect, both suggestions establish metacontingencies intended to influence the APs of the behavior analytic community.

Recommendation #1: Integrate Cultural Level Analysis and Intervention Training Within Behavior Analytic Education

The APA Citizen Psychologist (2018) project identified a range of competencies necessary for effective advocacy action and developed a curriculum to train them. The curriculum is tailored to educational level and teaching skills necessary for effective communication, addressing sociocultural diversity and inequities issues, public service engagement, community advocacy, community leadership, application of the ethics code, self-reflection, application of psychological science, community engagement, and self-care. As already mentioned, BFSR’s Matrix Project (Ardila et al., 2019; Luke & Mattaini, 2014) has developed course materials to support social action. Additionally, interdisciplinary acquaintance is critical, as behavior analysis provides a powerful theoretical and methodological approach to remediating social problems—but because it is a purely functional approach, the content of what specifically is to be changed is located in other disciplines (cf., Rakos, 1983).¹⁰

A comprehensive integration of cultural level knowledge and analyses into undergraduate and graduate behavior analytic education can establish a metacontingency with at least two likely APs: (a) increased demand for, and placement in, social action internships and field placements and (2) growing research output as theses, dissertations, and senior exit projects tackle systemic dysfunctions. Both of these outcomes are likely to have additional positive consequences. The addition of a social action component to behavior analytic training programs may partially address an increasingly prevalent undercurrent among masters-level practitioners that the reinforcers available to them from a “technological education” are prone to satiation; the inclusion of systems analysis and intervention in behavior analytic education would expand these practitioners’ skills, options, and range of reinforcers. It also will likely increase the scientific data addressing vexing social problems as it simultaneously expands the scope, ideas, and growth of the discipline. Finally, behavior analytic programs and faculty can strengthen students’ ability to pursue goals rooted in policy change by applying knowledge in verbal rules and equivalence relations directly to advocacy work.

Recommendation #2: Develop a Discipline-Specific ABAI Code of Ethics

ABAI’s Code of Ethics lacks its own content but “expects its members to uphold the highest standards of personal and professional behavior in the conduct of their work and the advancement of behavior analysis. ABAI embraces the diversity of professions within its membership; thus each ABAI member should adhere to the ethical standards that have been defined for his or her profession” (Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI), 2007) including The American Psychological Association’s Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, The Behavior Analyst Certification Board’s Professional and Ethical Compliance Code for Behavior Analysts, The National Association of Social Workers’ Code of Ethics, and several others.

Most of these codes limit their focus to defining the boundaries of professional behavior. The APA ethics code, for instance, is intended to be narrow in scope by “provid(ing) a common set of principles and standards upon which psychologists build their professional and scientific work” (APA, 2017). Similarly, the BACB^® Professional and Ethical Compliance Code for Behavior Analysts addresses only 10 areas of professional work behavior (BACB^®, 2019). The NASW Code of Ethics (2017), on the other hand, explicitly mandates social action as an ethical imperative:

The primary mission…is to enhance human well-being…with (a)…focus on individual well-being in a social context and the well-being of society. Fundamental to social work is attention to the environmental forces that create, contribute to, and address problems in living....Social workers promote social justice and social change with…individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities. Social workers…strive to end discrimination, oppression, poverty, and other forms of social injustice….(via) direct practice, community organizing, supervision, consultation, administration, advocacy, social and political action, policy development and implementation, education, and research and evaluation. Social workers seek to…promote the responsiveness of organizations, communities, and other social institutions to individuals’ needs and social problems…” (emphases added)

The NASW code eliminates the artificial distinction between environmental determinism that affects individuals versus groups of individuals, leading to the logical conclusion that social action to change oppressive environments is an ethical mandate both within and beyond the official professional work role. Social workers are enjoined in the Code to adopt the value to “challenge social injustice” and adhere to the ethical standard to accept their “Ethical Responsibilities to the Broader Society” including, specifically, “Social Welfare” and “Social and Political Action” (NASW).

As noted earlier, Skinner’s approach also strongly implies that behavior analysts have an ethical mandate to use their science to address social problems. The continuity in environmental determinism, which for behavior analysts is logically similar to rejection of unscientific distinctions between public and private responses, offers a philosophical compatibility with the NASW Code of Ethics that suggests it can serve as a good model for an ABAI code. In fact, from the inception of behaviorism and through its maturation,¹¹ the assumption of continuity of determinism has prompted wide-ranging social and cultural analyses and repeated calls for progressive cultural engineering (Rakos, 1992, 2013), even as the specific principles that determine behavior increase in complexity over time, from the stimulus-response psychology of Watson, to the operant conditioning of Skinner, to the newer concept of the metacontingency. This progressive ideology is seen not only in Watson’s and Skinner’s writings but in behavioral thinking more generally: Mills (1999) argues that behaviorism historically has exuded a social optimism that embraced behavioral science solutions because

“…behaviorists adopt a version of scientism. In common with their Progressive forebears, they see science not just as technology but as technology that must have social applications…they despise any characterization of science as the pursuit of pure truth” (p. 154).

The development of an ABAI Code of Ethics with environmental determinism as its Weltanschauung would exemplify how, as noted previously, leaders may modify or formulate new rules—the fifth metacontingency factor—that accommodate the requirements of consumer practices and that are consistent with the general cultural milieu (Houmanfar et al., 2009). Thus, an ABAI Code of Ethics that is formulated to increase the social action efforts of behavior analysts—the AP of the metacontingency—might begin with a Preamble along the lines of the following, which is adapted from the NASW document:

Behavior analysts use their professional skills to enhance the well-being of individuals, families, groups, organizations, and the larger society. Fundamental to behavior analysis is attention to the environmental forces at all levels of analysis that create, contribute to, and remediate problems in living.

Behavior analysts focus on the environmental contingencies and metacontingencies that promote individual and societal well-being. They strive to change the contingencies and metacontingencies that support discrimination, oppression, poverty, and other forms of social injustice and that prevent the empowerment of vulnerable and oppressed people.

Behavior analysts recognize the primary role the environment plays in producing individual and social problems and inequities. They promote social justice for and social change with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities through their professional activities, including education, research and evaluation, direct practice, supervision, consultation, administration, advocacy, social and political action, and policy development and implementation.

Two important general benefits appear attainable if ABAI were to organizationally embrace social activism via a “Code of Ethics.” First, a social action-focused Code would serve as a prompt to reinvigorate a discipline that has narrowed its vision considerably over the years in response to the demand in developmental and school contexts for masters-level, board certified applied behavior analysts. An embrace of environmental continuity would represent a contemporary return to the discipline’s Skinnerian roots—where social problems are argued to be correctable through scientific cultural analysis and design. In developing MOs and shared values that support social change efforts, such a Code also will establish a cultural milieu where teaching and research grapple again with “big ideas” that stimulate the imagination and offer new directions for growth, especially if education programs deliberately integrate systems-level training as advocated above. A second benefit to adopting a social action-oriented Code of Ethics will be its cumulative effect as with integrated social action training, society will experience an increase in the amount and diversity of scientific input into systems-level decision-making. This outcome will represent, for behavior analysis, a continuation and strengthening of its social action heritage established by Watson and Skinner—both of whom seemed to realize that impartiality in a deterministic world is a myth: “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere” (Weisel, 1986). This is particularly apt when scientific knowledge about environmental control can help the vulnerable and oppressed.

Final Word (and a Motivating Operation)

Mattaini (2013) iterates that “[c]ampaigns that focus on ending oppression but do not have a vision and plan for what is to be constructed should the campaign succeed are at high risk for producing limited benefit” (p. 21). The statement beseeches our involvement in the creation of a more equitable society, as behavior analysts are well equipped to turn a visionary plan into measurable goals. As our science and activism work moves beyond the classroom, onto university campuses, into the community, collaborating and problem solving with diverse groups, dedicated to a healthier society, we are working toward goals based in shared values. Collectively, we can then inform a new reality, based on construction instead of obstruction (Mattaini, 2013). To that end, activist behavior analysts might find themselves volunteering at a nonprofit or nongovernmental organization, running for office, serving on task forces, or embedding themselves in institutions or organizations dedicated to social progress. If behavior analysts can help set and meet measurable societal goals related to shared values, in order to improve the human condition, then we are truly contributing to the evolution of a more just society by stimulating progressive change where we are able to impact the system.

The end of a research project or chapter is where our work begins.