In the early days of applied behavior analysis (ABA), its founding generation could have gathered at a single corner bar (e.g., see Rutherford, 2009). Today ABA subsumes numerous scholarly journals and professional organizations, many graduate training programs, and more than 54,000 certified practitioners worldwide at the master’s level and above (Behavior Analyst Certification Board, 2022). This swelling of the ranks raises a crucial question that we pose, especially on behalf of those who are joining the field and those who teach them: Is ABA's reach into the various corners of the human experience expanding as well?

Just a few professional generations have passed since Skinner (e.g., 1948, 1953) began trumpeting the potential of behavior analysis to change the world for the better. At that time, no consensus existed about what an applied science of behavior might look like or achieve (Rutherford, 2009). In the late 1950s and 1960s, a few pioneers explored some possible applications (e.g., Allyon & Michael, 1959; Baer, 1962; Birnbrauer et al., 1965; Bijou, 1957), and ABA was born (Morris et al., 1990; Morris et al., 2005; Morris et al., 2013). Skinner's original conception was that the scientific exploration and application of fundamental principles of behavior should address the whole of the human condition, and it is our impression that this vision has never seriously been questioned. For instance, when ABA achieved early successes with severe problem behavior of people residing in institutions, we doubt any pioneering applied behavior analyst thought, "This is plenty." When Baer et al. (1968) put forward the first formal definition of ABA, they constrained the field only in this way: "The label applied is . . . determined by the . . . interest which society shows in the problem being studied" (p. 92). Consistent with this seminal perspective, we have no sense that contemporary behavior analysts regard ABA as intended for just a few kinds of behavior or a few kinds of people (e.g., see Friman, 2006, 2014; Normand & Kohn, 2013; Poling, 2010).

Before ABA, there were no systematic applications of behavior principles. During ABA's earliest years, research and practice focused on only a few types of socially important behavior. Today, can we imagine some enlightened future in which ABA has grown to match Skinner's all-encompassing vision? One hopes for evidence of progress, but how might such progress be evaluated?

Some who have reflected on this question have offered qualitative commentary on how well ABA is doing at expanding its reach (e.g., Friman, 2006, 2014; Normand & Kohn, 2013; Poling, 2010), For example, Friman (2006) opined that ABA was becoming too focused on problems of developmental disorders and placing too little emphasis on matters of concern to society in general. This is a thought-provoking argument, but one framed in terms of diagnostic membership and demographics rather than of socially significant classes of behavior. Other observers have attempted to quantify ABA's citation impact on various areas of research and practice. For instance, Kazdin (1975) showed how often ABA research had been cited by journals in each of several areas of professional specialization (e.g., psychiatry, clinical psychology, corrections). Kazdin's analysis suggested that the ABA of 1975 had expanded its reach beyond that of, say, the ABA of 1965, but no specific socially important behaviors were mentioned—something that has been true in general of such assessments (e.g., Critchfield, 2002; Critchfield & Reed, 2004; Laties & Mace, 1993)

In the end, both qualitative commentaries and citation analyses are too coarse-grained to inform us about specific domains of socially significant behavior upon which applied behavior analysts are shedding light. We therefore took a different approach by compiling an extensive list of socially significant behaviors that have been the focus of empirical attention in behavior analysis research (for a model of this approach, see Heward & Critchfield, 2020).

Four preliminary comments are in order about our effort. First and foremost, this is not a systematic literature review. We did not try to identify every single domain of socially significant behavior that has received attention in ABA. We were simply curious whether we could identify enough domains to persuade ourselves, and a skeptical reader, that ABA is broader and more richly nuanced than in its formative days. Second, we made no effort to summarize the research in any particular domain. Instead, we cited one or two illustrative empirical articles as evidence that the domain has been addressed in the peer-reviewed research literature in some data-based way. Third, we labeled domains with everyday language for behaviors the general public might view as socially significant. We make no claim that other observers would describe the domains in the same way.Footnote 1

Finally, two broad classes of socially significant behavior are evident in the list. The first class might be called individual well-being behaviors, by which we mean behaviors that affect one person's quality of life. It has become popular to think about such behaviors as falling into a distribution based on their prevalence in and relevance to the population at large (see Fig. 1, based on Friman, 2006). Some socially significant behaviors are rare because they pertain to relatively uncommon disorders (e.g., pica or trichotillomania) or to exceptional talent (e.g., Ericsson et al., 2005). Also included are transitional behaviors of young children that, in typically developing individuals, are replaced by more sophisticated behaviors. At the other end of the life span are behavior changes that enhance the quality of life for senior citizens (Skinner & Vaughan, 1997). The most common behaviors, those comprising the largest portion of the distribution (or its "dome"), reflect the experiences of most individuals for most of their lives; the various classes of behavior that contribute to physical health is an example (e.g., Jarmolowicz et al., 2016; Marsch et al., 2014; Rehfeldt & Tindall, 2021). One valid perspective is that for ABA to be a truly general-purpose science and continue to thrive, it must promote positive change across the full range of individual well-being behaviors.

Fig. 1
figure 1

A distribution of socially significant behaviors. Note. Based on Friman (2006)

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A second class of socially significant behaviors might be called species-survival behaviors, which are distinguished by their impact on humanity. For example: “Threats abound, including atomic warfare, global warming, overpopulation, pandemic diseases, natural resource depletion, and corporate abuse. Each of these has the potential to destroy our way of life, if not life itself” (Neuringer, 2011, p. 28). Many (most?) existential threats are direct products of, or can be affected by, human behavior, so, "To survive, we must learn how to change behaviors" that create threats (p. 28). For purposes of the present article, we assume ABA must attend to both individual well-being behaviors and species-survival behaviors.

Whereas many behavior analysts (present authors included) are enthusiastic about the discipline's ability to improve both the quality of people’s lives and the settings in which they live them, a clear-eyed view shows that a great deal of work remains on both fronts. Regarding individual well-being behaviors, skeptics say ABA has focused too much on autism and developmental disabilities, the challenges of which are essential to address but unrelated to the daily concerns of most people (e.g., Friman, 2006, 2014; Normand & Kohn, 2013; Poling, 2010). As for species-survival behaviors, skeptics argue that ABA has not addressed most of humanity's major threats, and has achieved few, if any, effects with population-wide impact (e.g., Chance, 2007; Dixon et al., 2018; Marcattilio & Nevin, 1986; Mattaini & Aspholm, 2016).

Contrasting views of the extent and impact of ABA exist because most assessments, whether optimistic or skeptical, have been subjective and/or employed disparate conceptual frameworks. We seek to offer something more objective and, to our knowledge, more extensive than what currently exists in the ABA literature, namely, an inventory of a range of socially significant behaviors—meaningful at the levels of both individual well-being and species-survival—that behavior analysts have addressed empiricallyFootnote 2 (cf. Kazdin, 1975). Heward and Critchfield (2020) presented a preliminary model for counting the proverbial horse's teeth when they cited published sources for 164 socially significant behavior domains. We build upon that effort here.

Making the World a Better Place, One Socially Significant Behavior at a Time

In compiling our list, we were not overly concerned with whether a given application incorporated each of Baer et al.’s (1968) classic dimensions of ABA. Consistent with the notion that useful ABA studies feature various combinations of desirable characteristics (e.g., Axelrod, 2017; Cooper et al., 2020, ch. 10; Critchfield & Reed, 2017; Hyten, 2017; Kunkel, 1987; St. Peter, 2017), we included any peer-reviewed report that was empirical and focused on a specific class of socially significant behavior.Footnote 3 The Appendix describes how we compiled our list and acknowledges some of the limitations of that process.

Table 1 displays the results: 350 domains of socially significant behavior with illustrative citations. The articles cited in Table 1 date from 1954 to the present and represent the contributions of more than 1,000 investigators. Domains of application range from the mundane (e.g., walking, jokes and humor, video games) to the critically consequential (e.g., hostage negotiations, violence prevention, urban search and rescue), and include a great deal in between. Through its heft and breadth, Table 1 offers a concrete frame of reference for discussing how well Skinner’s vision of a generally applicable applied behavior science has been realized. Consistent with the assumption that behavior analysis has a substantial role to play in enhancing the human experience, Table 1 demonstrates that behavior principles have proven effective in changing a vast spectrum of behaviors. One wonders how many other applied areas in psychology and related fields have addressed such a variety of socially significant behaviors.

Table 1 ABA from A to Z: Applications of Behavior Science to 350 Socially Significant Domains
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Table 1 may serve a valuable educational function for those who are new to behavior analysis. This compendium of applied research documents the enormous life-improving potential ABA’s advocates have long proclaimed. It is one thing to assert that "ABA can help make the world a better place." It is quite another to provide a basis for multiple-exemplar training that features hundreds of ways in which the application of behavioral principles and technology can be fruitful (Dardig, 1985). We submit that the greater the range of examples of meaningful behavior change encountered by novices to ABA, the richer their understanding of ABA’s potential will be.

We do not mean to suggest that research reports, by themselves, are an effective recruiting tool (e.g., Detrich, 2018). Instructive examples must be shared in a way that captures the excitement of discovery and satisfaction of addressing socially significant problems (for some practical tips, see Dardig, 1985). Murray Sidman’s (2007) joyful description of observing the emergence of stimulus equivalence relations by a boy with severe intellectual disabilities is a powerful example.

Then came the magic moment. With Kent now matching dictated words both to pictures and to printed words, we repeated the reading comprehension tests in which he had to match the printed words with their corresponding pictures, tests that Kent had been completely unable to do before. As the tests progressed, we could not believe what we were seeing. Trial after trial, Kent correctly matched the car, the cap, the cat, the box, the cow—each of the 20 pictures—to its printed name, and each of the 20 printed names to its corresponding picture. The technician, sitting behind Kent in the experimental room, could hardly contain himself. At the end, he leaped up, grabbed the boy in a bear hug, and shouted, “Dammit, Kent, you can read!” Outside the room, where the rest of us were watching through a one-way window, I was dancing the twist; my son, who happened to be in the lab at that moment, said to me later, “Dad, I’ve never seen you like that before!” (p. 315)

Building on a Great Start: Watchwords for the Work Ahead

Table 1 tallies an impressive array of accomplishments, but there is always work to be done; prospects for the long-term influence and even survival of ABA—and, not hyperbolically, of our species—will be improved by leaving no domain of socially significant behavior unstudied. Table 1, therefore, may also function to help interested researchers identify promising or under-investigated topics. Finally, Table 1 sets the occasion for discussing how ABA might press forward to help make the world a more humane place. In this section, we identify some themes that, based on our experience of compiling Table 1, we believe are important elements of such a discussion.

Flexibility

Empirical evidence has always been the cornerstone of applied behavior analysis. Expanding ABA’s influence will require devising research to suit a wide variety of settings and problems. It is instructive, we believe, that Table 1 reflects no single methodological canon. The cited research incorporates experimental and descriptive strategies of investigation, single-subject and group-comparison designs, a wide variety of measurement methods, and visual analysis and quantitative methods. Methodological flexibility has enabled ABA to flourish. Tackling a broad range of socially significant behaviors requires methods compatible with the problems of interest, rather than selecting a problem that fits neatly with preferred research designs (e.g., Birnbrauer, 1979; Critchfield & Reed, 2017; Fawcett, 1991; Kunkel, 1987). This conclusion echoes Baer et al.'s (1987) admonition that progress is impeded when, "applied researchers . . . transform questions to fit the known designs and their rules, rather than constructing a design that answers the original question" (p. 319). Or, as Sidman (1960) put more strongly, there is always a danger that a discussion of desirable methods will be . . .

Accepted as constituting a set of rules that must be followed in the design of experiments. I cannot emphasize too strongly that this would be disastrous. I could make the trite statement that every rule has its exception, but this is not strong enough. Nor is the more relaxed statement that the rules of experimental design are flexible, to be employed only where appropriate. The fact is that there are no rules of experimental design. (p. 214)

We trust that behavior analysts distinguish between valuable information and hierarchical standards of evidence. Table 1 would be shorter, less interesting, and less reflective of the human experience if our search had excluded studies that employed descriptive methods, group-comparison designs, or self-report measures. To build on Sidman's point, we assert that behavior analysts, in the pursuit of understanding and influencing behavior, should and will employ any research methods that advance that endeavor.Footnote 4

Thoroughness

The domains with the most impact in Table 1—those where the findings of ABA are widely used and benefitting large numbers of individuals—tend to be those with the most extensive evidence bases (e.g., autism, special education, workplace safety). Our literature search suggested that many other domains have been lightly investigated. For some domains, we found only a single exploratory study or a smattering of loosely related articles. Other domains appear to be explored by a single research team, with their work neither replicated nor extended by other investigators. Such breadth without depth is concerning because, contrary to the popular notion that science advances through "Eureka!" moments of discovery, progress usually depends on cumulative evidence built up incrementally across many investigations (Rogers, 2010; Root-Bernstein, 1988; Sidman, 1960; Skinner, 1956). Turning most of the domains in Table 1 into large-scale success stories will require considerable additional research.

Scaling

To achieve societal impact in a given domain, ABA must develop effective, user-friendly interventions that are disseminated to all who can benefit from them. In compiling Table 1, we found many translational studies or proof-of-concept demonstrations that fell short of implementing interventions in the field at a scale that might yield societal-level benefits (e.g., see Horner & Kittelman, 2021). Each domain that is in Table 1—or that could be—requires the kind of careful attention that has been devoted to areas like autism, developmental disabilities, and workplace safety. To appropriate a line from management guru Peter Drucker (e.g., 2020), without the hard work of building a systematic program of investigation, the goal of making the world more humane is merely a good intention.

A further prerequisite for impact is devising programs and interventions suited to large numbers of individuals—recall the "dome" of Fig. 1's distribution of socially significant behaviors. In compiling Table 1, we found a good deal of what might be called "dome adjacency." That is, behavior analysts have studied numerous behaviors of relevance to the general human population—concerns like sleep difficulties, perspective-taking, impulsivity, and adherence to medical regimens—but have done so primarily with children and persons with disabilities, and much less so in typically developing adults. There is no guarantee that insights derived in the left tail of Fig. 1 will generalize meaningfully under the "dome"Footnote 5: Promising interventions often fail when transplanted into new settings or populations (Detrich, 2013a, 2013b; Fixsen et al., 2019). This lesson, however, suggests the potential for cross-fertilization between ABA and other disciplines that have studied “under the dome” problems to the exclusion of the tails of the dome, which brings us to the next section.

Connections and Partnerships

Scientists in many disciplines want to address society’s pressing problems, and they have productively engaged in that enterprise. The work of those researchers might benefit from contacting behavior analysis research, and vice versa. Both directions of influence and collaboration deserve comment.

Regarding the sharing of behavior analysis research, scientists in other fields can benefit only from what they know about. Behavior analysis journals have relatively small subscriber counts and garner a large proportion of their citations from articles published in other behavior analysis journals (e.g., Critchfield & Reed, 2004). Almost 60% of the articles cited in Table 1 are from a dozen journals read primarily by behavior analystsFootnote 6 and more than 40% come from one outlet, the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis.

Behavior analysis journals might not provide the best platform for widespread dissemination of behavior analytic principles, methods, and technology to society. Journals and professional magazines that do not specialize in behavior analysis attract many more readers, and these may be the right readers—that is, people who control the modal practices in particular domains of application. Reaching those readers may be an important early step in setting behavioral solutions into motion (Friman, 2014).

With new audiences come new opportunities for connections and partnerships. Decades ago, behavior analysts began placing their studies in mainstream journals devoted to autism and special education, a practice that certainly contributed to the acceptance and growth of ABA in those areas. Friman (2021) has described how behavioral pediatrics research gained traction with physicians when one investigator, Edward Christopherson, employed strategic messaging in articles published outside of behavior analysis journals:

He did not bemoan the relative absence of behavioral applications in pediatric practices. He criticized neither the pediatricians for referring patients to nonbehavioral providers nor those providers for using treatments that were demonstrably inferior to behavioral methods. Instead, he conducted research showing various ways behavior analysis could benefit pediatrics and published them in pediatric medical journals. . . . That he was successful is beyond dispute. There are behavioral pediatric clinics across the United States . . . [and] behavior analysts have edited three issues of the prestigious Pediatric Clinics of North America that focused on behavioral pediatric themes. . . . The general message is that behavioral pediatrics is marketed as a benefit to pediatrics, not a corrective. It is an enhancement of success, not the satisfaction of a deficiency. (p. 311)

We have heard behavior analysts remark that their work is not welcome in nonbehavioral journals, that outsiders don't understand behavior analysis or are biased against it.Footnote 7 Yet Table 1 shows that a great deal of behavior analysis research has been published in nonbehavioral journals (Table 2 lists 103 of these journals). It is clear that more than a few behavior analysts have reached mainstream readers, and we presume that their successes depended in part on tailoring the message to the needs and values of a specific audience (cf. Friman, 2014, 2021).

Table 2 104 Mainstream Scholarly Journals that Have Published Behavior Analysis Research
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Every domain in Table 1 represents an opportunity to cite and collaborate with investigators from other disciplines. Tapping the expertise of other fields may help behavior analysts avoid reinventing the wheel in some domains. For instance, measurement systems can be coopted, ways of gaining access to settings and populations can be identified, and effects well-established by other disciplines can be replicated and refined. Case studies of the process of science show that discoveries often result from synthesizing seemingly unrelated knowledge. Insulin therapy for diabetes, for instance, arose at the conjunction of Oskar Minkowski's training with medical diagnostics, research on the digestive functions of the pancreas, and personal knowledge of the potty habits of one suddenly incontinent dog (Root-Bernstein, 1988). Therapeutic massage as a treatment for preterm infants arose at the conjunction of Tiffany Field's knowledge of traditional practices in neonatal intensive care and a chance encounter with a researcher who studied why rat mothers lick their pups (Field, 1993).

Behavior analysts seeking to contribute to a more humane world should harness useful ideas wherever they may be found; those who focus solely on behavior analysis research and commune only with other behavior analysts may insulate themselves from both "unrelated" knowledge that could spur the next important discovery (Critchfield & Farmer-Dougan, 2014) and the selective forces that could promote its dissemination. The Matrix Project initiated by ABAI’s special interest group, Behaviorists for Social Responsibility (Mattaini & Luke, 2014), is one notable effort to identify supports or barriers for behavior analysts addressing issues of social importance, and to facilitate systems-level change by connecting various actors and entities within and outside behavior analysis (see Seniuk et al. [2019], in particular for a description of how the Matrix Project is being used with respect to sustainability). Nevin (2010) shares a story of the way an island community in Denmark united to use wind power and other innovative practices to become energy independent (they now produce more energy than they consume); this project became the model for a similar one on Martha's Vineyard, in which Nevin himself was involved.

Diversity

A general-purpose applied science must be responsive to the needs of all people. Recent surveys of the literature show that ABA has been slow to confront the implications of individual differences (Jones et al., 2020; Pritchett et al., 2021). In compiling Table 1, however, we saw limited descriptions of participants' demographic characteristics. More complete identification of the characteristics of research participants is central to delineating the effectiveness and social validity of applied work (Jones et al., 2020; Li et al., 2017). We are heartened by recent articles that demonstrate increasing awareness that ABA must develop inclusive and culturally competent interventions (Beaulieu et al., 2019; Fong et al., 2017; Zarcone et al., 2019).

Effectiveness

There are no one-size-fits-all interventions, and behavior analysts imperil effectiveness if they overlook diversity (e.g., Bumstead & Boyce, 2005). Imagine, for instance, trying to teach young nonverbal children with autism using a behavior skills training program developed for factory workers and using the Picture Exchange Communication System (Bondy & Frost, 1994) to train those same factory workers. Interventions encounter replication challenges when transported into contexts different from those in which they were developed (Detrich, 2020; Fixsen et al., 2019).

A critical component of intervention effectiveness is implementation integrity, which can vary across contexts and groups (e.g., Fixsen & Blase, 2019). To cite one troubling example, punitive school discipline procedures tend to be employed with greater intensity and in disproportionate numbers with members of underrepresented groups (e.g., Butler et al., 2012; Simmons-Reed & Cartledge, 2014). Greflund et al. (2014) reported that this form of bias was avoided when one schoolwide positive behavioral interventions and supports program paid explicit attention to participant characteristics.

Social Validity

People have different ideas about what counts as socially significant; cultural groups vary in what they value as the common good (Holland, 1974, 1978; Winett & Winkler, 1972). To a large degree, social significance is in the eye of the beholder, a point that Strain et al. (2012) highlighted in describing their work designing interventions for children with developmental disabilities:

Our preconceived notion was that families would be most interested in their children displaying specific developmental skills associated with routines, such as independently dressing self, feeding, and tooth brushing. Relatedly, we also expected that families would be focused on communication skills such as expressing one's needs, wants, and discomforts. Contrary to our a priori judgments, families were most interested in completing routines in a timely fashion. (p. 184)

Social validity assessments help to reveal what different people regard as important (Detrich, 2018; Strain et al., 2012), but they can accomplish this purpose only if the right people are asked (e.g., Fawcett, 1991; Holland, 1978; Pritchett et al., 2021). Some issues may be more important to members of underrepresented groups than to majority-culture individuals—think of microaggressions, racial identity concerns, and the quest for healthy eating in an urban food desert. Some behaviors the majority culture regards as valuable may be objectionable to minority groups—think of how contraception use intersects with the beliefs of certain religious sects. A particularly dark example involves attempts by early behavioral researchers to force binary gender roles on nonbinary individuals (e.g., Rekers et al., 1974). Many of the world's problems involve members of specific groups being subjected to unkindness, economic disparity, and restricted civil liberties; attention to group-specific characteristics, needs, and practices is required, therefore, to do justice to social justice issues (e.g., Pritchett et al., 2021).Footnote 8

Prevention

In compiling Table 1, we found numerous studies focusing on changing individual behavior, but limited empirical work aimed at understanding and changing contingencies that provide the context for behavior. For example, applied behavior analysts have conducted research on substance use by individuals (undergirded by a robust body of basic research, e.g., Craig et al., 2016; Madden et al., 1997), but ABA has not learned how to influence systems that select drug-seeking over the non-drug-related behaviors of many individuals.

Social systems require a different level of analysis, and changing them is a complex task (e.g., Malott & Glenn, 2006), but one that is necessary to maximize the benefits that an analysis of behavior can deliver. Biglan and Ogden (2008) describe one effort to change the national policies and practices in community mental health in Norway, the achievement of which required building community alliances and influencing policy makers. This project involved components well beyond the interventions common to most behavior analysts.

Prevention-oriented programs may test the flexibility of behavior analysts because (1) they focus on reengineering environments on a broad scale so that problems do not arise in the first place (Bradshaw, 2013; Hovell et al., 1986; Kazdin, 2018; Malott & Glenn, 2006; Winett et al., 1991), and (2) they measure effectiveness at a community or population level (Hovell et al., 1986; Fawcett, 1991). Consider the following example. When young children consume bits of flaking paint in older houses, they may ingest lead that adversely affects both behavior (e.g., attention, aggression) and general intelligence (Needleman, 2004). This risk is probabilistic: Not every child who eats paint chips is affected to the same degree, and some children who do not eat paint chips develop the same problems. Although it is clear that lead mitigation efforts in the United States during the 1970s through 1990s (which includes banning lead as a gasoline additive) greatly reduced the general prevalence of lead poisoning and associated behavior problems (Needleman, 2004; Reyes, 2007), it is impossible to verify that a given child who did not develop behavior problems benefitted personally from these efforts.

Applied behavior analysts value big and rapid changes in behavior (Baer, 1977; Baer et al., 1968). Prevention science, in contrast, is interested in effects that can be small at the individual level and temporally diffuse; at the community or population level, however, small changes over time add up to big benefits (Fawcett, 1991; Fixsen et al., 2019; Hovell et al., 1986). For instance, low-dose lead exposure may decrease an individual's IQ by only a few points  (Jakubowski, 2011), but in a population like that of the United States this is enough to create huge ripple effects, such as changes in intellectual functioning that were sufficient to shift an incalculable number of children from regular to special education (Nevin, 2009). To use money as a convenient big-picture marker of the implications of this unfortunate shift, exposure to toxic levels of lead increased education costs and decreased lifetime earning potential for many affected individuals. It has therefore been estimated that environmental lead mitigation in the United States during the late 20th century, by virtue of preserving relatively small amounts of functioning for many thousands of children who otherwise would have been poisoned, created many billions of dollars in annual economic benefits (e.g., Needleman, 2004; Needleman & Bellinger, 1981).

Positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) is one prevention-oriented success story of which ABA can be proud. PBIS entails a tiered continuum of school-wide instructional interventions and behavioral supports; the greater a student's needs, the more targeted and intensive the supports (Sugai & Horner, 2020). It is a multifaceted intervention that restructures school environments in order to promote respectful, prosocial behavior and reduce the incidence of problem behavior (Bradshaw, 2013; Horner & Sugai, 2015; Pinkelman & Horner, 2019).

Table 1 documents that beyond school-based discipline problems, ABA has begun to explore prevention in a number of domains, including cancer, infections, kidnapping, poisoning, crime, sexual abuse, substance abuse, and accidents in the workplace or those involving guns. To date, most of this research has focused on changing individual behavior, such as teaching adults to detect cancer symptoms and teaching children who happen upon a gun to not touch it, get away, and call for adult help. Most of this work has yet to be implemented at a scale at which community or population-wide benefits can be assessed.Footnote 9 Proof-of-concept studies are necessary and important to demonstrate the capacity to change behaviors that contribute to societal problems, but "prevention" can only be claimed when it is documented that cancer survival rates go up and the number of child gun accidents goes down at the community or population level.

Survival

Individual well-being behaviors improve quality of life for many, but probably do not determine the continuation of a way of life, or of life itself. That is the province of species-survival behaviors, which Skinner (1987) emphasized in his article, “Why We Are Not Acting to Save the World.”

Most thoughtful people would agree that the world is in serious trouble. A nuclear war could mean a nuclear winter that would destroy all living things; fossil fuels will not last forever, and many other critical resources are nearing exhaustion; the earth grows steadily less habitable; and all this is exacerbated by a burgeoning population that resists control. (p. 1)

Table 1 reveals much attention to individual well-being behaviors but relatively little to species-survival behaviors. If extensive evidence (emphasis on extensive) exists that research by behavior analysts has reduced nuclear proliferation, led to the adoption of renewable energy sources in replacement of fossil fuels, or mitigated unbridled population growth, to cite just a few examples, we missed it in our article search. At the same time, it should be recognized that no other scientific discipline has found the solution to these “super wicked problems” (Lazarus, 2009; Levin et al., 2012).

Empirical efforts by behavior analysts to address species-survival behaviors are limited in number and scope. Environmental stewardship, for example, is crucial to human survival (Chance & Heward, 2010; Cone & Hayes, 1977; Newland, 2013), but the work we found in this domain—on recycling, for example, or reducing driving or energy use—was modest in scale, in general involving small geographic areas and relatively few consumers or participants (for a review, see Gelino et al., 2021).Footnote 10 According to one well-known source, the top three solutions for reducing carbon dioxide are cutting food waste—from production to table—health and education, and plant-rich diets (Project Drawdown, n.d.). It is not difficult to imagine behavior analysts having something to offer with respect to these solutions, as well as to many other proenvironmental endeavors such as reducing water pollution or promoting sustainable farming practices and land-use strategies that reduce soil depletion or flood risk.

Assuming that we are correct that behavior analysts have made limited forays into the domain of species-survival behaviors, we are impelled to ask why. Drawing upon points raised in preceding sections, we can suggest at least three related contributing factors. First, lack of content knowledge: people who specialize exclusively in behavior analysis, by virtue of specialized training in a discipline, may know too little about species-survival behaviors to begin developing strategies to address them. Second, lack of experience with studying and implemented scaled or comprehensive interventions: ABA has historically emphasized the measurement and change of individual behavior (Baer et al., 1968), often in settings that are circumscribed spatially or functionally. This approach is compatible with many individual well-being behaviors, but not necessarily with species-survival behaviors, which demand a formidably larger scale of analysis. For example, what individual reinforcement-based strategies might be developed to combat nuclear proliferation (e.g., Marcattilio & Nevin, 1986; Nevin & Fuld, 1993)? Can individualized energy-use interventions be implemented for citizens of a city of several million individuals? In short, perhaps applied behavior scientists tend to shy away from topics that a traditional ABA skill set has not prepared them to investigate. Third, lack of effective contingencies: most well-trained applied behavior scientists are already fully engaged with other areas of study. Perhaps species-survival behaviors receive little study because professional reinforcement mechanisms favor attention to individual well-being behaviors in selected domains of study (e.g., Holland, 1978). These barriers may be intimidating, but they are not indomitable, especially in university or community settings where opportunities abound to make connections with colleagues who can benefit from our methods and technology, and compensate for the "lacks" we have identified.

Advice From the Founding Generation: The Implementation Imperative

Some 70 years ago, Skinner began sketching the notion that behavior analysis could be a general-purpose science relevant to the entire human experience. Taken as a whole, the lengthy inventory of domains in Table 1 suggests that his view was not too grandiose. ABA has something to contribute to just about every conceivable domain of socially significant behavior. But those who believe behavior analysis can help make the world a better, more humane place have their work cut out for them.

For inspiration about how to go forward, we look once again to ABA’s pioneers, who exhibited little hesitance when first transporting behavior analysis from laboratory to field. When presented with problems to which behavior analytic principles had not been applied, they created solutions as they went along. Although perhaps not of the scale of the concerns that confront us, those early problems could be intimidating, as Ted Ayllon observed of working with patients in a psychiatric hospital: "I didn't think it was going to work . . . with people [with whom] everybody's tried everything. . . . I would try it for myself to see. . . . But I didn't see how it could work" (quoted in Rutherford, 2009, p. 67). It is important to note that Ayllon plunged in anyway, resulting in an early demonstration of ABA transportability (Ayllon & Michael, 1959) and, eventually, the first token economy (Ayllon & Azrin, 1968). Helping create a more humane world, it seems obvious to say, requires no less of a can-do spirit.

Forty-five years ago, Don Baer, a member of that dauntless founding generation, said that "It is certainly time for applied behavior analysis to go beyond its current parameters. In fact, it has always been time to do that" (Baer, 1987, p. 335). Baer also warned us to expect a rocky path to an all-encompassing science of behavior, because:

(a) We are not empowered to try to solve those bigger remaining problems, (b) we have not yet made the analysis of how to empower ourselves to try them, and (c) we have not yet made the system-analytic task analyses that will prove crucial to solving those problems when we do empower ourselves sufficiently to try them. (Baer, 1987, p. 335)

Nonetheless, to Baer and his generation, the difficulty of a problem should have no bearing on one's willingness to try to solve it. As Ayllon did with his formidable psychiatric patients, plunging in was the only way to discover what might be accomplished.

Expanding out parameters and improving the individual and collective human experience will require comprehensive, sustained, high-rate efforts that give systematic attention to the tremendous breadth of socially significant behaviors and involve as many kinds of people as possible. It will require sharing our research with those best equipped to put it to use, and acquiring insights wherever they may be found, including through diverse research methods and the expertise of other disciplines. It will require addressing complex contingency systems that underly behaviors that threaten both individual well-being and humanity's future. “Ultimately, we need to develop truly systematic research programs that show the conditions under which interventions do, and do not, work in the various domains, and we need to scale up from our cherished n-of-3 designs to diverse populations” (M. Christopher Newland, personal communication). Those are tall orders. We do not pretend to know how to fill them; neither can we hesitate to try.

One model that has demonstrated many of these elements is positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS), mentioned above. It is both an "intervention" in its own right and a form of collaboration. The architects of PBIS recognized that "Despite their relevance to the solution of social problems, the behaviors of the relatively powerful (service providers, administrators, policymakers, and others 'upstream' to social problems) are rarely targeted for change" (Fawcett, 1991, p. 624). As of October 2019, PBIS had been in place as a whole-school approach in over 27,000 U.S. schools (Florida Positive Behavioral Interventions & Supports Project, n.d.). This scale of implementation is possible in part because PBIS was developed in close consultation with policy makers, school officials, and other stakeholders with decision-making authority in the educational system (Horner & Kittelman, 2021). We believe that programs of this scale and scope can be introduced to other realms, as is a goal of the Matrix Project as well as the Coalition of Behavioral Science Organizations. The Coalition states that its mission "is to expand . . . awareness [of what behavioral science has contributed to human well-being] and thereby support research and dissemination of culturally competent practices that enhance nurturing societies. . ." (Association for Behavior Analysis International, n.d.). Grounded in a cohesive set of guiding principles, this group may provide an engine for amplifying the message and impact of behavior analysis at a system level.

Turning ABA's widespread success in a few domains and exploratory developments in many others into a full suite of life-enhancing interventions will require a global team of thousands of behavior analysts young and old (but especially the young!) to pursue a difficult, decades-long journey. With respect to such challenges, Winston Churchill (1921) said,

Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb. (p. 544)

We hope Table 1 has placed evidence of the growth and scope and potential of applied behavior analysis in front of you. The history of this remarkable field is behind us; many wonderful discoveries and contributions lie ahead.