To love behavior analysis you have to doubt it.
As a kid during the Vietnam War, I saw patriotic people from my neighborhood volunteer to serve in the military, obviously at great peril. I also saw patriotic people from my neighborhood protest against the war, also at great peril (they were attacked by law enforcement, despised by their parents and neighbors, etc.). Thus I grew up with twin views of patriotism: on the one hand as committing deeply to a cause, and on the other hand as asking tough questions about the cause.
But let’s separate this from a military context, which tends to evoke strong emotions. Let’s say you work for a company that designs carbon monoxide detectors. The company has a new model that performed well in initial tests and needs to be marketed and sold so that (a) people can be protected from CO2 poisoning and (b) the company can be profitable. But what if you have concerns about the thoroughness of those initial tests? What if you worry that there are conditions under which the devices won’t register properly? If you’re right and say something, that looks bad for the company. But if you’re right and say nothing, people could die and the company’s very future could be threatened.
That is how I see my responsibility as a behavior analyst. I must be deeply committed to the discipline, but must also ask brutally hard questions about it. In the former case, I should do everything I can to spread the good word about our science.. In the latter case, I should do everything I can to be sure that science is on the right track.
Back in Vietnam days, anti-war protesters were often portrayed as anti-American, and countered with slogans like, “My country, right or wrong!” [see the Postscript] and “America, love it or leave it,” the latter being the title of a 1965 Ernest Tubb song that begins: “Well, I’m gettin’ mighty tired of seein’ hippies runnin’ wild/And burnin’ down the schools and steppin’ on the flag.” (it ends – duh – with ‘America, love it or leave it.”).
What the heck, if you’ve got a free 1:51 in your schedule, check the song out for yourself.
That, my friends, is commitment without critical evaluation. And “Hippies steppin’ on the flag” kind of captures the vibe that emerges when people ask hard questions about behavior analysis. If question-askers come from outside of behavior analysis, they’re called hostile or uninformed or not very bright. If a behavior analyst deviates from the party line to ask difficult questions, that person is called a heretic or “not a real behavior analyst.”
But here’s the thing. Sometimes, metaphorically speaking, the hippies are steppin’ on the flag for a reason. Sometimes people ask brutally hard questions about behavior analysis because, like the carbon monoxide detector mentioned above, it might not as good as it could or should be.
In fact, here’s a maxim to orient your thinking: The more an idea is accepted as “settled science,” the more it’s presented as “common knowledge” in our discipline, the more you should wonder if it’s really true, or if there’s more to be learned. “Heresies” keep us sharp, because nothing squelches curiosity like declaring,”Settled science!”
When you question the conventional wisdom, you’re helping behavior analysis stay curious and get better as a discipline. If you find holes in our data or theory, you may launch potentially valuable new lines of inquiry. And if the conventional wisdom you challenge ends up being verified, well, then we all have greater security in the integrity of what we (think we) know. That’s a win-win.
To illustrate the value of asking brutally hard questions, and perhaps to inspire you to ask your own, here are some of my favorite examples of “heretical” work. I am not saying that I necessarily agree with all conclusions in these examples, but I greatly value the critical thinking exercise that each of them represents. If you’re living in a behavioral echo chamber, that is, only reading stuff that endorses the conventional behavioral wisdom, consider boosting your behavior analysis “patriotism” by examining some heretical works like these.
Hippie… er, happy reading.
| conventional wisdom | “HIPPIE heresy” |
|---|---|
| Extinction means “withholding reinforcement.” | Lattal, K. A., St. Peter, C., & Escobar, R. (2013). Operant extinction: Elimination and generation of behavior. In G. J. Madden, et al., (Eds.), APA handbook of behavior analysis, Vol. 2. Translating principles into practice (pp. 77–107). American Psychological Association. Yes, the cessation of reinforcement can create extinction effects, just as your undergraduate textbook said. But extinction is way more complicated than that, and there are multiple ways to create it. |
| Cognitive concepts are intellectually bankrupt. | Zentall, T. R. (2001). The case for a cognitive approach to animal learning and behavior. Behavioural processes, 54(1-3), 65-78. Tom Zentall (see also here and here) argues against treating cognitive ideas as “true,” but for embracing their considerable heuristic value in spawning valuable research questions — questions that conventional behavioristic perspectives, he maintains, would not suggest. |
| Reinforcement strengthens behavior. | Shahan, T. A. (2017). Moving beyond reinforcement and response strength. The Behavior Analyst, 40, 107-121. Your textbooks told you that reinforcement strengthens behavior. Tim Shahan says, “nope,” and provides a lot of evidence to back that up. |
| Relational Frame Theory (RFT) triggered a “post-Skinnerian” revolution in behavior analysis theory and research. | Schlinger Jr, H. D., & Blakely, E. (2024). A mediational theory of equivalence relations and transformation of function. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 122(2), 207-223. Sure, a lot of valuable research is associated with RFT, but Schlinger and Blakely ask, in effect, whether RFT is really necessary to explain what it shows us. What if Skinnerian ideas were sufficient all along? |
| At each stage of skill acquisition, behavior should meet an empirical mastery criterion before the next stage begins. | Wong, K. K., Fienup, D. M., Richling, S. M., Keen, A., & Mackay, K. (2022). Systematic review of acquisition mastery criteria and statistical analysis of associations with response maintenance and generalization. Behavioral Interventions, 37(4), 993-1012. Dan Fienup checked for evidence supporting a widely-embraced “best practice,” and found it threadbare. So he launched a research program to ask when and how mastery criteria matter. This review article tells some of the story. |
Postscript
“My Country, right or wrong” is thought to be based on Commodore Stephen Decatur’s 1816 celebratory toast following a naval victory: “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong!” The comment was jingoistically misinterpreted even in its day. According to the Hampton Roads Naval Museum, “Decatur’s toast is not a call for undying, blind patriotic devotion to one’s country as the expression is often used in modern political discourse. It is rather a prayer for guidance, wisdom, and temperance in foreign relations.”
In other words, Decatur tilted at least as much toward the critical evaluation component of patriotism as the commitment component…. as has been true with many other distinguished observers:
- 1790: Reflecting on a decrease in civility during the French Revolution, Edmund Burke wrote, “To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.”
- 1871: U.S. Senator Cal Shurz proclaimed in a speech, “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.”
- 1907: Author G.K. Chesterton wrote, “My country, right or wrong’ is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying ‘My mother, drunk or sober.’ …No doubt if a decent man’s mother took to drink he would share her troubles to the last; but to talk as if he would be in a state of gay indifference as to whether his mother took to drink or not is certainly not the language of men who know the great mystery.”
- 1969: Author Patrick O’Brien wrote, “Patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.”