Contributions of contingencies in modern societies to “Privacy” in the behavioral relations of cognition and emotion

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine specific features of modern individualistic societies that contribute to "emotions" and "cognitions" becoming a matter of privacy. Although some behavior analysts identify emotions and cognitions as "private events," we argue with Skinner (1945) that cognitions and emotions are relations among events and that their origin is in public events in the contingencies of reinforcement maintained by other people. Guided by Elias (1939/1996), we suggest that the shift from feudal economies to market economies involved the increasing individualization of society's members. This individualizing process includes the socially maintained contingencies that bring some verbal responses under control of private stimulation and reduce the magnitude of some verbal responses to a covert level. Behavioral relations in which either stimuli or responses (or both) cannot be observed by others set the stage for a concept of "privacy." Changes in societal contingencies that gave rise to individualization and the attribution of privacy to cognitions and emotions are suggested to include the following: (a) increasing frequency of individual consequences that have no apparent or direct relevance to the group; (b) increasing numbers of concurrent contingencies and choice requirements; (c) conflicts between immediate and delayed consequences for the individual; and (d) conflicts between consequences for the individual and for the group.