Resolving Barriers to an Applied Science of the Human Condition: Rule Governance and the Verbal Behavior of Applied Scientists.

Abstract

Rules / verbal behavior governing applied behavior scientists since Skinner have achieved great success resolving challenges experienced by individuals with severe developmental and intellectual disabilities. We extend prior work by Dixon, Belisle, Rehfeldt, and Root (2018, "Why We Are Still Not Acting to Save the World: The Upward Challenge of a Post-Skinnerian Behavior Science," Perspectives on Behavior Science, 41, 241-267) by suggesting that many of these rules, applied inflexibly, are unlikely to resolve significant problems experienced by humans without these same intellectual challenges (i.e., most humans). Particularly, methodological models of human behavior that ignore both private events and advances in relational frame theory and that favor a bottom-up inductive theorizing have not, and we argue cannot, address uniquely human challenges. Instead, we propose alternative rules developed in part within contextual behavior science that are more consistent with Skinner's radical behaviorism than are current approaches and that may expand the scope of applied behavior science. Only by adapting our own public and private verbal behavior as applied scientists can we move toward solving the wide range of challenges within the human condition.