Behavior analysis and social constructionism: some points of contact and departure.
Behavior analysis and social constructionism share three core rules, so we can team up instead of argue.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Bryan and team compared two views that usually fight: behavior analysis and social constructionism.
They read both sets of writings side-by-side and listed where the views overlap and where they split.
What they found
The two camps actually share three big rules. They both reject hidden mind stuff, treat words as actions, and admit their own limits.
The paper shows these shared rules mean the camps can work together, not compete.
How this fits with other research
Parker (1984) did the same bridge-building earlier, but inside behaviorism. It linked Skinner’s radical behaviorism with Kantor’s interbehavioral psychology, proving that ‘rival’ behaviorist schools can merge.
Kirby et al. (2022) took the idea further. They turned the shared rule of ‘admit your limits’ into a step-by-step tactic called cultural reciprocity that helps BCBAs partner with other professionals today.
Malagodi (1986) previewed the move outward. That paper told behaviorists to study culture, setting the stage for Bryan’s later step of talking to social constructionists.
Why it matters
If you supervise RBTs or work on teams, use the paper’s three shared rules as a cheat sheet. When a colleague says, ‘Behaviorists ignore context,’ you can reply, ‘We actually treat language as context-shaped action, just like you.’ This small shift opens doors for joint grants, parent training, or policy work without selling out our science.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Social constructionists occasionally single out behavior analysis as the field of psychology that most closely resembles the natural sciences in its commitment to empiricism, and accuses it of suffering from many of the limitations to science identified by the postmodernist movement (e.g., K. J. Gergen, 1985a; Soyland, 1994). Indeed, behavior analysis is a natural science in many respects. However, it also shares with social constructionism important epistemological features such as a rejection of mentalism, a functional-analytic approach to language, the use of interpretive methodologies, and a reflexive stance on analysis. The current paper outlines briefly the key tenets of the behavior-analytic and social constructionist perspectives before examining a number of commonalties between these approaches. The paper aims to show that far from being a nemesis to social constructionism, behavior analysis may in fact be its close ally.
The Behavior analyst, 2003 · doi:10.1007/BF03392077