Contingencies and metacontingencies: Toward a synthesis of behavior analysis and cultural materialism.

Glenn (1988) wrote a theory paper. He asked: what if we blend behavior analysis with cultural materialism? The goal was a single lens for seeing how whole cultures keep or drop habits.

He coined 'metacontingencies.' These are the big, slow environmental events that reward or kill cultural practices like recycling, voting, or hand-flapping rules.

The paper argues that behavior analysts can jump from one kid to whole towns. Track the metacontingencies and you can predict which group habits will spread, survive, or vanish.

In short, contingencies shape one person's behavior; metacontingencies shape the group's.

Hart et al. (1980) took the idea and ran. They gave step-by-step rules for building community interventions that fit local metacontingencies. Where Glenn (1988) drew the map, B et al. built the road.

Coffey et al. (2020) zoom back in. Their IISCA reviews show single-case contingencies still matter. The two views nest: IISCA handles the child, metacontingencies handle the classroom culture that keeps the IISCA results alive.

Dallery et al. (2015) seem to clash. They push digital tech as the scaler, not cultural analysis. But the gap is fake: apps are just efficient metacontingency detectors—real-time data streams that spot which group practices get rewarded.

Next time you write a behavior plan, zoom out. Ask what school or home rewards keep the problem alive. Change those group rules—maybe staff attention, maybe peer laughs—and your single-case intervention will stick instead of fading. You already do FBAs; now do a quick 'cultural FBA' and target the metacontingencies too.