Normative Emotional Responses to Behavior Analysis Jargon or How Not to Use Words to Win Friends and Influence People
Behavior-analysis words feel colder than everyday speech—swap them for plain terms to keep clients listening.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team asked the adults to rate how pleasant 30 common behavior-analysis words sound.
Words like "extinction," "punishment," and "mand" were mixed with everyday words and general science words.
Each person gave a warmth score from 1 (cold) to 5 (warm) for every word on the list.
What they found
The ABA words scored lowest. They felt harsher than plain English and even harsher than general science terms.
Effect size was large: the gap was big enough that you would notice it in real conversation.
How this fits with other research
Freedman (2016) warned us a year earlier that leading with jargon turns people off. Critchfield et al. (2017) now give the hard numbers that prove the warning was right.
Briscoe et al. (1975) showed community boards can learn to speak in precise behavioral terms. The new data say we should not ask the public to speak that way; instead we should translate for them.
Gray et al. (2026) train students to run BST sessions. The jargon study reminds us to coach those same students to drop the tech talk when they greet parents.
Why it matters
If parents hear "punishment" and flinch, they may walk away before they hear your plan. Swap the word for "brief removal of screen time" and keep the science, lose the sting. You protect rapport and still stay evidence-based.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
It has been suggested that non-experts regard the jargon of behavior analysis as abrasive, harsh, and unpleasant. If this is true, excessive reliance on jargon could interfere with the dissemination of effective services. To address this often discussed but rarely studied issue, we consulted a large, public domain list of English words that have been rated by members of the general public for the emotional reactions they evoke. Selected words that behavior analysts use as technical terms were compared to selected words that are commonly used to discuss general science, general clinical work, and behavioral assessment. There was a tendency for behavior analysis terms to register as more unpleasant than other kinds of professional terms and also as more unpleasant than English words generally. We suggest possible reasons for this finding, discuss its relevance to the challenge of deciding how to communicate with consumers who do not yet understand or value behavior analysis, and advocate for systematic research to guide the marketing of behavior analysis.
Behavior Analysis in Practice, 2017 · doi:10.1007/s40617-016-0161-9