Some reciprocal roles between behavior analysis and institutional economics in post-darwinian science.
Behavior analysis can serve as the engine for institutional economics and other social sciences.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Eagle (1985) wrote a theory paper. The author asked: can our science of behavior plug the gaps in institutional economics? The paper maps how reinforcement, punishment, and rule-governed behavior can explain markets, firms, and laws.
The goal was to show that behavior analysis gives other social sciences the mechanistic engine they lack.
What they found
The paper argues that behavior principles can unify economics and the rest of social science. Concepts like reinforcement value and contingency-shaped behavior can explain why institutions grow, change, or fail.
No data were collected; the piece is a blueprint for exporting our tools.
How this fits with other research
Crosbie (1993) extends the call. Where Eagle (1985) focused on economics, J urges behavior analysts to court many fields and to spotlight verbal behavior to gain influence.
Bauman (1991) shows the idea in action. The paper uses behavioral-economics tools to set drug policy, proving the 1985 export plan can work outside the lab.
Lerman (2024) is the modern sequel. It turns the 1985 dream into a step-by-step plan for training teachers, police, and nurses in our methods.
Why it matters
You already use reinforcement charts and token boards. This paper says you can export the same logic to whole organizations. When a school wants a new discipline policy, speak their language: show how reinforcement loops shape teacher and student behavior. Frame your consultation as filling the mechanistic gap they sense but cannot name. The 1985 vision, plus the newer blueprints, gives you permission—and vocabulary—to lead outside the clinic.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Behavior analysis and institutional economics are viewed as having common origins in the early 20th century effort to benefit from the conceptual revolution spurred by Darwin's synthesis. Institutional economics, initiated by Thorstein Veblen, appears to have failed to develop a progressive scientific technology, while behavior analysis has done so. It is suggested that institutional economics has been held back by lack of a synthesizing scientific mechanism that elucidates the relation between technological and ceremonial processes, the two cultural forces described by Veblen. The theory of institutional economist C. E. Ayres, built on Veblen's distinction, is used to clarify the concepts of technological and ceremonial processes for the reader. An analysis of the behavioral processes that might underlie the cultural processes described by Veblen/Ayres suggests that the experimental analysis of behavior has provided concepts that might function as a synthesizing mechanism for the social sciences and, in particular, institutional economics. The Veblen/Ayres dichotomy, now seen in terms of underlying behavioral processes, is used to examine the field of behavior analysis in terms of its origins, its relation to psychology and its current state. The paper concludes with a few practical suggestions as to how behavior analysts might work to enhance survival.
The Behavior analyst, 1985 · doi:10.1007/BF03391909