By Matt Harrington, BCBA · Behaviorist Book Club · Research-backed answers for behavior analysts
RFT proposes that political polarization emerges through derived relational responding — particularly through evaluative and hierarchical frames that transform the psychological functions of political stimuli. When individuals repeatedly encounter stimuli (political figures, symbols, policy positions) in the context of in-group versus out-group relational frames, those stimuli acquire transformed functions that generate strong motivational and emotional responses consistent with hostility and avoidance. Critically, these transformations can occur without direct contact with the actual consequences of political behavior — the relational network itself is sufficient to drive the emotional and motivational states associated with polarized responding.
Evaluative frames (good/bad, right/wrong) and hierarchical frames (us/them, superior/inferior) are the most directly implicated. Evaluative framing transforms neutral political stimuli into sources of strong approach or avoidance functions. Hierarchical framing positions in-group and out-group members in relations of superiority and inferiority, generating dehumanizing stimulus functions that override typical social inhibitions against interpersonal aggression. Comparative frames (more extreme, less principled, more dangerous) amplify the evaluative gradient. Deictic perspective-taking frames are notably weak in polarized responding — difficulty taking the genuine psychological perspective of an out-group member maintains the relational network structures that drive polarization.
RFT-based analysis generates plausible intervention hypotheses, though the empirical research specifically targeting political polarization through RFT-based behavioral interventions is in early stages. Perspective-taking training that strengthens deictic framing — the ability to adopt the psychological perspective of out-group members — has potential to modify the relational networks that maintain polarized hostility. ACT-based defusion from evaluative language, which reduces the functional dominance of in-group/out-group relational networks, has demonstrated effects on psychological rigidity that are theoretically relevant. Translating these individual-level interventions to population-scale behavior change represents a significant research and practical challenge.
Social identity theory explains in-group/out-group behavior through constructs like self-esteem maintenance, social categorization, and group identification. RFT provides a more molecularly specified behavioral account: it identifies the specific relational operations — derived relational responding, transformation of stimulus functions, contextual control by evaluative cues — that produce the phenomena social identity theory describes. The RFT account is more directly actionable for intervention design because it specifies the behavioral mechanisms that could be targeted, rather than describing the outcomes of those mechanisms at a social-psychological level. The frameworks are not mutually exclusive; RFT offers a behavioral complement to the cognitive-social account.
Language is the primary vehicle through which polarization spreads and is maintained. Political language — slogans, labels, narratives, and in-group/out-group terminology — functions as contextual cues that activate relational networks and transform the stimulus functions of political content. RFT predicts that exposure to polarizing language, even without direct experience of political events, is sufficient to establish and maintain the motivational and emotional states associated with polarized responding. This explains why media environments saturated with partisan framing can maintain polarized behavioral repertoires in individuals who have no direct negative experience with out-group members.
Directly applicable clinical connections include: using the RFT analysis of evaluative framing to inform ACT-based defusion work with clients whose behavioral rigidity includes strong evaluative narratives about self and others; applying perspective-taking training grounded in deictic framing to clients with social cognition challenges; and using the analysis of transformation of stimulus functions to understand why clients engage in avoidance or aggression toward stimuli that have become aversively conditioned through relational networks rather than direct experience. The analysis also informs how BCBAs engage with professional disagreements within their field — recognizing tribal responding and modeling perspective-taking are professional applications of the same principles.
The empirical foundation for Harte's analysis draws on established RFT research demonstrating the role of derived relational responding in transformation of stimulus functions, as well as experimental work on evaluative conditioning through relational networks. Research published in journals such as JABA, The Psychological Record, and the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior has documented how derived relations change the functional properties of stimuli in ways that parallel the emotional and motivational changes associated with polarized responding. Harte's contribution is to apply this established RFT experimental base to the analysis of naturally occurring political behavior, which requires additional empirical validation in applied and naturalistic contexts.
Political polarization is relevant to behavior analysts for several reasons: the behavioral mechanisms implicated in polarization are the same mechanisms that behavior analysts study and target clinically; the behavioral science field itself is not immune to polarization dynamics and understanding them supports more rigorous professional discourse; and behavior analysis aspires to develop a comprehensive science of human behavior, which must eventually engage with social-level phenomena like polarization. Sessions like Harte's demonstrate the range and explanatory ambition of RFT as a framework, which strengthens practitioners' conceptual grounding regardless of whether direct clinical applications are immediately obvious.
Perspective-taking — operationalized in RFT as deictic framing — involves relating to events from multiple psychological viewpoints: I/you, here/there, now/then. Strong deictic framing repertoires allow individuals to genuinely simulate the psychological experience of others, which the RFT framework predicts would modify the stimulus functions of out-group members and reduce the aversive transformation that characterizes polarized responding. Conversely, weak deictic framing — an inability to genuinely adopt others' perspectives — maintains the relational network structures that drive hostility. Training perspective-taking skills, as ACT-based approaches do, may therefore have genuine depolarization effects at the individual level.
Harte's broader research applies RFT to complex socially significant behavioral phenomena, extending the framework's reach beyond traditional clinical and educational applications. His work exemplifies the translational science direction that applied RFT is pursuing — using the established experimental and conceptual foundations of RFT to analyze and ultimately intervene on behavior at the societal level. The EABA Summer School context positions this as advanced conceptual work for practitioners with substantial RFT literacy, modeling how theoretical frameworks in behavior analysis can be extended to address the full range of human behavioral challenges, including those that existing behavioral intervention models have not yet systematically addressed.
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All behavior-analytic intervention is individualized. The information on this page is for educational purposes and does not constitute clinical advice. Treatment decisions should be informed by the best available published research, individualized assessment, and obtained with the informed consent of the client or their legal guardian. Behavior analysts are responsible for practicing within the boundaries of their competence and adhering to the BACB Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts.