Toward an Integration of Behaviorism and
G. ANNE BOGAT AND LEONARD A. JASON
The field of behavioral community psychology has emerged during the last 25 years as a subspecialty of community psychology and applied behavior analysis. It attempts to under- stand and change community problems through the application of behavioral theory and technology. The field has spawned several textbooks (e.g., Glenwick & Jason, 1980; Nietzel, Winett, MacDonald, & Davidson, 1977), a special issue of Journal of Community Psychology (Glenwick & Jason, 1984), and a compendium of articles originally appearing in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, entitled Behavior Analysis in the Community 1968-1986 (Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 1987). In addition, several recent chapters elabo- rate the contributions that behavioral researchers can make to community psychology (e.g., Burgoyne & Jason, 1991; Fawcett, 1990). These different sources present compelling theoreti- cal and empirical data to demonstrate the utility and scope of such an approach; yet most contain one of two types of caveats. The first expresses regret that behavioral community psychology has yet to tackle large societal problems. Some authors (e.g., Fawcett, Mathews, &
Fletcher, 1980) even suggest that there may be insurmountable obstacles to using behavioral technologies to promote far-reaching community change. The second is that, unfortunately, a synthesis of community approaches and behavioral technology has been delayed because of difficulties delineating turf, choosing problems best suited for a collaboration between the two approaches, and agreeing upon definitions of concepts (Glenwick & Jason, 1993).
These two caveats make quite different points as to the nature of integrating behaviorism
*This is a translation of a "fragment" from the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus.
G. ANNE BOGAT • Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824.
LEONARD A. JASON· Department of Psychology, De Paul University, Chicago, Illinois 60614.
Handbook of Community Psychology, edited by Julian Rappaport and Edward Seidman. Kluwer Academic {Plenum Publishers, New York, 2000.
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with community psychology; however, the conclusion reached is the same: To date, although the behavioral perspective has been adopted by some community psychologists, it has not been wholeheartedly embraced by the dominant ecological model (Duffy & Wong, 1996;
Jason & Bogat, 1983; Jason & Crawford, 1991; Jason & Glenwick, 1984). At this point in the history of community psychology, this state of affairs seems perplexing. This chapter will examine why, to date, there has been such minimal collaboration between the two fields, and how a more meaningful partnership might best be effected. Any discussion of the difficulties integrating these two approaches must necessarily consider three separate aspects of behavior- ism: its philosophy concerning human behavior, the theories that result from this philosophy, and the technology used to test these theories.
PHILOSOPHICAL DIFFERENCES
One of the major determinants in the formation of community psychology was a basic discontent with the asocial nature of psychology. [See Sarason's (1981) penetrating analysis of clinical psychology's pertinacious pursuit of the "self-contained" individual.] Early behavior- ists anticipated community psychologists by stressing the importance of the context of behavior. Kantor consistently admonished psychologists for ignoring the role of the environ- ment. "Despite the fact that psychological events always consist of fields, psychologists persist in locating their data in or at the organism" (Kantor, 1958, p. 83). His interbehavioral psychology takes its name from his insistence on the importance of understanding individuals' behavior as "interbehavior" with the environment. Skinner's radical behaviorism also was concerned with the environment and its influence on behavior, although he conceded that" ...
the selective role of the environment in shaping and maintaining the behavior of the individual is only beginning to be recognized and studied" (1971, p. 25). Finally, the early rhetoric of the applied behaviorists embraced sociological theories concerned with the influence of culture and society on behavior. For instance, Ullmann and Krasner (1969), in their behavioral approach to abnormal behavior, focused quite strongly, at least in their introductory com- ments, on the importance of labeling theory.
Thus, the behaviorists, with their emphasis on studying environments and person- environment interactions, helped legitimize these pursuits within the academic community, and hence paved the way for community psychologists. Historically, then, the link between community psychology and behaviorism should have been a natural one; however, there are, as will be discussed below, philosophical differences that have hindered collaboration.
For some years, the field of clinical psychology debated the merits of integrating behavior therapy with more traditional, psychoanalytic therapies. Messer and Winokur (1980) sug- gested that, in part, the differences between these therapeutic approaches emanated from contrasting assumptions about viewpoints and visions of reality. Portions of their argument also highlight the philosophical differences in community psychology between behaviorism and the mainstream community-ecological model. First, behavioral and community psychol- ogy approaches tend to stress contrasting viewpoints on reality (taken from Rychlak, 1968).
Behaviorists tend to develop ideas about the world based on their "vantage point as observer, regardless of the subject's viewpoint" (Messer & Winokur, 1980, p. 822). In contrast, community-ecological psychology approaches emphasize respect for cultural relativity; an emphasis on collaborative, rather than a merely professional, relationship with settings;
implementing programs responsive to community needs; etc. All of these values uphold the importance of each person's competency, not just the professional's, in defining and solving problems.
Kelly and colleagues (1987, 1990, 1998; Kingry-Westergaard & Kelly, 1990) have pro- vided detailed and insightful recommendations for collaborative relationships between social scientists and citizens. In one paper Kelly (1987) asks "Why worry about creating a collabora- tive relationship or creating social settings?" His answer is instructive:
I believe that the very process of creating social settings is a process which can be empowering and thereby preventive. When the professional initiates a process where citizens actively co-design service delivery, citizens are validated for taking action that is synonymous with what is known about the practice of good mental health. They are identifying resources, receiving support while creating resources, and having the autonomy and free choice to use these resources for the development of their own needs and aspirations (p. 4; emphasis in the original)
In principle, behaviorists could easily support the above-stated viewpoint of community psychology. In practice, however, behaviorists often frame reality differently. Behavioral community psychologists, like community psychologists, seek to enhance those mediational factors that enable people to control their lives. However, behavioral community psycholo- gists also believe that certain setting and consequence events, some of which people are not even aware, can and should be modified so that deleterious influences on human behavior are reduced. In other words, a person's recognition of the aversive consequences of a particular problem is not the sole reason for motivating a change. Behaviorists feel comfortable creating change by controlling reinforcers and contingencies.
This viewpoint is also manifested by the written descriptions of behavioral research.
Willems (1974) suggested that the behaviorist's "skill and ingenuity in picking crucial behaviors and deciding upon category systems needs to be made more public and explicit and it needs to be subjected to study. It is, after all, diagnosis par excellence" (p. 20; emphasis in the original). This is only one piece of important information (from a community psycholo- gist's perspective) that is missing. Behaviorists rarely chronicle how they came to define a behavior or an environment as a problem (were they independent observers, agents of the setting, agents of concerned citizens?) or how a particular intervention was decided upon (were persons other than the investigators involved in planning and implementing the inter- vention?). The absence of these types of person and setting descriptions cannot represent a total lack of interest in the collaborator's perspective (applied research cannot be conducted without some contact with persons in the setting), but it does indicate the behaviorist's tendency to formulate a problem and its solution from the observer's vantage point.
For example, in a series oftruly innovative studies, Twardosz, Cataldo, and Risley (1974) examined the influence of an open environmental design in a child-care center. A community psychologist might describe this research as the creation of an alternative setting. As part of this narrative, the community psychologist would detail the process of collaboration between a group of university researchers and the staff of a daycare center that resulted in optimal learning and supervision environments for children. However, Twardosz et al. do not concep- tualize their research as the creation of alternative settings. They do not mention how the collaboration was enacted or the difficulties establishing and monitoring environmental changes. The reader is provided only a thumbnail sketch of the setting; the major portion of the paper describes the interventions and documents changes in the children's behavior.
Returning to Messer and Winokur's argument, behavioral psychologists and traditional psychologists differ not only on their viewpoint of reality, but also on their basic visions of reality, of which there are four: the romantic,l the ironic, the tragic, and the comic.
[These four visions are based on Schafer's (1976) reworking of Frye 's (1957) four mythic forms. According to Schafer (1976), the romantic vision is "a perilous, heroic, individualistic journey ... which ends after crucial struggles with exaltation" (p. 31). We believe that neither behaviorism nor community psychology adheres to a romantic vision.
The ironic vision ... is characterized chiefly as a readiness to seek out internal contradictions, ambi- guities, and paradoxes .... The tragic vision emphasizes [that] ... conflict is endemic in life; it cannot be eliminated, but only confronted with the muted hope of partial mastery .... The comic vision is in many ways antithetical to the tragic: It emphasizes the familiar, controllable, and predictable aspects of situations and people. Conflict is viewed as centered in situations, and it can be eliminated by effective manipulative action or via the power of positive thinking (Messer & Winokur, 1980, p. 823).
Although both behaviorism and community psychology encompass some aspects of the ironic, the tragic, and the comic, behaviorists' predominant vision of reality most closely approxi- mates the comic, whereas some combination of ironic and tragic visions is the regnant per- spective of most community psychologists.
Perhaps community psychology's ironic vision is best exemplified by Rappaport's (1981) exhortation for community psychologists to pursue paradox. He suggested that all social problems are inherently paradoxical; they contain internal antinomies that cannot be resolved.
Community psychologists need to search out these paradoxes and emphasize the aspect of the social problem that is being ignored. Paradoxes imply ambiguity. With a historical tradition specifically founded on an opposition to conceptualizations that result in ambiguous outcome criteria, behaviorists do not embrace the ironic vision.
The tragic vision in community psychology is closely tied to the ironic vision. Rappaport stated that the purpose of community psychology is not to find the one best solution to a social problem. "I do not believe that there are no solutions, only that given the nature of social problems there are no permanent solutions and no single 'this is the only answer possible' solutions, even at any moment in time" (Rappaport, 1981, p. 9). Because all social problems, by definition, are paradoxical, they require divergent types of solutions. Behaviorists believe there are specific, convergent solutions to target problems and that, in time, effective behav- ioral strategies will be discovered for currently insolvable problems. (Some writers qualify this by saying the social change will be at microlevels of society or "first-order" change.) This perspective is at the heart of behaviorists' comic vision.
The merit in this approach is obvious. Behaviorists can take exceedingly complicated problems and construe them in such a way as to create manageable and researchable topics.
"What is chaos to others yields functional and critical dimensions of behavior to them [behaviorists]" (Willems, 1974, p. 20). But this propensity for ascertaining simple problems and solutions in the midst of complex social problems worries community psychologists.
Sarason (1972) illustrated such reservations when he criticized Skinner's theory, not for being wrong, but for being incomplete.
These unstated differences in the viewpoint and visions of reality between behaviorism and mainstream community psychology underpin some community psychologists' skepticism concerning the applicability of behaviorism to major social problems. However, it is also possible that these differences can serve as an important adjunct to the dominant community- ecological model. Such integration could occur both at the theoretical and technological levels of research.
THEORETICAL ISSUES
When discussing philosophical differences between behaviorism and the dominant com- munity model, we purposely blurred all distinctions between different behavioral theories.
However, within the behavioral perspective, and thus within behavioral community psychol- ogy, there are two major paradigms: behavior analysis and behavior therapy. Behavior
analysts (BAs) adhere to a more strictly operant approach, are more apt to collect time-series data, and are more closely identified with the work ofB. F. Skinner. Behavior therapists (BTs) value cognitive events, use traditional, experimental designs as well as time-series designs, and are more closely linked with such early theorists as Wolpe, Lazarus, and Eysenck. Hence, the theoretical differences between these two approaches can be vast. BAs control and influ- ence behavior by altering either the antecedents (the environment or setting) or the conse- quences (rewards or punishments) associated with them. They eschew the notion ofhypotheti- cal constructs; their theory is based on the understanding and manipulation of observable, quantifiable events. In contrast, BTS are willing to consider the theoretical importance of unobservable phenomena. They suggest that cognitive processes (e.g., feelings, beliefs) help to explain the individual's interaction with his or her environment, and are thus important to modify.
Either a BA or a BT approach can be used to conceptualize a particular community problem. For example, a BA approach at the organizational level has been effective in drastically reducing passive smoke in public settings (Jason & Liotta, 1982). This study was undertaken in two phases. In the first, "no smoking" signs were posted in one section of a school cafeteria. The signs, used as prompts or stimuli, moderately reduced the number of persons smoking in that area of the cafeteria. In the second phase of the study, the prompts were maintained and consequence controls were added. Those persons smoking in this section were told: "This is a non-smoking area, please don't smoke here." The addition of the consequence control resulted in a dramatic reduction in the number of persons smoking in that section. Following this demonstration project, the cafeteria's employees instituted the conse- quence controls. Significant reductions in smoking were maintained over a three-month follow-up period.
A BT framework can be used to combat the problem of smoking at a community level (Jason, McMahon, Salina, Hedeker, Stockton, Dunson, & Kimball, 1995; Jason, Salina, McMahon, Hedeker, & Stockton, 1997). Following a media intervention, 14 one-hour meet- ings were held for the subsequent six months at companies in the greater Chicago metropolitan area. Meetings were first scheduled relatively frequently, when abstainers needed the most support, and then gradually reduced. In addition, participants were able to earn money for quitting and remaining abstinent (Jason et aI., 1995). At the 24-month follow-up, 38% of the participants who received support groups and incentives were abstinent, compared to 22% of those receiving support groups only (Jason et aI., 1997).
Behavioral theory has been used to address many other community problems besides smoking (e.g., preventing child injury, Peterson & Mori, 1985; reducing speeding and acci- dents, Van Houten et al., 1985; decreasing residential energy consumption, Winett, Leckliter, Chinn, Stohl, & Love, 1985; increasing immunization of preschool children, Yokley &
Glenwick, 1984; increasing safe sex behavior, Winett, 1993; increasing blood donations, Ferrari & Jason, 1990; and helping parents reduce their children's television watching, Jason &
Hanaway, 1997). In fact, one of the most widely implemented primary-prevention programs helps to develop social problem-solving skills among children-an approach very much within the rubric of a cognitive behavioral paradigm (Weissberg & Greenberg, 1997).
Despite all the evidence that behavioral theories can be used to conceptualize social problems, two widely held misperceptions about behavioral theories may continue to impede constructive dialogue between those advocating a behavioral approach and those espousing the dominant community model: Behavioral theories are only relevant for individual-level interventions, and are too narrowly focused to offer solutions for large and multifaceted social problems.
The primary criticism directed against behavioral theory is that is can only describe individual behavior. It is true that, at present, most behavioral community interventions have been conceptualized at an individual level; however, this is not proof that the theory cannot accommodate higher-order change.
For example, many behavioral community psychologists have studied the problem of litter. The general tactic of this research is the institution of feedback and reinforcement techniques that encourage individuals to dispose oftheir trash properly (see Geller, Winett, &
Everett, 1982). This literature has been faulted for being fairly insignificant, as well as for focusing at an individual, tertiary level of analysis (Glenwick & Jason, 1993). We believe that behavioral theory can be employed to reframe the issue of litter so that there will be general agreement as to its significance as a social problem, the level of analysis will be the community or society, and the level of intervention will be primary prevention. Arguments analogous to the one that follows could be applied to other social problems that behavioral theory might address.
In the early 1970s, when the first behavioral study on litter was published, few would have envisioned the scenario that occurred in 1986-1987, when a tugboat towing a garbage barge spent nine months looking for a state (six turned it down) or foreign country (three declined) in which to dump its 3000 tons of refuse. As the century draws to a close, waste management has become a problem of staggering magnitude, and behaviorists appear almost prescient in their early attention to this problem.
Mainstream community psychologists would agree that waste disposal is an important problem; however, they would not necessarily concur that theory and tertiary interventions focused on individual citizens can solve it. The behaviorists construed the solution as one of encouraging proper disposal rather than as one of (a) encouraging less extraneous packaging, (b) developing new, non-biodegradable, and dangerous by-products of packaging, or (c) manu- facturing goods of superior quality that can be recycled and repaired. These solutions are clearly more difficult to research and influence; interventions for their implementation require primary prevention strategies to create more broad-based social changes.
The determination of whether a problem is important rests more with one's philosophical perspective than with some objective truth. For the behaviorist, who maintains a comic vision, a valid intervention emphasis is litter itself. This focus creates an unambiguous, "familiar, controllable, and predictable" problem amenable to behavioral theory and technology. For the community psychologist, who adheres to a tragic/ironic vision, litter and its disposal would be viewed as only one component of a multifaceted ecological system. In examining the entire system, the community psychologists might note that an intervention focused on points a-c in the previous paragraph might ultimately have a larger impact on waste disposal than would an individual-focused intervention. Further, the community psychologist would be concerned about the unintended effects of an individual-centered intervention; for example, would it thwart or prevent organizational and societal change because public sentiment comes to assume that the genesis of the problem is the individual, not society?
An integration of all three visions of reality creates a context in which the problem of litter, and the behavioral community psychology interventions directed toward it, have signifi- cance. Weick (1984), in detailing the importance of small wins when approaching social problems, suggests a way of integrating these visions. He provides examples of successful small endeavors (e.g., Alcoholics Anonymous, the evolution of gender neutrality in American language) as examples of changes that may be construed as minor, but when taken together, show results. His description of the politics of small wins evokes the comic viewpoint: