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TOWARD A CONSTRUCTIONAL APPROACH TO SOCIAL PROBLEMS: ETHICAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES RAISED BY APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS
Behavior and Social Issues, Spring 2002 by Goldiamond, Israel
Concepts of social power and its allocation are currently being applied to many social issues. In a related manner, questions are being increasingly raised with regard to the constitutional and human rights of prisoners, mental patients, and other subjects of institutional control.3 It is only to be expected, given this intellectual and social climate, that behavior modification procedures used in institutions (and elsewhere) should come under scrutiny. These procedures, needless to say, have not been singled out for such examination, since their examination is part of a larger inspection. Nevertheless, the use of terms such as "control," "social control," "conditioning" and the explicit relation of the procedures to a conceptual system derived from the animal laboratory seem to make them targets of choice, as well as of opportunity. Any reader is aware of the heat which these terms have generated when used simply as part of a conceptual system and applied in the abstract to human behavior. There is nothing new about it. What is new is the joining of the old philosophical arguments to the current use of applied behavior analysis. This confluence is compounded by the application of the term "behavior modification" to a variety of questionable institutional practices whose proponents refer to the conceptual system and its application as justification. A renewed challenge to the conceptual system and its applications is now under way. It threatens to affect opportunities for basic research as well as for the development of socially useful approaches and instruments. It is not, accordingly, a trivial matter of concern only to students and practitioners of behavior modification.
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An example of the heat generated by abstract application is given by the reviews of Skinner's (1971) book. With few exceptions, these were characterized by misunderstandings and less charitable distortions of human experimentation, behaviorism, and conditioning. No work, of course, is beyond criticism, but the reviews often told more of the postures of their authors than of the book reviewed. On a more practical level, Wexler (1973) has recently reviewed some relations between behavior modification and the law, with special emphasis on patients in mental hospitals. He has reflected some serious questions which have been raised about these procedures. Among these questions is the extent to which token economies, the potency of whose reinforcers may rely upon their deprivation, also deprive patients of their constitutional or human right to them. Wexler is not unmindful of the fact that elimination of such procedures may raise therapeutic problems. These questions and others he has noted have disturbed many members of the community of applied and other behavior analysts. These are genuine issues and Wexler has raised them with skill and understanding. His research has been thorough and his scholarship in both law and behavior analysis impressive. If the article is disturbing, it is nevertheless a relief to find a discussion of this nature free of the distortions, misunderstandings, or cant which have characterized too many other discussions. His review is, accordingly, an impressive and important contribution to the field and should be read for its major points, since only those germane to the present discussion will be considered here. The field of behavior analysis is fortunate to have come under scrutiny by a legal scholar who understands it.
One focus of Wexler's discussion, and the legal concern it reflects, is upon the constitutional issues (cf. Sen. Ervin, 1973) raised by agents of institutions who intentionally apply explicit behavior control techniques to what is, in essence, a captive population. This population, subject as it is to total institutional control, can be legally seen as under coercion and thereby deprived of constitutional rights to freedom to assent or dissent. The issue becomes critical when the arena for assent or dissent is submission to behavioral control procedures which may shape and control the direction of future assent, dissent and, indeed, choice itself. Philosophical counterarguments that all choice is so controlled are beside the point when viewed in terms of the stark constitutional problem involved. In question form it might be stated: because a person has been classified as a patient, has an institution or its agents been authorized to deprive him of rights to assent or dissent, especially in those areas where the issue is to accept or not accept the implantation of the institutional value system over one's own? Our political system is characterized by a well-justified suspicion of the potential for damage when powers are concentrated and has attempted to separate and diffuse powers, to institute checks and balances, along with other safeguards including due process of law. To what extent are there such checks in an institution, and has due process been extended to specify which behaviors are within the institution's purview and which are reserved to the patient? What institutional safe-guards other than personal integrity and the sloppiness of the system exist against potential abuse? And if behavior modification is providing the powerful means of efficient control some of its adherents (and opponents, as well) claim for it, the mitigating slack is removed.
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