TOWARD A CONSTRUCTIONAL APPROACH TO SOCIAL PROBLEMS: ETHICAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES RAISED BY APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS

Political experience also provides examples. Certain policies represent common agreement and little conflict. In other cases, conflicting interests cite ethical principles in their support. In the economic arena, certain groups support decrease in taxes, while others advocate their increase. Ethical principles are cited. In the busing controversy, coercion in the form of requiring parents to send children to schools outside their districts is justified by reference to the unethical consignment of children to inferior education by virtue of residence in neighborhoods whose choice was constrained by exclusion from others. In each of these cases, the ethics are relatable to the processes whereby decisions are made. To the extent that conflicting interests are allowed their due access to these processes, the outcome can be considered ethically arrived at.

An example of the violations of such process will now be presented to bring the issues into bolder relief. Moral indignation was invoked to support the violation.76

ETHICS OF ALTERNATIVE SYSTEMS

A colleague at a different university showed us a deeply moving film. The heroine was an institutionalized primary-grade girl. She was a head-banger, so a padded football helmet was put on her head. Because she could take it off, her hands were tied down in her crib. She kept tossing her neck and tore out her hair at every opportunity. She accordingly had a perpetually bruised face on a hairless head, with a neck almost as thick as that of a horse. She was nonverbal.

My colleague and his staff carefully planned a program for her, using all kinds of reinforcers. She was remanded to their program, but persisted in her typical behavior. In desperation, the ultimate weapon was unwrapped. When she tossed her head, my colleague yelled "Don't!", simultaneously delivering a sharp slap to her cheek. She subsided for a brief period, tossed again, and the punishment was delivered. My colleague reports that less than a dozen slaps were ever delivered and that the word "Don't!" yelled even from across the room was effective. Its use was shortly down to once a week and was discontinued in a few weeks. In the meantime, the football helmet was removed and the girl began to eat at the table. She slept in a regular bed. Her hair grew out, and she turned out to he a very pretty little blond girl with delicate features and a delicate neck. In less than a year, she started to move toward joining a group of older girls whose behavior, it was hoped, she would model. She smiled often.

The initial institution and her parents discovered that she had been slapped. They immediately withdrew her from the custody of my colleague's staff. The last part of the film shows her back at the institution. She is strapped down in her crib. Her hands are tied to a side. She is wearing a football helmet. Her hair is torn out, her face is a mass of bruises and her neck is almost as thick as that of a horse.

This ABA experiment does not address itself primarily to the efficacy of my colleague's procedures, since his was the B procedure which tests the A's. It does speak for the efficacy of the standard procedures which are applied in many other institutions.