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

A third issue relates to further analysis of contingencies of coercion and contingencies of consent, and to development and assessment of resources which bear on these.

A fourth issue relates to distinctions between custodial and therapeutic (correctional, educational) functions of institutions.

Finally, we have to examine the various social systems involved in the various contingency relations whose alternatives supply the matrix for behaviors of social concern. Among these is the referent social system (parent, community) which together with the referent client (child, patient) interact to maintain costly patterns for each. The change agent may work with the system to change its repertoire, or he may work with the client to change his repertoire, or both. The ethics of contracting with one to change the other is questionable. Nevertheless, such change of the other does occur. This is because there is a distinction between changing one's behavior and changing one's repertoire. Working with the client to change his behavior, or his aspirations, has all the dubious properties of asking him to "adapt." Working with the system to change its treatment, or its expectations has all the dubious properties of asking it to "yield." Both client and system will resist, especially if they consider their requirements to be reasonable. However working with the client to change his repertoire (or the system to change its repertoire, etc.) requires a contingency analysis: the client attempts to analyze what the system has or can produce (analyzing his socially produced reinforcers), which it has been withholding. He may analyze what he might do which would reinforce the system when it yields these. He may try to set up conditions which increase the likelihood. The analytic and change procedures are intertwined. Stated otherwise, he learns how to change the relations between himself and the referent system. The referent system similarly learns how to change the relations between it and the client. In a successful program, both change, in directions which satisfy both. Research would be directed toward the necessary conditions and programs.

These research implications derive from the research requirements of the constructional models discussed. Their pursuit can not be divorced from ethical practice. Research on behavior which meets high scientific and technological standards also meets high ethical standards. These are all human endeavors.

In the process of seeking to make explicit what has been implicit, of seeking explicitly to develop constructional solutions which alleviate human distress by preempting it, if we open our eyes to the constructional evidence around us, we shall discover the existence of a large number of colleagues working in the same direction, and who have developed solutions we can share. Many may have developed explicit systems which seek to alleviate human distress by eliminative procedures. However, they have often developed constructional solutions of elegance and power, often obscured by the construct requirements of a pathological orientation. We, they, and society can only benefit by making explicit what is implicit in this area. And each of us can best do so, I submit, by contributing those skills with which we are identified. On our part this is a research methodology involving a scientific strategy in which research competence is contingent on competence as a change agent. And indeed, as a first step, the contingencies we might start out with, and the behaviors we might first analyze and change, are our own.