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Distinguishing Units of Analysis, Procedures, and Processes in Cultural Selection: Notes on Metacontingency Terminology

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Abstract

The concept of metacontingency has been used to understand cultural selection and how organisms behave in groups. Despite constant refinements to its definition, the term has still been used to describe either a unit of analysis, a procedure, or even one or more processes. Based mainly on experimental studies, this paper clarifies those elements and proposes terms to deal with them. The culturant is the unit of analysis typically employed in experiments on this matter, and it is fundamental to differentiate descriptive culturants (interlocking behavioral contingencies defined by their environmental effect, i.e., their aggregate product) and functional culturants (classes of interlocking behavioral contingencies under control of cultural consequences). We argue that the term metacontingency should refer to the procedure of arranging a conditional relation between a culturant and a cultural consequence. The processes of cultural selection can be defined based on the effect of environmental events (e.g., cultural consequences) on characteristics (e.g., frequency) of the culturant and can be directly described as changes in culturants (e.g., culturant increase and culturant decrease). This terminology can improve conceptual precision in the area of cultural selection and facilitate clear communication in interpretative or quasi-experimental studies.

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Notes

  1. What we are calling cultural consequences (CCs) were referred by Glenn et al. (2016) as selecting environmental events or conditions, external environment, or external consequences. The term consequence in these expressions may have the unfortunate implication that only events effectively produced by IBCs and APs produce selective effects. However, Marques and Tourinho’s (2015) experimental results suggest that noncontingent events—not properly called consequences—can produce selective effects. Despite this, referring to selecting events or conditions also has an unfortunate implied meaning—namely, that events delivered contingent on IBCs and APs must select them. This cannot be affirmed before presenting empirical evidence and so could not properly be used when referring to planned but not yet implemented procedures. As to external environment, we think that it is too broad an expression to refer to events presented in some close temporal contiguity after an AP. All that said, we will stick to the term cultural consequence (CC), being aware that noncontingent CCs might produce selective effects and that the actual effects of CCs can only be properly determined empirically.

  2. From results such as these, we conclude that the production of CCs altered certain properties of the participants’ responding (e.g., response rate in Toledo & Benvenuti, 2015) because of the direct effect of the CCs as stimuli and also because of the control that stimuli produced by other people came to exert. Here, as in similar experiments, the effects of CCs differ from those of reinforcers (a) in leading the behavior of the individuals involved to be controlled by stimuli produced by other people (i.e., social discriminative and conditional stimuli) and, more fundamentally, (b) in involving the simultaneous change of the behavior of two or more individuals. This simultaneous change is not of a parallel or independent type, as could occur, for example, with the independent presentation of the same operant contingency for several individuals (as in an airline mileage program). The change produced leads to a joint, unit-like action of the individuals involved. In such a case, controlling the behavior of several individuals is not the result of scheduling a number of different contingencies or of several identical contingencies for several individuals (which would probably produce, in practice, several different outcomes), but rather the scheduling of a single (meta)contingency. In this regard, the effects of a CC differ from those of a reinforcer in the sense that an understanding of the individual behaviors involved—which are influenced by the behavior of other individuals and their numerous interrelations—requires the consideration of an extraordinary number of variables that grows exponentially with the increase in individuals involved.

  3. The terms aversive and appetitive cultural consequences are used here in the same meaning as Catania’s (2007) vocabulary defines aversive and appetitive stimulus—that is, aversive to refer stimulus that suppresses responses and appetitive to a stimulus as positive reinforcement.

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Acknowledgements

Fábio Henrique Baia would like to thank Universidade de Rio Verde, which supported this project through a Bolsa Pesquisador 3 grant. Both authors contributed equally to the preparation of this paper.

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  1. Laboratório de Psicologia Experimental (LAPEX), Fazendas Fontes do Saber, Universidade de Rio Verde, Caixa Postal 104, Rio Verde, GO, 75901-970, Brazil

    Fábio Henrique Baia

  2. Colegiado de Psicologia, Universidade Federal do Vale do São Francisco (Univasf), Avenida José de Sá Maniçoba, S/N, Campus Sede da Univasf, Petrolina, PE, 56304-917, Brazil

    Angelo A. S. Sampaio

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Baia, F.H., Sampaio, A.A.S. Distinguishing Units of Analysis, Procedures, and Processes in Cultural Selection: Notes on Metacontingency Terminology. Behav. Soc. Iss. 28, 204–220 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42822-019-00017-8

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