| Abstract: This presentation provides a review of the application of elementary principles of operant behavior (both contingency-shaped and rule-governed behavior), toward the conceptualization, design, and evaluation of social welfare policy. All social policy is intended to influence human behavior, and it does this most often through the contrived manipulation of contingencies of punishment and, sometimes, reinforcement. Policies that use contingency management are provided to support this thesis, examples illustrating the use of positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, negative punishment, shaping, and extinction. A form of within subject research designs known as time series studies are ideally suited to evaluate the outcomes of social welfare policies. Too often social welfare policies are devised on the basis of common sense, and lack a strong empirical background of successful experimental pilot testing under real life conditions. Thus, it is common for such policies to be ineffective, or to produce short or long term results that are harmful. Behavior analysts can contribute to the improvement of local communities and our larger society by contributing their expertise in altering human behavior via the design of new welfare policies, the modification of existing programs, and the critical analysis of ineffective ones. |
| Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of the presentation, participants will be able to: (1) describe the fundamental contingencies underlying the mechanisms of action of selected social welfare policies; (2) predict, using behavioral principles, the long-term future success or failure of a contemporary proposed (not yet adopted) national social welfare policy; (3) identify, using behavioral principles, why a previously implemented national or state social welfare policy failed to produce the intended effects. |
 Bruce Thyer, Ph.D. is a Distinguished Research Professor with the College of Social Work at Florida State University. A BCBA-D, he is also a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in Florida and Georgia. He has devoted much of his career to promoting the adoption of behavior analysis within the field of social work. He has been a reviewer for the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis and a former Associate Editor with that journal. He has published widely in the ABA literature and also in the fields of social work, psychology and psychiatry. |