Humble Behaviorism Focus Pack | 2.5 Ethics BCBA CEUs

Description

In 1991, Allen Neuringer published a call for behaviorists to be more humble. He argued that greater humility would be functional in that it would lead to greater collaboration, better research, and more widespread acceptance of behavioral research. In 2022, Kirby and colleagues revisited Neuringer’s call and integrated it with other recommendations by behavior analysts to present a framework of cultural reciprocity.

This focus pack includes the following article quizzes and a final, integrative quiz that encourages comparison and synthesis:

Article Quiz: Humble Behaviorism

Read the following article (reading time: 31 min) and pass a 6-question quiz on it:

• Neuringer, A. (1991). Humble behaviorism. The Behavior Analyst, 14 (1), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03392543
• Abstract: If behaviorists were more humble, their effectiveness as scientists would increase. An explicitly humble behaviorism could reduce the threat of behavioral research perceived by many in our society; meliorate fights among sub-disciplines of psychology, so that adversaries might work together toward common goals, and encourage researchers to identify and admit their own ignorance and error, thereby motivating research. This hypothesis is not meant as criticism specifically of behaviorists, for some of my behavioral colleagues are among the most humble of people, others not, as is the case in all fields. Nor is behavioral science, or science generally, unusually arrogant. Science depends upon the continual checking ofone scientist’s work by others. Most scientists therefore must be somewhat humble, for often their research is shown to be insufficient and their conclusions challenged. At the same time, positions can be strongly held, and activities involved in testing and disproving can be aggressive and destructive. Arrogance and humility in science coexist. The present hypothesis, however, is that humility will prove to be functional.
  
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Article Quiz: Humble Behaviorism Redux

Read the following article (reading time: 1 hr 23 min) and pass a 8-question quiz on it:

• Kirby, M. S., Spencer, T. D., & Spiker, S. T. (2022). Humble behaviorism redux. Behavior and Social Issues, 31 (1), 133-158. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42822-022-00092-4
• Abstract: The need to bring behavior analysis to scale is no more obvious or urgent than now. Collaboration between behavior analysts and healthcare workers, educators, policymakers, mental health clinicians, social workers, and so many other professionals is critical to reaching under-resourced and traditionally marginalized populations. First, however, interprofessional collaboration must be adopted widely and reinforced within the behavior analytic community. Disciplinary centrism and hubris pose barriers to effective interprofessional collaboration, leading one to assume the position that practitioners of the same discipline are better trained and smarter than those of a different field. However, cultural humility (Wright, Behavior Analysis in Practice, 12(4), 805–809, 2019) is an alternative to disciplinary centrism that allows professionals to retain identities born of cultural histories and training (Pecukonis,  Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 40(3), 211–220, 2020). Furthermore, cultural reciprocity is a process of self-observation and collaborative inquiry that involves questioning one’s own assumptions and forces individuals (and professions) to confront the contradictions between their values and their practices (Kalyanpur & Harry, 1999). In this paper, we revisit the call for Humble Behaviorism first made by Alan Neuringer in 1991 and the recommendations of fellow behavior analysts since. Specifically, we introduce a framework of cultural reciprocity to guide humble behaviorists as they acquire behaviors necessary to establish and maintain productive interprofessional relationships. We encourage them to act on their ethical and moral duties to address social problems of global concern and bring behavior analysis to scale
  
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Final Quiz

A final, 6-question quiz that encourages comparison and synthesis of the two articles.