Conservation and Transformation of Cultural Practices through Contingencies and Metacontingencies

Abstract

Cultural practices are maintained by social contingencies that prevail in a given society, group or organization. Behavior analysts have dealt mostly with cultural practices while individual behavior has been examined through the experimental analysis of operant behavior. Metacontingency is a generic concept encompassing the behavior of persons in groups leading to aggregate products, some effect on the environment that is possible through the result of interlocked behavioral contingencies. The concept has generated a large amount of empirical research, much of it experimental. So far metacontingencies have been classified as ceremonial or technological. The present work advances the classification of conservative metaconcontingencies, in which the aggregate product is strictly specified by the social contingency, and transformative metacontingencies, which require variability and originality in the aggregate product.