Behavioral Analysis of Non-Experimental Data Associated with Cultural Practices

Abstract

Behavior analysis is usually seen as the experimental analysis of individual behavior, a distinctive contribution of the field to psychology in general. But what characterizes behavior analysis since Skinner’s days is the scientific method, not only experimentation, and not exclusively individual behavior. Behavior analysis as science may use field observation, for instance. Prediction and confirmation or disconfirmation do not require experimentation. The present work discusses some examples of behavior analyses of cultural practices in which the observation of interlocked behavior contingencies may happen without experimentation.