Psychological Theories and Social Theories: In Search of Fine-Tuning

Abstract

Our aim in this paper is to provide some reflections regarding the relationships between the psychological theory and the social theory. More specifically, we will present and defend the thesis according to which the relationships between behavior analysis – the science taken into consideration from which theories of behavior are risen – and the social sciences shall be of complementarity, the former providing adequate theories of behavior and conception of individual to the latters and the latters providing social theories that promote a broader knowledge of human behavior and inform social-political projects to the former. Based upon this thesis, the itinerary we will make on this article is characterized by five sections: firstly, we will discuss psychological theory, its scope and its role in the interpretation of what B. F. Skinner (1953/2014) called total culture and its effects on the individual. Here, we will argue that behavior analysis produces discourses regarding behavioral relations and when Skinner (1953/2011) approached phenomena traditionally studied by the social sciences, he did so by focusing on the psychological dimensions of those phenomena; secondly, we will argue against what We call psychologism, the practice of trying to explain, based exclusively on psychological theories, phenomena and processes of wider dimension – in terms of scope and time – than the behavior of individuals. This presupposes a thesis that is fundamental to the social sciences: albeit social, cultural, and political phenomena are composed of behavioral relations, the formers are not reducible to the latters. We allude to the way Skinner (1969/2014) discusses the evolution of the grammars as an example of psychologism – based mainly upon the distinction between behavior shaped directly by contingencies of reinforcement and rule-governed behavior and desconsidering the production of the sciences of the language; thirdly, we will try to delimitate the scope of social theory and its usefulness for a wider knowledge of human behavior. In this sense, we will argue that for a wider knowledge about the total culture itself – controlling agencies plus ethnical group – acting upon the individual, behavior analysts need a social theory complementary to the psychological one; fourthly, We will discuss the use – and its consequences – of inadequate psychological theories and conceptions of individual in the social sciences. Here, we will provide some examples extracted from the area of the political sciences concerned with the voting behavior. As we want to demonstrate, the use within this area of internalizing models to understand human behavior provides some problematic explanations of the voting behavior. In this sense, behavior analysis could provide some alternative theories of behavior to this area in particular, and to social sciences in general – point already outlined by Skinner (1953/2011) in his dispute of the conceptions of individuals and theories of behavior within some areas of the social sciences; finally, fifthly, we will talk about the challenges in the interdisciplinary dialogues and initial suggestions that hopefully can be fruitful. Here, we will outline the importance of the theoretical research in dissolving dilemmas.