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Radical behaviorism can be interpreted either mechanistically or contextualistically.
The present article describes the essence of the contextualistic interpretation and contrasts it with other positions common in behavior therapy. Contemporary behavior
analysis, contextually viewed, is applied to the problem of cognition. Derived stimulus
relations are argued to be at the core of cognition, and that the relation between cognition and other kinds of behavior is contextually situated. New therapeutic strategies
emerge from a reexamination of the philosophy and theory of contextualistic behavior
analysis.
While the growth of behavior therapy has been one of the success stories
in applied psychology over the last 25 years, its intellectual development seems
less dramatic. The present article examines the contribution contextualistic
behaviorism might make to the further progress of behavior therapy.
Requests for reprints should be sent to: Steven C. Hayes, Department of Psychology, University of Nevada, Reno, NV 89557-0062.
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0005-7894/92/0225-024951.00/0
Copyright 1992 by Association for Advancementof Behavior Therapy
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
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constitute the subject matter of a scientific psychology because public agreement as to their occurrence was impossible (a kind of methodological behaviorism). Thus for Watson, scientific legitimacy was an issue of public observability.
Skinner deviated considerably from these views, Skinner distinguished the
subjective/objective dichotomy (which he thought to be of fundamental
scientific importance) from the private/public dichotomy (which he thought
was not fundamental). Skinner (1945) defined scientific observations as those
under the control of a certain kind of contingency. Only when an observation
was controlled by particular stimulus events (largely those of a nonverbal sort)
and a general history of reinforcement for speaking under the control of those
events, as opposed to control by audience factors, states of reinforceability,
and so on, was the observation scientifically valid. As such, observations could
be private and objective (scientifically legitimate) or public and subjective
(scientifically illegitimate), depending upon the contingencies controlling the
observations.
Public subjective observations are readily demonstrated. In discussing this
point in classes we show the class the following words on the blackboard for
about one-half second and then cover them:
Paris in
the
the spring
The class is asked to write down what they read. Virtually all will write "Paris
in the spring." If interrater reliability were being calculated, it would be very
high, and if that were the metric for objectivity we could be confident the words
indeed were "Paris in the spring." But these observations were subjective in
the sense that they were controlled by individual histories with particular
words - "Paris in the spring" is familiar, "the, the" is unfamiliar, and so o n rather than by what was observed and a history of reinforcement for control
by observed events. In Skinner's view, the observations of the class are
scientifically illegitimate, even though highly "reliable."
This is the sense in which "radical behaviorism" is radical or "to the root":
Even its core concepts and observations are defined in terms of contingencies,
specifically, those bearing on the behavior of the scientist. Skinner rejected
methodological behaviorism because he did not believe that public agreement
provided assurance of proper contingency control. As in the example above,
it is easy to find instances where whole groups of observers are similarly
influenced by motivational states and other subjective conditions.
In solving this problem by way of contingency analysis, Skinner opened
up behaviorism to the very thing Watson was trying to eliminate" Introspective observations of private events. For example, Skinner said that radical behaviorism "does not insist upon truth by agreement and can therefore consider events taking place in the private world within the skin. It does not call
these events unobservable" (Skinner, 1974, p. 16). Radical behaviorism is not
interpretable as extreme behaviorism for this reason, despite claims to the contrary (e.g., Mahoney, 1989). In a fundamental sense, radical behaviorism is
not part of the tradition of "behaviorism" at all because all psychological ac-
228
tivities that are contacted in a scientifically valid manner are subject to analysis. In this way at least, radical behaviorism rejects both methodological behaviorism and Watsonian metaphysical behaviorism.
Skinnerians did not move rapidly to investigations of thinking and feeling
for another reason, however. Skinner felt that an understanding of private
events was not necessary for a scientific understanding of overt activity (Skinner,
1953). We will analyze why he came to this conclusion later and will argue
that there are reasons to believe that he was mistaken.
Inconsistencies in Skinner's position. Radical behaviorism was a position
virtually defined by the writings of B. E Skinner, and Skinner often failed
to be precise about his core assumptions, or wrote about them in contradictory ways (Parrott, 1983, 1986; Hayes, Hayes, & Reese, 1988). The definition
of behavior is a case in point. In 1938 Skinner defined behavior both mechanically and interactively- one definition following the other in successive paragraphs. The mechanical definition, in the tradition of Watson, treats behavior
as an organismic phenomenon, taking place in settings made up of things and
events conceptualized as existing independently of the behavior itself. In accord with this view, Skinner defined behavior as "the movement of an organism
or of its parts in a frame of reference provided by the organism itself or by
various external objects or fields of force" (Skinner, 1938, p. 6). When behavior is defined as movement in this way, changes in the conditions of its
occurrence or "frame of reference" may change the occurrence of behavior
or its probability but they do not change behavior per se. For example, raising
a hand to get attention and raising a hand to stretch a muscle is the same behavior when behavior is defined by movement. The two episodes differ, of
course, because the "causal determinants" of the behavior differ, but the behavior is a raising of the hand in either case.
In 1938 Skinner also defined behavior as an interaction between an organism
and its environment, the implication being that behavior and its environment
constitute a unitary phenomenon. In Skinner's words, behavior is "the functioning of an organism which is engaged in acting upon or having commerce
with the outside world" (1938, p. 6). From this perspective, behavior does change
its nature as its circumstances of occurrence change because the behavior and
those circumstances are two aspects of a single event. In other words, getting
attention is a different behavior than stretching regardless of the similar movements involved.
The 1938 b o o k is the only place where Skinner attempted a definition of
"behavior" and the two definitions given differ in a philosophically fundamental
way. As a result, some Skinnerians have defined behavior much as Watson
did, as movement in a frame of reference (e.g., Johnston & Pennypacker, 1981).
Conversely, some radical behaviorists view behavior as an event of a whole
organism interacting in and with a context (e.g., Hayes et al., 1988; Morris,
1988).
Similar problems occur in other areas of Skinner's work including his view
of causality, the relation between psychology and biology, the nature of stimuli,
and other topics. In each case, Skinner's analysis is either ambiguous or contradictory at a fundamental level. For example, Skinner's position sometimes
has a linear, causal quality, as when he claims that: "We have discovered more
229
about how the living organism works and are better able to see its machinelike properties" (Skinner, 1953, p. 47). At other times, he rejects the causal
logic of reductionism (Skinner, 1938, p. 418-432. See Hayes et al., 1988 for
a more detailed analysis of Skinner's views).
Because Skinner embraced philosophically incompatible views, it is not possible to articulate the radical behavioral position. There appear to be two distinct philosophical systems operating under the banner of radical behaviorism.
Understanding the nature of this division is important for our purposes since
the clinical implications of the two versions o f radical behaviorism are quite
different.
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HAYES ~ I~YES
231
ganize the same topographies into completely different events, not in the sense
that they are influenced by different forces, but in the sense of qualitatively
different interactions with different contextual participants.
Both of the operants described above might also be organized into larger
or smaller units. For example, rearing up to access parts o f the environment
(as when the animal does so to sniff at an opening) might itself be understood
as an operant with a distinct history. Indeed, an infinity o f operant constructions are simultaneously possible, and there are no grounds in contextualistic
thinking on which to argue that one or the other of them is "the correct one"
save the extent to which a given construction serves the purposes of the analyst. Contextualistic truth, in other words, is that which accomplishes the
analysts' goals.
Pepper's categories are useful in the present context not because behaviorists
self-consciously consider themselves to be mechanists or contextualists, but
because they point to fundamental differences in the assumptions and premises
of groups of behavior analysts and therapists. We and others have argued elsewhere that radical behaviorism is, in essence, contextualistic (Hayes et al., 1988;
Hayes, 1987; Morris, 1988). It would be more accurate to say, however, that
in the hands of some, radical behaviorism appears contextualistic, while in
the hands of others, it appears mechanistic.
It is not our intention to suggest that either mechanism or contextualism
is correct, the other wrong. Evaluated on their own terms, both mechanism
and contextualism are coherent, viable positions. Our point is, rather, that
Skinner combined the two in an incoherent fashion; one consequence of which
has been to render the term "radical behaviorism" useless as a category name.
Radical behaviorism encompasses both mechanistic and contextualistic types
of behaviorism. The two positions are incompatible, and the differences cannot
be resolved by way of a compromise. In the remainder of the article we will,
therefore, restrict our analysis to only one o f these interpretations o f radical
b e h a v i o r i s m - the contextualistic p o s i t i o n - a n d will develop the clinical implications of this position as it bears on cognition. First we will describe in
more detail the core conceptions of contextualistic behaviorism.
Contextualistic Behaviorism
Though several types of contextualistic behaviorism are possible, we will
restrict our analysis to a type defined by four characteristics: a) a focus on
the psychological level of analysis, b) a commitment to contextually delimited
constructs, c) a pragmatic view of truth, and d) an interest in the joint goals
o f description, prediction, control, and interpretation achieved with precision,
scope and depth, and based upon verifiable experience.
232
to be fundamentally indivisible and interactive, contextualists hold that psychology can never be explained by events at other levels of analysis. For example, a psychological act-in-context cannot be explained by appeal to actions of various parts of the organism involved in the interaction (e.g., its brain,
glands, etc.). This is not to say that contextualistic behaviorism denies the
legitimacy of other levels of analysis (biology, anthropology). On the contrary, these other levels are recognized as legitimate in their own right and
are further assumed to provide a context for psychological analyses.
Goals of Analysis
Unlike all other world views, the truth criterion of contextualism is subordinated to something else: The goals of the analysis. "Serious analysis for [the
contextualist] is always either directly or indirectly p r a c t i c a l . . . If from one
texture you wish to get to another, then analysis has an end, and a direction,
and some strands have relevancy to this end and others do not, a n d . . , the
enterprise becomes important in reference to the end" (Pepper, 1942, pp.
250-251). From a contextualistic perspective, any event or any feature of an
event is conceptualized as an event-in-context. This conceptualization presents
a problem when the context of an event comes under consideration, because
it then becomes the event-in-context with the result that a contextualistic analysis of anything can devolve into an appreciation of the whole, about which
nothing can be said. A word about the whole holds itself apart from the whole,
and thus a true appreciation of the whole is mute (L. J. Hayes, in press).
What saves contextualism from silence is a goal. The act of the scientist
is an act in context. It is a purposive act (not causally but descriptively). Analysis ends not with a discovery of the truth, but with the production of verbal
constructions that help achieve a goal. In contextualistic behaviorism, "truth"
233
is that achievement. Any goal may be embraced, but the analytic practices
useful in terms of one goal may not be useful for another (Hayes & Brownstein, 1986). Thus, contextualistic psychologies may differ widely depending
on their goals.
No justification can be given for the selection of these goals because
justification necessarily appeals to truth or correctness, and for a contextualist, truth cannot be evaluated except in terms of a goal. Goals are therefore
a priori events that can be articulated but not justified. If a scientist seeks,
for example, a personal experience of coherence and eschews any interest in
prediction and control, this cannot be criticized as illegitimate. Many pragmatists, starting with James himself, have failed to appreciate the necessary
but a priori nature of goals for contextualistic analyses. As a result they have
either been vague about their goals or have dogmatically asserted that their
goals were the only ones possible. Skinner, for example, very clearly adopted
a pragmatic view of truth (see the quote at the end of the last section), but
he often seemed to be arguing that prediction and control were the goals of
science, not just his goals.
Contextualistic behaviorism, as here defined, is a psychological variety of
what has been termed "functional contextualism" (Biglan & Hayes, 1991).
"Functional contextualism" was coined to distinguish positions having an instrumental character from more descriptive forms of contextualism that seek
simply an understanding of participants in an interaction (e.g., Rosnow &
Georgoudi, 1986). The behavior analytic form of contextualistic behaviorism
has as its goals the description, prediction, control, and interpretation of organismic interactions in and with a context. It seeks empirically-based analyses that achieve all of these goals jointly (not any one in isolation) with precision (a restricted set of constructs apply to any particular event), scope (a wide
number of events can be analyzed with these constructs), and depth (analytic
constructs at the psychological level cohere with those at other levels).
Causality. The interest in control does not mean that contextualistic behaviorists embrace an ontological view of causality. A holistic perspective
cannot take the position that there really are "causes." For one event to "cause"
another at least two independent events are necessary. All contexts are in principle relevant to any event, and there are no truly independent events (Hayes,
1989). Causality is instead taken to be a useful way of speaking about the
achievement of goals when certain contextual features are assumed.
For example, for a contextualist, saying that a spark caused the explosion
may be a useful way of speaking because it points to ways of avoiding such
results: avoid sparks. Fuel, oxygen, and a certain base temperature were also
necessary features for the explosion, and these might have been described as
"causes." The operation of these features in turn depend upon other contextual features (e.g., in the early stages of the big bang substances interacted
in different ways), that could also be called "causes." The selection of any one
"cause" depends upon the other features being assumed, and the pragmatic
effect of the description. For instance, in most human environments oxygen
is present, and the spark is a more important focus of causal constructions.
In other cases (as when welding in a vacuum) the spark is assumed and explo-
234
HAVES& HAYES
sions are more likely to be explained by the loss of the vacuum and the resultant presence of oxygen.
This concludes our discussion of philosophical developments in behavior
analysis. It is to contextualistic behaviorism that we are seeing some contemporary behavior therapists turn their attention in recent years. We suspect that
contextualism represents a more palatable philosophical position for clinical
workers than did traditional mechanistic behaviorism. This aside for the moment, recall our earlier suggestion that the evolution in the movement known
as behavior analysis was occurring on more than one front. The other notable
difference between behavior analysis as originally conceived and the new wave
of this movement has to do with a set of unusual findings that are drawing
into question some long held assumptions and premises. We turn now to these
developments.
Stimulus Equivalence
When humans are taught a series of related conditional discriminations,
the stimuli that enter into those discriminations often become connected to
one another in ways not explicitly trained. The phenomena involved are typically investigated in a matching to sample format. For example, given the presence of a particular unfamiliar visual form (the s a m p l e - call it A1), the person
Equivalence Relation
Reflexivity
I
I
I..
Reflexivity
I I
I I
I I
I I
I I
I~
IV,
IV
\4k' A
II
Reflexivity
LI
Trained
Symmetry
Trained
I I
i
Symmetry
Transitivity
./
I
tI
I
I
235
236
nnws ~ HAVES
Lipkens, Kop, Matthijs, 1988. As for Mclntire, Cleary, & Thompson, 1987
and Vaughan, 1988, see Hayes, 1989a). Furthermore, children without spontaneous productive use of signs or speech also show little equivalence (Devany
et al. 1986).
To understand why stimulus equivalence is having a major impact on behavioral researchers one should note that is not readily predicted from a three
term contingency formulation. If an organism learns that the probability of
reinforcement for selecting B1 is greater in the presence of A1 than in the presence of, say, A2, this does not imply that the probability of reinforcement
for selecting A1 is greater in the presence of B1 than in its absence.
The development of theoretical accounts of stimulus equivalence is still in
its infancy in behavior analysis. Some researchers view stimulus equivalence
as a primitive, unanalyzable into component processes (e.g., Sidman 1986;
1990). Another alternative has appealed to the historical development of relational responding (Hayes, 1991a; Hayes, & Hayes, 1989). The latter view holds
that the action of relating two arbitrary stimuli itself has a history. For example, with enough instances of directly trained symmetrical responding in
a given context, derived symmetrical responding may emerge with respect to
novel stimuli in that context. Such relational derivation is arbitrarily applicable
in the sense that it need not be based on formal properties of the relata, and
may be brought to bear on stimuli by virtue of contextual cues to do so. In
this view, stimulus equivalence is viewed as a special case of arbitrarily applicable relational responding (Hayes & Hayes, 1989). In both analyses, however, equivalence is a case of something new.
Neo-behavioral analyses of this kind of phenomenon have existed for most
of this century. The existing behavioral interpretations, however, either have
appealed to derived relations between stimuli and responding to explain derived relations between stimuli (Hull, 1934), or have relied on processes such
as classical conditioning to explain the findings (e.g., Staats & Staats, 1957).
The former approach begs the q u e s t i o n - t h e latter imposes process limitations that do not fit the actual experimental preparations used in the equivalence literature.
237
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H A Y E S & HAYES
a psychological function, and that event is in an equivalence relation with another event "B", under certain conditions "B" may acquire a new psychological function based on the function of "A" and the relation between "A" and
"B." Suppose a child is trained that the written word DOG is called "dog"
and that the word goes with actual dogs. We may say that the child has had
two relations directly trained: DOG ~ dog and DOG ~ "dog." Later the child
plays with a dog for the first time and enjo2cs it. We may say that dogs have
directly acquired various joyous functions by virtue o f the play. Now, upon
hearing his mother say "dogs" from another room the child may smile and
go to the other room even though a dog is not visible and the child has no
direct history of reinforcement for any of these activities in response to the
word "dog." The child knows something about the word "dogs," but it is an
indirect form of knowing.
This kind of effect has been shown in many studies. Transfer of discriminative functions have been shown across equivalence relations in simple equivalence classes (Hayes, Brownstein, Devany, Kohlenberg, & Shelby, 1987; Kohlenberg, Hayes, & Hayes, 1991), and conditional equivalence classes (Wulfert
& Hayes, 1988), and across symmetrically related stimuli (e.g., Catania, Horne,
& Lowe, 1989; De Rose, Mcllvane, Dube, Galpin, & Stoddard, 1988; Lazar,
1977; Lazar & Kotlarchyk, 1986; Gatch & Osborne, 1989). Transfer of consequential functions has also been shown (Hayes et al., 1987; Hayes, Kohlenberg, & Hayes, 1991).
Because this second kind of knowing occurs readily in verbal humans but
with difficulty or not at all in non-humans or non-verbal humans, it is easy
to see how behavior a n a l y s i s - w i t h its commitment to the animal behavior
t r a d i t i o n - a n d cognitive psychology have had so little to say to one another.
From a modern behavior analytic viewpoint, cognition may be defined as the
derivation of arbitrarily applicable stimulus relations. "Logic" and "reason"
refer to the derivation of such relations according to certain conventional rules.
Because these rules are themselves the product of (or an instantiation of) arbitrarily applicable derived stimulus relations it is not correct to say that logic
or reason produce cognitive interactions-rather they are such interactions
(Hayes, 1989b).
Cognitive Control
We come now to the key issue of the relation between certain cognitive
e v e n t s - w e will use the words " t h o u g h t s " - a n d other forms of activity such
as emotion or overt behavior. In the cognitive tradition the link is mechanical.
Thus, the focus of therapy is on the nature or occurrence of particular thoughts.
If a person is thinking an "irrational" thought and then feeling anxious, the
focus of therapy would be on the presence of this thought or the sources of
its "irrational" form; that the thought leads to anxiety would be explained
on the basis of these same dimensions of presence and form.
Based on conceptualizations such as these, therapists can either: a) establish a new thought (e.g., the therapist may help the person relate "should" and
"irrational" for the first time); or b) make an old thought more or less likely
(e.g., asking a client to think "self-reinforcing" thoughts whenever a partic-
239
ular situation has been faced). What is important about these approaches is
that the thought-emotion relation itself is not at issue, much as the movement
o f one end of a lever is easily explained by the pressure on the other end. The
two are mechanically linked.
The behavioral objection to this kind o f theorizing is pragmatic. Skinner
expanded the objection to such a degree that he saw little use in the analysis
of emotions or cognitions. The nature o f his objection, and the reasons for
his excessive expansion of the point, deserve a more extended discussion.
Cognition and the pragmatic purposes o f contextualistic behaviorism. The
conceptualization o f the relationship between thoughts and other activities
has assumed a variety of forms within behaviorism and behavior therapy (see
Figure 2). The Watsonian behaviorists essentially tried to eliminate non-motor
or glandular behavior from consideration, either because the existence of such
was in question or because an adequate method for their scientific study was
unavailable. A few early behavior therapists encouraged a focus on overt behavior only, on the assumption that thoughts (and feelings, etc.) would change
on their own. The current mainstream position in behavior therapy is that
a change in thoughts will produce changes in overt activity. Traditional associationistic forms of behavior therapy and cognitive therapy do not differ
in this regard. The idea that relaxation will encourage a phobic to approach
is philosophically the same as the idea that rational thoughts will do likewise.
Contextualistic behaviorism takes a different view. It has an interest in the
joint goals of description, prediction, control, and interpretation. The inclusion of control puts certain constraints on the kinds of analyses that are useful
for the scientist, because only statements that point to events external to the
behavior of the individual organisms being studied can directly lead to control. Scientific rules are rules for scientists and their consumers, not rules for
the world. Since therapists a r e - a n d can only ever b e - i n another organisms's
environment, rules for modifying behavior must start there. Skinner said it
this way: "In practice, all these ways o f changing a man's mind reduce to
manipulating his environment, verbal or otherwise" (Skinner, 1969, p. 239).
O f course, analyses o f human action that do not seek control as a goal need
not be constrained in this way (Hayes & Brownstein, 1986), but in the world
of therapy such a goal is a s s u m e d - b y the client at least.
Thus, control as a goal forces a contextual focus to psychological analyses.
Mediational analyses of all kinds must be rejected when the supposed mediational elements are in principle non-manipulable (cf. Watkins, 1990). When
thinking is related to other psychological activities, a contextual behaviorist
has two things to point out: First, both forms o f activity are the dependent
variables of psychology and both occur in and with a context. A claim that
a thought controls overt behavior is at best the description of a behaviorbehavior relation. Second, a behavior-behavior relation is itself an event-incontext.
The structure of the contextualist's point is the same whether one is speaking
o f the behavior effects of thinking, emoting, sensing, and so on. These are
all conceived of as behavior-behavior relations (where "behavior" is defined
as psychological activity), and such a relation itself is viewed as contextually
240
i ~ Y ~ s & HAYES
Overt Behavior
Overt Behavior
CONTEXTUALISTIC BEHAVIORISM
Thoughts
Overt Behavior
Behavior
Behavior
Context
FIG. 2,
Four ways of conceptualizing the relationship between thinking and overt acting.
situated. Any behavior-behavior relation is inherently incomplete as an explanation if one's goals include control because the direct application of this
knowledge is impossible. Behavior cannot be directly manipulated- only contextual variables have this quality. If causality is a way of speaking about how
to accomplish such goals, behavior-behavior relations can never be "causal"
for the contextual behaviorist.
241
For example, the formulation "John does poorly because he thinks irrational thoughts" must be rejected as a causal formulation, not because there
is no such thing as thinking or because there can be no relation between thinking
and other activity but because it is impossible to act directly given such a formulation. To intervene, the clinician must do something (e.g., talk to the client).
Whatever is done will be the context for the client's future action. Therefore,
when measured against a pragmatic criterion, causal constructions must point
to ways of altering context, not to the effect of action cut off from context.
A more directly useful formulation would specify the contextual features that
participate in doing poorly, thinking irrationally, and in the relationship between them.
If one sought only prediction, thinking could be considered "causal" by
a contextualist, but it would be a rare therapist who sought only prediction.
If, conversely, one is a mechanist, it is quite legitimate to view thoughts as
causes, because causality for a mechanist is a description the operation of
the machine based on its parts, relations, and forces.
Skinner took the pragmatic point one step further. He argued that feelings,
cognitions, and so on were not important to the understanding of behavior
because the conditions that gave rise to feelings (etc.) were isomorphic with
those that gave rise to associated overt behavior. For example, while recognizing that aversive events occasion both anxiety and avoidance, Skinner
claimed that "the middle term is of no functional significance, either in a theoretical analysis or in the practical control of behavior" (1953, p. 181). No
new contextual features emerge in the analysis of feeling or thoughts. In effect,
Skinner's radical behaviorism gave scientific legitimacy to cognition and emotion with one hand, but took away their practical importance with the other
(Parrott, 1986).
There is a flaw in Skinner's reasoning that is revealed in the stimulus equivalence phenomenon. The histories that give rise to the derivation of stimulus
relations and the transfer of control seen in equivalence are not the histories
that establish a particular instance of a trained stimulus relation.
In an organism without derived stimulus relations of this kind-without
the second kind of knowing- Skinner is entirely correct. If all psychological
history is either direct or indirect based upon formal properties of events (e.g.,
stimulus generalization), an analysis of overt behavior can always ignore the
phenomena of emotion and cognition. A rat who is afraid and avoids some
particular circumstance does not avoid it because of fear. Rather, both the
fear and the avoidance are due to a direct and identical history with that circumstance (of shock, for example). There is, as a result, no need to study fear
as a means of understanding avoidance.
In verbal organisms the situation is different. The conditions that gave rise
to fear and avoidance, and the fear and avoidance themselves, may all enter
into networks of derived stimulus relations. The social/verbal history of the
person participates in the overt behavior. Verbal organisms have a history with
both kinds of knowing. A thought-overt behavior relation involves both, and
analyzing the thought leads to a contextual analysis of a key feature of the
total event. For example, a verbal adult has learned many verbal rules about
242
243
a) The context of literal meaning depends upon socially conventional equivalence classes and other derived stimulus relations. Altering that context requires altering the "meaningful" use of language, not by providing new equivalence classes (e.g., new thoughts or new beliefs), but by using language in ways
that are confusing, nonsensical, arational, or experiential. To take one example
originally used by Titchner in demonstrating his context theory of meaning,
(Lundin, 1990), if the person said the word "humiliation" over and over again
very fast for perhaps 5 minutes, the word would temporarily loose all relational functions, retaining only its auditory functions. This would not have
lasting impact in itself, but would help the client see that literal meaning is
a contextually-controlled phenomenon, and the issue may not be the form
of the thinking but the contexts that determine the impact of thinking.
Similarly in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) the beginning
client is gravely warned by the therapist not to believe a word the therapist
is saying (Hayes, 1987). This kind of statement attacks literal meaning, because if it is itself believed then it must not be believed.
With enough attacks of this kind of literal meaning, the stimulus function
of verbal events may begin to depend less on their literal (conventional) meaning
and more on their role as a guide to effective action. Many thoughts, no matter
how "reasonable," have proven themselves to be useless guides to action. For
example, the obsessive-compulsive has repeatedly experienced the futility of
effortfully trying to eliminate undesirable thoughts. In this context, we would
argue that the obsessive-compulsive is trying to follow a completely reasonable rule: "I don't like thinking X; therefore do not think X." Unfortunately,
"do not think X" is itself a thought about X and is thus doomed to fail. The
client has repeatedly experienced the worthlessness of this thought as a guide
to action, and yet its literal reasonableness is so great that it is hard to abandon.
Rather than argue logically with an eminently reasonable thought, an alternative is to attack the hegemony of literal meaning itself.
b) The context of evaluation is based on conventional verbal agreements
about what is bad and good. When combined with literal meaning, evaluations present themselves not as actions, but as actions of the world: we say
"that is bad" not "that is, and I evaluate it as bad." Such a verbally-established
illusion structures our environment in a powerful way because it hides the indirect and arbitrary nature of evaluation and places it in the world of things.
If this very process is a problem, it does no good for a clinician to attempt
to alter evaluative statements directly (e.g., "you shouldn't say should") because the clinician is using the selfsame context of evaluation. The context
of evaluation is challenged by refusing to order events evaluatively. To take
one example, also from ACT, a therapist might take any report of any emotion, thought, memory, and so on, regardless of its conventional valence, and
respond to it positively but non-differentially. This should challenge the context of evaluation because the therapist's openness would not depend upon
the evaluative content. Example: Client - " I am worried I'll humiliate myself";
Therapist - "Wonderful. That's really neat. Tell me about that."
c) The context of reason-giving is established by the tendency of the verbal
community to support actions if a sufficiently good explanation is given for
244
nAVES i HAYES
them. Often reasons for one action devolve into the presence of other actions
(e.g., "I couldn't go because I was afraid" or "I did it because I was worried
about you."). When these verbal linkages are supported by listeners, the
behavior-behavior relation itself is also supported because the presence of one
behavior signals altered contingencies surrounding the other.
For example, a slight illness that would never lead to cancelling an important engagement might lead to cancelling an undesirable appointment. The
cancellation can be done "with a clear conscience" and a ready and "honest"
excuse is available, even to oneself. Reason-giving thus tends to glue behaviors
together in conventional ways. A variety of strategies might challenge reasongiving. It could be challenged directly. For example, if a client is asked "why"
repeatedly, the shallowness of reason-giving quickly emerges: C l i e n t - " I
decided I had to leave, even though it didn't make sense," T h e r a p i s t - " w h y
did you decide that?", Client-"well, I just wanted to go," Therapist - "why
did you want that?", C l i e n t - " I don't know! Why are you asking me this?"
Usually within about four "whys" the verbal structure of reasonableness begins
to fray, to be replaced by irritation at the "unreasonable" behavior of the therapist. Reason-giving could be challenged more indirectly simply by treating
reason-giving as a thing to be noticed rather than an explanation to be taken
literally. Example: C l i e n t - " I just had to leave. I had no choice." T h e r a p i s t "That's an interesting thought. You ought to thank your mind for that one.
What else has your mind had to say?"
d) The context of emotional control is a core issue for many clients. It is
common for clients to come into therapy with a list of undesirable thoughts,
feelings, memories, and bodily sensations that seemingly need to be removed,
altered, or avoided, and indeed we as therapists name most of the disorders
we treat and the treatments themselves in the same way ("anxiety disorders,"
"anxiety management," and so on). Emotional control glues behaviors together
because usually implicit in the effort to change feeling X is that if it doesn't
change some other form of activity cannot occur (e.g., "I can't travel! I'm too
anxious!"). The context of emotional control is often challenged in acceptanceoriented approaches through deliberate exercises that create the private events
that are being avoided. Although emotional control has been massively supported in mainstream behavior therapy, the recent interest in acceptance-based
approaches in behavior therapy shows signs of possible changes to come (e.g.,
Hayes, 1991b; Jacobson, 1991b). In ACT numerous metaphors and exercises
try to make evident the pervasiveness and uselessness of emotional control
efforts. Often efforts are made to take the client's own words and turn them
from emotional control declarations into emotional exposure declarations.
For example, a depressed client might say "I'll never do well until I feel better"
to which the therapist might reply "I think that's right. You won't do well until
you do a better job of feeling what is here to be f e l t - u n t i l you feel better."
Later on, every time "feel better" is used by the client to explain why some
feeling has to change, "feel better" can be brought up to shift the issue.
Contextual strategies often seem confusing or paradoxical toclients because
they fail to address content in the normal way. Contextual strategies neither
245
agree with nor disagree with the content of clients' self-verbalizations. Rather,
they place these activities into a different social/verbal context. For example,
in the context of evaluation and emotional control, "negative thoughts" must
be changed. These contexts are so ubiquitous that their presence is hardly noticed. A client complaining of being terribly worried or terribly anxious implicitly expects a therapist to agree that worry or anxiety is bad and must be
removed. If the therapist does not behave accordingly, the client will often
be extremely confused- as if the natural order of things is being challenged.
In the different social/verbal context of deliteralization and emotional acceptance, thoughts evaluated as negative may simply be noticed, with no efforts
either to change them or to behave in accord with them. There is no necessary
reason that worry or anxiety or sadness or any private event must be removed
if their disruptive effects are dependent upon particular contexts. A second
alternative exists: change the contexts.
In principle, there is no reason that the direct cognitive strategies and the
contextual strategies could not be combined. For example, a cognitive therapist might arrange conditions that potentiate a thought-emotion relation in
order to provide more evidence for the need to modify thoughts themselves.
Ellis (1962) has long combined cognitive control with acceptance strategies,
as has Barlow and others (e.g., Barlow & Craske, 1989; Barlow, Craske, Cerny,
& Klosko, 1989). For our purposes it is more important to see that purely contextual forms of therapy are also possible, in which cognitions are dealt with
continuously and deliberately, but without any interest in creating new thoughts
or modifying the probability of old ones (e.g., Hayes, 1987). The reason this
is important for the topic is that it shows how unusual and counter-intuitive
therapy alternatives flow from contextualistic behavioral philosophy. The data
on the impact of such strategies are limited, but those that are available show
both that these strategies can make an impact on a variety of disorders (Biglan,
1990; Hayes, 1987; Zettle, 1984; Zettle & Raines, 1989) and that they work
through different psychological processes than cognitive strategies (Khorakiwala, 1990; McCurry, 1991; Zettle & Hayes, 1986; Zettle & Raines, 1989).
Conclusion
Contextualistic behaviorism is a subtle position, with assumptions that differ
radically from normal ways of thinking about the world. We have considered
the topic of cognition in this article, but we might instead have analyzed the
role of sense of self, of consciousness, or the therapeutic relationship, or dozens
of other areas where the therapeutic implications of this approach are novel
and non-obvious. The therapeutic value of ideas is ultimately an empirical
matter, but it is important to have a range of ideas to test. Behavior therapy
has been relying on common sense, associationism, and cognitive theory for
many years. Perhaps a renewed and enlightened examination of contemporary
behaviorism will provide an alternative source of technical innovation and
theoretical analysis.
246
HAYES ~_~YES
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RECEIVED: September 6, 1991
ACCEPTED: January 17, 1992