Behavior is a mirror in which everyone displays their own image.

                                                                    Johann Wolfgang von Goeth

W. Joseph Wyatt, PhD

BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS:

1. Is a recognized field of study.

2. Accounts for both genetic and environmental causation.

3. Provides an analysis of private events (thoughts and feelings).

4. Has broad usefulness.

5. Focuses on both human and nonhuman behavior.

6. Provides analyses of language and language acquisition.

7. Has broad and growing bases in both basic and applied research.

8. Presents its theoretical and empirical literature in a growing number of current journals and      books.

9. Has a technical nomenclature of terminology that separates it from laypersons’ language.

10. Is a specialized filed requiring substantial post-graduate training in order to achieve expertise.

11. Emphasizes positive means of intervention, over negative means of intervention.

12. Is best illustrated by the three-term contingency, by S-R-S (or A-B-C) which stands for Stimulus-Response-Stimulus (or Antecedent-Behavior-Consequence).

13. Is a contemporary, evolving and developing field and is not the behaviorism of John B. Watson.

14. Acknowledges that not all behaviors are equally  conditionable.

 

Note:  These fourteen principles are the frequent subjects of misrepresentations in both popular and academic sources.  The list was formulated by several members of BALANCE (Behavior Analysis League for Accuracy in News, Commentary and Education), which was a Special Interest Group of the Association for Behavior Analysis International.  They were first published in the group’s newsletter, Balance, in 1996, in an article titled “Behavior analysis needs a Magna Charta – Now,” by W. Joseph Wyatt.

About the Author:  Dr. Wyatt has published many papers in professional journals.  See his two-part series “Recent Developments in the Assessment of Child Sexual Abuse” in the Forensic Examiner (1999).  He founded and edits Behavior Analysis Digest, a quarterly newsletter.  He is a member of the Board of Editors of Behavior and Social Issues.

Dr.  Wyatt is the author of two books The Millennium Man and B.F.  Skinner From A to Z.

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