Selection by consequences: One unifying principle for a transdisciplinary science of prevention

The principle of selection by consequences is critical to the analysis of a broad range of phenomena in the biological and behavioral sciences from the evolution of species to the selection of cultural practices. This paper reviews the role of that principle in diverse areas of the biobehavioral sciences and discusses how it can provide one dimension along which the diverse disciplines relevant to the prevention of problems of human behavior can be integrated. Such integration should improve the ability of prevention science to reduce the incidence and prevalence of human behavior problems. KEY WORDS: consequences; parenting interventions; prevention science; reinforcement; selection. Kellam (in press) noted that prevention science is characterized by diverse theoretical and method-ological paradigms with origins in diverse disciplines. He argues that many of the features of paradigms de-veloped to work with one problem may have value when applied to a different prevention problem. For example, design and analytic techniques have been borrowed from one area of substantive research and applied to another, as have general orientations such as life course development and community epidemiol-ogy (Kellam et al., 1999). Research on preventing the development of antisocial behavior has been strength-ened by the integration of epidemiological and de-velopmental perspectives (e.g., Kellam et al., 1994). There also have been several efforts to identify cross-cutting theoretical principles for prevention scienc