BEHAVIOR AND PERESTROIKA

The field of behavior analysis progressively has expanded its horizons. In the 1930s and 40s, it focused on molecular responses of birds and small mammals. The 1950s and 60s witnessed an expansion to consideration of primate behavior, including that of humans. The 1970s and 80s experienced the behavioral community psychology emphasis, which investigated behavior and its controlling contingencies within the context of the social network that characterizes· communities. As the 1990s begin, behavior analysis has matured to the point where it can go beyond Skinner's early discussions of large scale social processes (1953, 1971), and consider, in increasingly sophisticated manners, the contingencies that societies impose on their members and the functional relationship of these contingencies to the behavior of their constituents. The interest in behavior analysis on a societal level has been manifested in two directions. Some writers have developed cogent theoretical perspectives an