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. 2003 Fall;26(2):215–231. doi: 10.1007/BF03392077

Behavior analysis and social constructionism: Some points of contact and departure

Bryan Roche, Dermot Barnes-Holmes
PMCID: PMC2731460  PMID: 22478403

Abstract

Social constructionists occasionally single out behavior analysis as the field of psychology that most closely resembles the natural sciences in its commitment to empiricism, and accuses it of suffering from many of the limitations to science identified by the postmodernist movement (e.g., K. J. Gergen, 1985a; Soyland, 1994). Indeed, behavior analysis is a natural science in many respects. However, it also shares with social constructionism important epistemological features such as a rejection of mentalism, a functional-analytic approach to language, the use of interpretive methodologies, and a reflexive stance on analysis. The current paper outlines briefly the key tenets of the behavior-analytic and social constructionist perspectives before examining a number of commonalties between these approaches. The paper aims to show that far from being a nemesis to social constructionism, behavior analysis may in fact be its close ally.

Keywords: contextualism, social constructionism, behavioral hermeneutics, behavior analysis, discursive psychology, postmodernism

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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