Higher-order behavior classes: contingencies, beliefs, and verbal behavior

Abstract

The concepts of reinforcement and of higher-order classes of behavior are reviewed and applied to analyses of self-reinforcement, self-efficacy, the causal status of private events, and the role of verbal behavior in human action. The analyses support the case that Bandura's criticisms of behavior analytic thought rest upon several misunderstandings, the most important of which are the distinctions between theories and phenomena and a neglect of the process of ontogenic selection. Bandura's persistence in promoting these misunderstandings is puzzling, because over a period of at least two decades he has repeated without substantial correction arguments that were refuted at the time he first made them. Bandura's views on these concepts can be interpreted as a contemporary variety of creationism in behavioral science.