A Scientific Framework for Compassion and Social Justice

Lessons in Applied Behavior Analysis

Jacob A. Sadavoy, Michelle L. Zube, Jacob A. Sadavoy, Michelle L. Zube

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000404807
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

A Scientific Framework for Compassion and Social Justice provides readers with an in-depth understanding of the behavior analytic principles that maintain social justice issues and highlights behavior analytic principles that promote self-awareness and compassion.

Expanding on the goals of the field of applied behavioral analysis (ABA), this collection of essays from subject-matter experts in various fields combines personal experiences, scientific explanations, and effective strategies to promote a better existence; a better world. Chapters investigate the self-imposed barriers that contribute to human suffering and offer scientific explanations as to how the environment can systematically be shaped and generate a sociocultural system that promotes harmony, equality, fulfilment, and love.

The goal of this text is to help the reader focus overwhelming feelings of confusion and upheaval into action and to make a stand for social justice while mobilizing others to take value-based actions. The lifelong benefit of these essays extends beyond ABA practitioners to readers in gender studies, diversity studies, education, public health, and other mental health fields.

1
ACCEPTANCE AND COMMITMENT TRAINING

Acting to Support Compassion-Focused Applied Behavior Analysis

Jonathan Tarbox and Kristine Rodriguez

INTRODUCTION

The world is changing rapidly, global culture is in flux, and yet centuries-old inequities persist. The field of applied behavior analysis (ABA) is situated squarely within the purpose of serving humanity. This is evident to us, as the vast majority of researchers and practitioners in ABA have dedicated our careers to helping empower families living with autism and other developmental disabilities. While this dedication to serving humanity seems obvious to us in the field of ABA, it seems it has not been entirely obvious to others that we lead with our hearts. What’s more, there is a growing yearning inside the field of ABA to connect with other humans in more complete and fundamental ways.

In this chapter, we will make the case for embracing compassion in the field of ABA and discuss ways to use Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT) to empower us to live compassion in our daily research and practice.

This chapter begins with the belief that humans treating other humans with love, compassion, and dignity is among the highest moral imperatives. Many have argued that compassion is a near-fundamental value, across millennia, across cultures, and across all major world faith traditions, including Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, and Islam (Strauss et al., 2016). To lay the groundwork, we will briefly touch upon how empathy and compassion can be viewed as behavioral repertoires.

ROOTS OF EMPATHY AND COMPASSION

Compassion has been defined as taking action to benefit others and is supported by empathy (Eisenberg & Miller, 1987); however, very little behavioral research has been published on empathy. In one of the few available behavioral conceptual accounts of empathy, Vilardaga (2009) suggests that empathy consists of perspective-taking behavior, referred to as deictic relational framing, involving the operant behavior of relating oneself to the other in terms of similarity. For example, “The RBT I am supervising is the same as me, in that we both work with children with autism in the ABA field.” Expanding on Vilardaga’s RFT account of empathy, we have recently suggested that empathy may be strengthened if perspective-taking behavior is directed at shared values (Persicke, 2020). Empathy is likely strengthened when I see similarities between myself and you, in terms of something that matters a great deal to me, such as my values, my religion, my life’s purpose, etc.

The RFT literature predicts that empathy and compassionate behavior can be strengthened through repeated practice, across many different exemplars, until generalization occurs. If I want to strengthen my empathizing behavior, I should actively practice noticing, talking about, and writing about the ways in which I am the same as others, in terms of values. For example, I might practice identifying ways in which:

• I and specific people of different racial/ethnic backgrounds might be the same (e.g., we are all humans, we all want the best for our families, etc.)
• I and people of different religions might be the same (e.g., we both care deeply about our faith, we both care about our right to practice our faith, etc.), and
• I and people of different professions might be the same (e.g., we both care deeply about making a difference, etc.)

When looked at through a behavioral lens, empathy is not a personality trait or mental state, it is a skill to be practiced until fluency and generalization occurs.

Very little has been written about compassion from a behavior analytic perspective. However, Bridget Taylor and Linda LeBlanc have recently called for developing compassionate repertoires in ABA (2019; 2020). Among the many important messages of these recent papers is that compassion converts empathy into behavior aimed at alleviating the suffering of others. Put plainly, who we are in our heads doesn’t touch the world. It’s not about our intent; it’s about the impact we have through our behavior. If we are serious about moving toward a more compassionate future in ABA, then we will all need to demonstrate behavior change in our daily jobs, through small overt behaviors that care for and nurture our clients and colleagues in new and meaningful ways.

Seeing the need for greater compassionate behavior is the easy part; the work of actually practicing empathy and compassion can be difficult and uncomfortable. Below, we describe strategies from the ACT literature that we can use to support our empathy and compassion-building work.

ACCEPTANCE AND COMMITMENT TRAINING

Originally designed as a behavior analytic approach to talk therapy, ACT has flourished as a training approach outside of talk therapy for more than a decade (Tarbox et al., 2020). For an excellent overview of ACT, read A Liberated Mind (e.g., Hayes, 2020). Below, we discuss how components of ACT can be harnessed to support our compassionate behavior.

Values

Values are what we care deeply about and they give our lives meaning and purpose. Values are unique to each individual person but behavior analysts commonly report values such as, “making the world a better place” and “helping our clients achieve their highest potential,” among others. In behavioral perspective, values can be thought of as augmentals or verbally mediated motivating operations, which can give meaning to our behavior (Little et al., 2020). To contact your values, try putting down this book and just write for a few minutes about what you care about most, personally and professionally.

To use values to strengthen your compassion skills, first reflect on what you just wrote and ask yourself if compassion fits in anywhere. You may have identified compassion as something you care about most, for example, I care about being a compassionate helper at work. If compassion did not show up in your values reflection, are there any ways you can imagine that behaving more compassionately might help serve one of the values you did identify? For example, if you identified supporting families living with autism as one of your values, does it follow that behaving more compassionately might serve that value?

Committed Action

Committed action is the ACT component aimed directly at socially meaningful overt behavior change. To take committed action toward the value of building compassionate behavior, start by identifying small, achievable, measurable, overt behaviors and set a goal for yourself. For example, if you notice that your clients’ caregivers might wish to feel more heard by you, perhaps commit to dedicating the first five minutes of each caregiver meeting to just listening to their concerns, without trying to fix or change them. Or if you want to work on being more compassionate with the staff you supervise, perhaps commit to sharing one small way in which you empathize with the difficulty they are experiencing at your next supervision meeting (e.g., “I remember how stressed out I was when I was a new behavioral technician. I get where you are coming from; it’s a totally normal human reaction.”). After identifying the specific goal, make a commitment to someone you respect. Then do the behavior and collect data on yourself. Once a week or so, reflect on your progress and adjust as needed.

Acceptance

Engaging in the self-reflection necessary for empathetic perspective-taking can be uncomfortable because it necessitates seeing how others see us, perhaps sometimes as “cold and uncaring ABA people.” Engaging in new patterns of overt compassionate behavior may be uncomfortable, too, because it may require vulnerability. Acceptance skills, also often called “willingness” skills, consist of making room for the full range of emotions and thoughts that show up, including discomfort. From a behavioral perspective, it seems to consist of the behavioral repertoire of moving toward experiencing aversive emotions and thoughts, when doing so helps one choose committed action toward values. To practice building your acceptance skills, try to remember a time when a parent, client, or other professional judged you as being uncaring. See if you can remember the look of the place where it happened and the feeling in your stomach and chest. If you are like most humans, you are going to immediately want to stop thinking about this. To practice your acceptance skills, try just sitting with those feelings and thoughts for a bit longer. If you notice yourself trying to explain or rationalize them away, that’s okay, just try to bring your attention back to how it actually felt, then and now. As you practice these acceptance skills more and more, you might notice that you are able to experience discomfort for longer. Ultimately, you might find that your answer to this question gradually becomes more affirmative: Would you be willing to feel this discomfort again, if it was the price you need to pay to more fully enact your values of treating others with compassion?

Defusion

At this point, your mind is likely telling you plenty of convincing reasons not to do what this chapter is recommending (e.g., “it’s too fluffy,” “it’s not behavior analytic,” etc.). The human mind, that is, our repertoire of private verbal behavior, is very good at this. From the age of about four or five, we become able to derive cause-and-effect rules about should and shouldn’t. The purpose of defusion training is to help us build more flexible, values-based repertoires of responding to our own thoughts, in the interest of opening up more space for values-based action.

A behavior analytic perspective on thoughts is that they can influence behavior in the same way that overt verbal rules can, by verbally describing an imagined future. We can then respond to those verbal rules as though they are literally true. For example, it is likely common to have thoughts like, “I have to be professional, I can’t show weakness,” in our jobs. If we notice that we may be following this rule in an overly rigid way, for example, by never showing or acknowledging emotions with our clients, then the rule may be getting in the way of our value of conducting ourselves with greater compassion.

A defusion procedure that many find helpful is called Thanks Mind. To practice Thanks Mind, take a minute to list a few reasons your mind is telling you why you aren’t going to be able to do this compassionate behavior stuff. Now try saying one of those reasons out loud and then immediately add a sarcastic, “Wow, thanks mind! I really appreciate how you are always there to help me out when I’m trying to be more compassionate!”

A second handy defusion exercise is Or Not and it involves simply adding “… or not” to the end of whatever thought is telling you to put off or avoid executing your commitments to compassionate behavior. For example, “If I listen to this RBT complain, it’s just going to reinforce their complaining behavior … or not,” or “I just don’t have the energy to call this mom right now and listen to her concerns … or not.” Defusion exercises do not aim to disprove your unhelpful thoughts. They are merely providing more flexible, varied ways to react to our own thoughts, especially when those thoughts encourage us to avoid.

Present Moment Attention

We all have an incredible capacity to think about stuff other than what is actually happening in front of us. The capacity to reconsider the past and to anticipate the future is incredibly powerful and can be adaptive, when done in the right context. Unfortunately, it is very human to spend way too much time paying attention to something other than the present.

Present moment training involves training the behavior of paying attention more to what is happening here and now and less to thoughts about the past or future. Furthermore, it involves learning to self-manage our own attending behavior and redirect it back to the here and now, much as we track and redirect our own attention back to the road when we are driving and get distracted. How is this relevant to compassion? Fundamentally, humans want to be seen and heard. If we want to behave more compassionately when interacting with others, it is absolutely critical that we are paying attention to the people we are interacting with an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction Metta-Contingencies
• 1 Acceptance and Commitment Training Acting to Support Compassion-Focused Applied Behavior Analysis
• 2 AGEISM Reconsidering Aging: An Examination of Contextual Factors and the Construct of Old Age
• 3 ABA: An Evolution Rooted in Compassion: How B.F. Skinner Planted the Seeds of Social Justice for Behavior Analysis and How We Have Grown Over the Past 70 Years
• 4 Behavioral Economics In Health and in Sickness: Irrationality of the Decision-Making Process
• 5 Black Lives Matter From Theoretical Conceptualization to Function-Based Real-Life Application
• 6 Blame Not I: A Behavioral Conceptualization of Perpetrator Blame
• 7 Bullying Queen Bees, Wannabees, Bee-havior Analysts: Looking at Bullying through a Behavioral Lens
• 8 Burnout & Self-Care Filling your Vessel: Recognizing Burnout and Choosing Self-Care
• 9 Compassion The Role of Compassion in Social Justice Efforts
• 10 Connectedness Lessons in Cultural Humility, Racial Capitalism, Racial Colorblindness, Implicit Bias, and Colorism
• 11 Corruption An Integrity Violation Examined from a Behavior Analytic Perspective
• 12 Cultural Responsiveness The Development and Implications of Cultural Responsive Practices to Behavior Change Programs
• 13 Culturally Aware Practice Cultural Considerations for Delivering Effective Treatment
• 14 Culture A Cultural Behavioral Systems Science Perspective on the Struggle for Social Justice
• 15 The do Better Movement The Science of Togetherness
• 16 Equitable Education The Role of Behavior Analysts in Providing Equitable Services for Clients in Public Schools
• 17 Feminism We Can Shatter Glass: An Optimistic Reminder to Behavior-Analytic Feminists
• 18 Gendered Language Moving toward a Compassionate Gender Expansive Society
• 19 Global Impact Standing for Science Takes a Village – An International One
• 20 Higher Education Evidence-Based Teaching in Culturally Responsive Higher Education
• 21 Humanity of ABA ABA as a Humane Approach
• 22 Inclusivity “We’ve Tried Nothing and We’re All out of Ideas!”: Disruptive Behavior and Faith-based Congregations
• 23 Income Inequality Understanding the Needs of Economically Disadvantaged Children and Families
• 24 Indigenous Rights Finding the Trail: Indigenous Considerations for Decolonizing Research and Clinical Work
• 25 Islamophobia Behavior Analysis and Islamophobia: A Behaviorist Point of View
• 26 Criminal Justice The Implications of Dissemination of Applied Behavior Analysis in the Criminal Justice System
• 27 LGBTQ2IA Supporting Ontogenic and Cultural Compassion Building for the LGBTQ2IA Community
• 28 Microaggressions Addressing Microaggressions in the Workplace Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
• 29 Mindfulness Skills and Lessons Learned during the 2020 Pandemic: A Behavior Analytic View of Honing Mindfulness, Awareness, and Kindness
• 30 Organizational Behavior Management Promoting a Compassionate Culture within an Organization
• 31 Nepantla Finding Spirit: The Pedagogy of Nepantla
• 32 Neurodiversity & Ableism From Accountant to Advocate: Ableism and Neurodiversity in the Workplace
• 33 Perspective Taking A Relational Frame Approach to Understanding Perspective-Taking in Compassion and Social Justice
• 34 Prejudice and Oppression Addressing Societal Issues of Prejudice and Oppression: How Can Behavior Analysis Help?
• 35 Privilege Read, Reflect, Resist: Deconstructing Privilege
• 36 Racism Applying Behavior Analysis to Dismantle Racism: From Ideas to Action
• 37 Rural Access Rural Access to Ethical and Appropriate Behavior Analytic Treatment in Schools
• 38 Sexual Harassment Sexual Harassment in the Modern Era
• 39 Social Categorization & Stereotypes Stop Judging a Person by Their Cover: How Stereotypes Limit Our Connection with Others
• 40 Social Justice An Overdue and Urgent Topic for Behavior Analysis
• 41 Social Media A Global Social Tool or Dilemma?
• 42 Stigma Stigma through a Behavioral Lens: A Kenyan Perspective
• 43 Stimulus Equivalence A Derived Relational Account of Cultural Biases
• 44 Urban Planning Urban Planning through a Behavior Analytic Lens
• 45 Wellness Wellness and the Use of Acceptance Commitment Training in the Workplace
• 46 White Saviorism Lessons Learned and Continued Reflections
• Conclusion Designing Organizations with Love: An ACT Prosocial Framework for Social Justice, Diversity, and Inclusion
• Final Thoughts
• Index