Sobre maiorias e minorias: estudos sobre conformidade, não conformidade e macrocomportamento

Abstract

The growing interest in cultural phenomena in behavior analysis resulted in a growing interest for new methods and concepts related to groups and for phenomena and concepts relevant in social psychology, for example, the concept of conformity (and non-conformity). In behavior analysis, the concept of macrobehavior – a set of observable behavior similar in the repertoires of different individuals – has been cited as a possible unit of analysis of cultural phenomena. The study of macrobehavior considering the social conformity as a relevant variable to describe the selection and maintenance – or transmission – of cultural practices can contribute to the analysis of cultural phenomena. This work comprises two studies, in the first one the effect of a macrobehavior upon the selection and maintenance of similar topographies behaviors in a specific individual was investigated. In the second study was investigated if macrobehaviors are selected by consequences contingent on individual behavior of individuals in a group. In Study 1, the direct reinforcement of conformity or nonconformity was assessed in a experiment in which 8 participants were exposed to a reversal design. In a trial procedure, each person of a 5-person group – 4 confederates and a target participant – were asked if a 2-color abstract image had white or black as predominant color. All imagens had exactly 50% of white and 50% of black. Each trial, a new image was presented, and each person had to declare in the image had more “black” or “white”. Three confederates declared the same color and one of them declared another in each trial. The target participant was always the last to choose. The experimenter’s declaration of the correct color ended the trials in B and C conditions. In A contidion, baseline, the experimenter only registred the declarations. In the B condition (reinforcement of nonconformity), the experimenter declared in the end of each trial that the color chosen by the minority were correct. In the C condition (reinforcement of conformity) the color chosen by the majority was announced as correct. Four participants passed through the ABACA design and the other four the ACABA design. The A condition had 12 trials and the B and C had between 20 and 50 trials depending on participants performance. The results showed and increase in conformity in the condition C. When the B condition preceded the C condition, the effect of reinforcement over nonconformity were bigger than when condition C were present first. The Study 2 aimed to assess the role of external consequences upon a macrobehavior. The method was similar to Study 1, but the whole group were formed by naive participants (there were no confederates). The results showed that in B condition there was more diversity of individual responses than in C condition and no individual were always part of the minority. There was an observed effect of the order of presentation of experimental conditions