Efeitos de Consequências Intermitentes (FR2 e FR3) Sobre a Seleção de Respostas de Autocontrole Ético em Arranjos de Macrocontingência

Abstract

Cultural environmental phenomena have been studied while considering at least two types of relations: metacontingency and macrocontigency relations. Macrocontingency describes the relation between a cultural practice and the cumulative product of macro behavior contingencies that constitute this practice. In macrocontigency, each individual behavior produces an operating consequence besides contributing for the cumulative product. The magnitude of this cumulative product varies with the number of individuals that share cultural practice. Recent studies about macrocontingencies addressed two variables considered relevant for cultural behavioral phenomena: the competition between behavioral and the cumulative effect (CE) of macrobehavior, on one hand, and cumulative effect intermittence on the other. Selection studies at cultural level have evaluated analogous process to operant process, also including intermittent schemes. In the proportion that macrocontingencies studies appear also to be important to the knowledge of relevant phenomena for culture, (even though they may be approached operant selection level, only) it appears to be relevant to add to this investigations the manipulation of the cumulative effect intermittency. Present study aimed to investigate the intermittent cumulative effect in FR 1, FR 2, E FR 3 schemes over macrobehavior, under conditions of competition between individual consequences of lesser magnitude associated to positive cumulative effect for culture, different in nature from individual consequences. Participants were 46 college students, that composed two groups and they made up three culturo-behavioral lineages, termed L1, L2 and L3. They were exposed to several generations, three participants being exposed simultaneously. The task required the participants, always individualizing, to chose one horizontal line in an 10X10 matrix. Each session includes one sequence of successive trials of lines choices by participants, and columns choices by computer, and consequences liberation by researcher. All through the experiment, older participants were replaced with new participants, compounding generations. The firs participant replaced was P1, after P2, and so on. Each one participant was replaced with 20 sessions. The experiment was composed by 7 conditions, in a ABACADA delineament. Each group was exposed to the same conditions sequence. Choices of odd rows produced individual consequences (points exchanged for money) of greater magnitudes not associated to CE production; choices of even produced individual consequences of smaller magnitudes and contributed to the production of the CE that consisted of school items for donation to a public school. The results showed the effectiveness of CE in the installation and maintenance of self-control responses, after a long exposition to the programmed macrocontigency. The intermittency of cultural consequence and change of generations may have contributed to the need of a longer exposition.