Abstract
Applied behavior analysis (ABA) has featured an increasing concern for understanding and considering the cultural diversity of the populations behavior analysts serve in recent years. As an expression of that concern, the new BACB’s Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts is more explicit and comprehensive in its inclusion of ethical obligations concerning cultural diversity. The purpose of this paper is to offer a discussion on the limitations of both our capacity and willingness to know and overcome our ignorance about our own and other cultures. We examine different ways in which our ignorance of other cultures plays out even in willful compliance with the BACB ethics code. We suggest part of the problem is that the BACB ethics code seems to operate under the assumption that practitioners are always aware or can be aware of what they do not know and of their biases. In contrast, we offer a reflection on a more complex picture of our understanding of ourselves and other cultures, where we cannot assume people are aware of what they ignore and of their biases. Ethically, we find that in some cases these blindspots are accounted for by the BACB ethics code and should be foreseen and addressed by the behavior analyst (BA). But in other cases, when a person is not aware of what they ignore, understanding the connection between cultural diversity ignorance and professional behavior requires a different approach. Our analysis suggests an attitude of being thoughtfully diligent and humble while learning about cultural diversity issues and examining the areas where we might be ignorant and not aware of our ignorance. We argue that BAs’ obligations to respect the dignity of clients and their families and to provide effective treatment call for this attitude of diligence and humility that goes beyond mere compliance.
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Notes
For a systematic review on escape extinction see Chazin et al. (2021).
We acknowledge that the terms “Hispanic,” “Latinx,” “Latino/a” and “Latine,” among others, are contested among the populations they are supposed to label. The objections include the colonialist connotations the term “Hispanic” may be seen to carry, the non-binary excluding elements of “Latino/a”, the perceived foreignness of the “x” in “Latinx” and the difficulty some have in pronunciating it, or the ungrammatical nature of the “e” in Latine that makes wide adoption doubtful. At a deeper level, some members of communities that would fall under the Latinx group object to the very idea of such a group, pointing to profound differences different “sub-groups,” for instance, Chicanos, Cuban-Americans, Latin American immigrants, U.S.-born descendants of people from Latin American, and people of indigenous descent. We recognize that the views in these areas vary greatly across communities and individuals.
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Arango, A., Lustig, N. Ignorance and Cultural Diversity: the Ethical Obligations of the Behavior Analyst. Behav Analysis Practice 16, 23–39 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-022-00701-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-022-00701-z