The present article discusses the emergence and dynamics of community resilience by empirically investigating the case of the favela of Paraisópolis in São Paulo, Brazil. The emergence of innovative practices that initially contributed to significantly lower rates of COVID-19 infection and mortality when compared to the city average is described. The analytical framework combines two conceptual perspectives in the study of complex systems. First, resilience in socio-ecological systems highlights the adaptation processes characterized by an interplay of previous experience and emerging new knowledge. Second, the metacontingency framework describes the interplay between a cultural milieu, as a context for cultural practices; an aggregate product; and a selecting environment that embed the acquisition and continuity of interlocking behavioral contingencies. Research methods that combine elements of the descriptive analysis and an exploratory basic qualitative study are employed to understand how the community has self-organized during this period. The findings demonstrate how previous experience with social challenges facilitated self-organization and the emergence of innovative practices in the context of uncoordinated public health measures during the pandemic in Brazil. Furthermore, findings from interviews indicate the existence of positive feedback loops at the community level that facilitated the emergence of innovative practices. This study aims at contributing to the understanding of community resilience by identifying the geographic, psychological, and ecological factors (contextual variables) that facilitate responses to the pandemic.

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Until pharmacological measures are effective at containing the COVID-19 outbreak, adopting protective behaviors is paramount. In this work, we aim at informing interventions to limit the spread of the contagion and prepare against any future outbreaks by developing a behavioral framework to interpret and prescribe both the individual and large-scale uptake of non-pharmaceutical measures. First, we analyze the barriers and facilitators to adherence to protective behaviors according to a three-term contingency by exploring potential gaps in terms of setting stimuli, motivating operations, delayed consequences, and positive or negative consequences. We explore their roles in the likelihood of individual compliance to protective behaviors, taking physical distancing as an example of functional analysis. Second, we interpret contagion control as the cumulative effect of large-scale adherence to protective behaviors. We explore the interrelations between societal problems caused or amplified by similar behaviors presented by many individuals and the coordination of agents or agencies aiming at promoting large-scale behavioral change. Then, we highlight the potential of developing a behavioral vaccine, and practical steps for applying it to promote sustainable cultural change that may protect against health, social, and economic losses in future outbreaks.

In Selection by Consequences, Skinner (1981) described a causal model that explains human behavior as a joint product of three levels of selection: (a) the contingencies of survival involved in natural selection, (b) the contingencies of reinforcement involved in the selection of individual behavior, and (c) contingencies of an evolving social environment. Since then, researchers from behavior analysis and other fields such as biology and anthropology have used an evolutionist/selectionist approach to greatly improve our understanding of those three levels of analysis. As our knowledge of each level has expanded, the borders between them and their belonging to specialized academic domains has become less clear. Even though Skinner (1981, p 502) stated that "each level of variation and selection has its own discipline-the first, biology; the second, psychology; and the third anthropology," we argue that Selection by Consequences sets a milieu for behavior analysis to take part in the analysis of the integrated relation among all levels of analysis. In this commentary to Skinner's (1981) paper, we aim to point out some advances in behavior analysis that may contribute to bridging the gap between the three levels of analysis described by Skinner. In doing so, we will briefly describe some relations between natural and behavioral selection and between behavioral and cultural selection. Additionally, we discuss an alternative model to analyze selection of cultures. Natural-Behavioral SelectionLet us start with the relationship between natural and behavioral selection. Glenn and Madden (1995) pointed to Skinner (1953) andCampbell (1956) as the first to compare the processes of natural selection and reinforcement. Glenn and Madden argued that if the same processes that explain organic selection were applicable to behavioral selection, the understanding of one would provide valuable insights about the other. In organic evolution through natural selection, genes are the units of retention and replication that are transmitted generation-to-generation, enabling species survival and adaptation to environmental changes. On the other hand, in behavioral

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