Organized Cooperation: a Behavioral Perspective on Volunteerism

Abstract

In 2014 in the United States, an estimated 62.8 million people, or 25.3% of the population volunteered their time and money to a nonprofit organization, spending around 7.9 billion hours of volunteer time ("Volunteering in 2014("Volunteering in ," 2015. Volunteerism accounts for a significant portion of the workforce, particularly among nonprofit organizations that rely heavily on community support to provide necessary, yet usually unprofitable services. Despite the importance of volunteer practices, volunteer retention is a pervasive issue and can be a time-consuming and costly endeavor for the organization. The current paper provides a review of behavior analytic literature to discuss how behavior science is suited for empirically investigating the origins and maintenance of volunteer behavior. Furthermore, although behavior systems analysis has not specifically addressed volunteerism, this analytic approach could be beneficial to investigate ameliorating volunteer retention on the large scale. The conclusion explores research suggestions and likely implications of expanding behavior analysis further into this domain.

Variáveis Descritivas do Altruísmo na Análise do Comportamento

“…A maior diversidade de variáveis invocadas no estudo do altruísmo foi identificada no campo das consequências. Alguns autores defenderam (i) que a eliminação ou o adiamento de eventos aversivos pode manter o comportamento altruísta (e.g., Goldstein et al, 1978;Peláez, 2001;Zin et al, 2015), enquanto outros argumentaram em favor da (ii) possibilidade de manutenção do comportamento altruísta por reforçadores positivos (e.g., Brayko et al, 2016;Chater et al, 2008;Grusec & Redler, 1980;Peláez, 2001;Rachlin, 2012;Weiner, 1977;Zin et al, 2015).…”

Efeito do sistema de economias de fichas sobre o comportamento cooperativo em crianças

“…Se assumirmos que o SEF aumentou a cooperação ou que, com algumas modificações no nosso protocolo, tem potencial para isso, ele assemelha-se, apesar de não se igualar, aos programas de incentivo à aprendizagem cooperativa (Mendes, Nascimento, & Costa-Lobo, 2018;Fragelli, 2015). Um engajamento promovido pelo SEF pode ajudar na compreensão da falta de engajamento de estudantes nas atividades em grupo (Brayko et al, 2016) Psicol. Pesqui.…”

Out of the Lab: Shaping an Ecological and Constructional Cultural Systems Science

“…The metacontingency as developed by Glenn et al (Glenn, 1988;Glenn et al, 2016), and the elaborated metacontingency as recast by Houmanfar et al and the University of Nevada-Reno (Brayko, Houmanfar, and Ghezzi, 2016;Houmanfar, Alavosius, Morford, Reimer, & Herbst, 2015;Houmanfar, Rodrigues, & Ward, 2010) have proved useful in beginning to understand some dimensions of cultural processes, and we need more of this work. In the elaborated metacontingency, the addition of feedback loops between consumer practices and group rule generation by providing a functional account of associated verbal networks (i.e., relational responding) was a critical advance, as much of the earlier work did not convincingly capture how the choices/ environmental demand of receiving systems/consumers produced changes in the contingency interlocks within the dynamic behavioral systems.…”