Title: Editorial: The Science of Behavior and Human Rights
Abstract: The "good life" is not a world in which people have what they need; it is one in which the good things they need figure as reinforcers in effective contingencies (Skinner, 1975(Skinner, /1996, p. 69), p. 69).The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted and proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 1948, enumerates "rights and freedoms" to which every person is entitled "without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status."There are, in fact, two principle types of rights included in the Universal Declaration: freedom from threat and punishment of particular kinds, and opportunities to access reinforcers.Examples of the first include the right to liberty and security of person, the right not to be subjected to "torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment," to "arbitrary arrest, detention or exile," or to "arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation."Examples of the second, include the right "to marry and to found a family," to "seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers," and to "work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment."There is much more (see the Behaviorists for Social Responsibility website for the full declaration), but this gives a flavor for the Declaration.Human rights are much in the news as the world becomes increasingly interconnected.This is a world of interlocking cultural practices, in which some practices may produce rich reinforcers for the few, but only minimal reinforcers for many others, often despite high levels of behavior.This is also a world in which establishing operations are often manipulated through marketing to increase motivation to work for reinforcers that may, in the long run, produce poor individual and collective outcomes.What, if anything, can the science of behavior contribute to the realization of the rights enumerated in the Declaration in this cultural context?Perhaps one small contribution is a way of understanding "rights."Contemporary understandings of human rights suggest that rights are not possessions; rather they are better viewed as relationships entailing obligations (Lowery, in press).Skinner defined "culture" as the "contingencies of reinforcement maintained by a group" (1987, p. 74)-contingencies that maintain cultural practices (Biglan, 1995).Perhaps, then, positive rights might be thought of as contingencies in which those things that persons and peoples need to survive and thrive figure as reinforcers, while negative rights might be viewed as involving freedom from contingencies of coercion (Sidman, 2001).The science of behavior suggests that cultures emphasizing contingencies in which valued events, conditions and things figure as "effective reinforcers" are likely to produce high levels of behavior, low levels of countercontrol, and few side effects.In contrast, contingencies based in extensive