Abstract

CRUZ, Robson Nascimento da. Informality to formality: the initial course of social organization of behavior analysis. Perspectivas [online]. 2011, vol.2, n.1, pp. 77-89. ISSN 2177-3548.

When we analyze the history of a science based in its formal aspects, we don't frequently take into account that the science organization depends on a social relation net responsible for the production and support of its acceptance and maintenance along the time. In this present study, we analyze the way this net was formed and was a responsible part for the initial historic formation of the behavior analysis as a scientific community, which emerges between the 1930s and the 1950s in the United States of America. This investigation had the following topics as basis: (a) the intense informal contact between B. F. Skinner and F. S. Keller, as a first step to the institutional establishment of a new behavior science; (b) the rejection of the experimental outlining of a unique subject, by a significant part of the north-american experimental psychology, and the communication difficulties and the isolation among the first behavior analysts, as reasons for the start of a social organization of the area; (c) the first conference of the experimental analysis of the behavior in 1947 as a spreading source of a new science community. The social organization of a new science - through a net of informal relationships that were born from its growing formalization, institutionalization, visibility and acceptance are the main conclusions derived from the present study.

Keywords : behavior analysis; experimental analysis of behavior; history of behaviorism; history of psychology.

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