Hawai’i ABA 2024

Ryan O’Donnell, MS, BCBA

Title: 

Embracing Your Sphere of Influence: A Behavior Analyst's Perspective

Abstract: 

The mantra “saving the world with behavior analysis” seems to capture everyone who enters this field at some point in their career. The degree to which it imbues each of us is unique, but it is often seen as a unifying view of the possibilities for a better world through behaviorism. One doesn’t have to go far to hear this echoed in our literature, conferences, or centers worldwide. Like many, I initially believed behavior analysis could change the world, embodying this mantra in my everyday professional and personal activities. However, there were times when a behavioral interpretation felt like only part of the explanation, or there was direct evidence of it being subverted entirely (e.g., Project Follow Through).

Years into my journey, freshly certified with a mountain of student loan debt fueling my work ethic, I slowly descended into apathy and despair as I expanded my understanding of the world’s systems that influence behavior. It became clear that behavior analysis alone did not seem sufficient to solve society’s more pressing problems. While the worldview is invaluable and something I’ll never let go of, I found that, as I explored the world living by this mantra, there were often solutions to behavioral issues that could be addressed either in part or entirely through explanations outside our field.

Yet there was hope, as social alignment and cooperation emerged as crucial for identifying patterns in life and business as I explored literature beyond the field of behavior analysis. In this presentation, I aim to provide an overview of a few areas I’ve studied (e.g., economics, technology, game theory) and illustrate how these experiences synthesized into a model emphasizing the importance of impacting within one's “sphere of influence.” While not behavior analytic, I will argue that a behavior analyst can use the worldview of behavior analysis to interpret one’s “sphere of influence” and use it as a daily guidepost for justifying professional and personal behavior. Using my personal journey in the field to date, and the data beyond the field I’ve explored so far, I believe I can help each behavior analyst more efficiently assess their efforts in “saving the world with behavior analysis” by asking themselves one simple question: What is your “sphere of influence?”

Objectives: 

  1. Participants will be able to describe a cursory behavioral interpretation of the concept of “sphere of influence.” 

  2. Participants will be able to provide three areas outside behavior analysis that have sufficient evidence of influencing the behavior of living organisms. 

  3. Participants will be able to describe the difference between mechanistic and contextualistic behavioral interpretations of behavioral events. 

  4. Participants will be able to describe factors that could impact their ability to influence systems that influence broader society effectively.