Journal of Emerging Trends in Educational Research and Policy Studies: Home

Abstract:
The primary goals of this paper are to examine processes of stability and change in collaborative social behaviors known as metacontingencies, and to suggest that changes in metacontingencies derive both from stimulus and consequence control and from cognitive control. This addresses the problem of not giving adequate attention to cognitive control. When stability or change is observed in the functioning of a metacontingency, participants will, to a significant extent, have regulated this continuity or change. The preferences of individuals in metacontingencies are not necessarily consistent with collaborative goals. These potential inconsistencies may be associated with individual discontents. They may be grounded in cultural changes, lack of continuity in reinforcing consequences, negative assessments of aggregate products, disproportionate use of common resources by participants, and/or loss of personal investments in an interlocking behavioral contingency. The impact of this paper is in the notion that analyses of metacontingencies can benefit from consideration of external sources of control and cognitive processes.

Keywords: metacontingencies, external control, cognitive processes, contingencies, interlocking contingencies

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