Economics, sociology and anthropology are concerned in various ways with human activities. Whether these activities involve the transfer of the human invention called money, social interactions, or the evolution of cultures, they have behavioral dimensions. The essays here suggest ways in which the common concerns of these social sciences may lead to conceptual affinities with behavior analysis.

Economic concepts have traditionally been anchored to measures of the aggregate behavior of large numbers of people (taken as representing decisions of the fictitious "economic man"), whereas those of behavior analysis begin with direct observations of the behavior of individuals. We are accustomed to thinking that the meaningful interrelation of the two fields would be accomplished by extrapolating to the aggregate the principles derived from studying individuals. Hursh shows, however, that some data from individual-subject research designs that are puzzling in terms of principles so far derived from behavior theory are readily understood in terms of conventional economic principles. For example, open and closed economies, translated into characteristics of experimental procedures, focus on aspects of procedure that traditionally have been viewed as mundane housekeeping details typically buried in method sections of experimental reports: e.g., determination of session length and care of subjects between sessions. With data from individuals, Hursh compellingly shows that such variables can profoundly affect the persistence and patterns of behavior.

The economic concept of elasticity suggests dynamic properties of reinforcers that can readily be examined experimentally. Another concept, complementarity, suggests a systematic strategy for investigating interactive effects between disparate types of reinforcers. Together with efforts by other behavior analysts (e.g., Herrnstein, 1988; Rachlin, Green, Kagel & Battalio, 1976; Staddon, 1979), this work has achieved constructive collaboration with a coordinate but distinct discipline. The economist's "invisible hand of the marketplace" becomes accessible as the behavior analyst's ubiquitous "contingencies of reinforcement."

Turning to the more social of the social sciences, Bernstein's review concerns Deci & Ryan's Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior,a book widely understood as antithetical to behavioral interventions. Bernstein skillfully shows how a behavior analyst can approach such issues constructively, acknowledging points that are valid no matter what one's viewpoint. In this case, that means identifying the characteristics of a behavioral intervention that would be likely to be ineffective. Behavior analysts have nothing to fear in that analysis, because it turns out that the deleterious effects presented as supporting Deci & Ryan's case are unlikely to occur if the rewards employed in the intervention are actually reinforcers, and if those reinforcers are made contingent upon the quality and magnitude of the target activity rather than merely upon time spent in the activity. A greater danger is to be found in leaving such effects unanalyzed and thus susceptible to misuse, as in Deci & Ryan's rejection of all reinforcement-based practices because some applications of reward (which may not even qualify as reinforcement) may have counterproductive effects on some kinds of behavior. Rather than dismissing criticisms of behavior analysis as misguided or conceptually confused, Bernstein shows how such criticisms can identify phenomena that await more adequate analysis in behavior analytic terms.

Blackman shows that the philosophical issues raised by behavior analytic theory bring it close to the very core of social science, even though its interpretive principles and research strategies usually place behavior analysis among the natural sciences. Thus, on the one hand, we find selectionist principles, Darwinian theory and the interpretive status of physiological principles woven into relation with Skinner's behavior analytic stance, with a consideration of what makes that stance unconventional as psychological interpretation. On the other, we find the same principles, addressed more generally to discriminations made by the interpreter, yielding descriptions nearly interchangeable with assertions of G. H. Mead, a "doyen of social science." While recognizing substantial differences between the views of Mead and Skinner, Blackman proposes that their similarities are fundamental.

Lloyd's review of Marvin Harris's Cultural Materialism encourages behavior analysts to look even more broadly afield for affinities with other viewpoints, by providing evidence of links between behavior analysis and an established approach to cultural anthropology. Harris characterizes infrastructures as systems of contingencies upon which the characteristics of a culture are based. They are at the outer limit of scale in a behavior analytic conceptualization of social contingencies, but they are at the small end in the analysis provided by cultural materialism. Harris accounts for cultural practices in terms of these systems of contingencies, supported by a broad range of anthropological data: e.g., how cannibalism developed in some places and not others, how it is that pork came to be eaten in China but not in the Middle East, how the cow came to be deified in India even in locales where male calves are favored over female ones. In addition to emphasizing contingent relations between behavior and consequences, Harris also shares with behavior analysts a skepticism about the commonly assumed relations between what people do and what they say about what they do. Lloyd proposes that when such interpretive assumptions are shared between two viewpoints that originate in different fields, one can immediately enter into constructive discussion of what each has to offer the other.