A particular case of self-control happens when the conflict between immediate and delayed
consequences are associated with consequences more favorable to the individual, or more
favorable to the group. In such cases, responding under control of delayed consequences more
favorable to the group can be called Ethical Self-Control. Literature on Behavior
Analysis points out that the selection of self-control and ethical self-control depends on
contingencies delivered by members of the group, which permits us to say that these
phenomena are cultural products. This work investigated the selection, maintenance, and
transmission of ethical self-control in two settings analogous to cultural contingencies:
macrocontingencies and metacontingencies. Six microcultures, two in each of the three
studies, were exposed to a task in wich each participant had to choose a line in a colored
10x10 matrix. There were individual consequences according to which choices of odd lines
produced three tokens that could be exchanged for money, and choices of even lines produced
only one token. Cultural contingencies allowed the production of school items that would be
donated to public schools. The production of such items depended up on the existence of
macrocontingencies or metacontingencies. The first study evaluated the effect of the
cumulative product of independent operant responses functionally over the behavior of
participants in a laboratory microculture, when individual consequences that produce higher
magnitude reinforcers are concurrent with the production of consequences more favorable to
the culture, with individual consequences and cultural consequences different in nature. In
this study, choices of even lines produced lower magnitude reinforcers and one school item.
The results showed the effectiveness of the cumulative product in the installation and
maintenance of self-control responses, but only after a long exposure to the
macrocontingency. The changing in generations might have contributed as well to the
necessity of a long exposure. The second analyzed if Interlocked Behavioral Contingencies
(IBCs) and their associated Aggregate Products (AP) can be selected by cultural
consequences different in nature from the individual consequences, in situations where the
production of the cultural consequence is concurrent with the higher magnitude individual
consequences. In this study, the production of school items was contingent to the occurrence
of IBCs+APs that involved choices in three even lines with different colors. Results suggest
that the cultural consequence was effective in the selection and maintenance of ethical selfcontrol
responses. The data also suggests that the IBC’s+APs keep recurring for a large
number of cycles even after suspending the metacontingency. Finally, the third study
investigated the effect of cultural consequences and cumulative product on ethical self-control
responses, in situations in wich the production of the cultural consequences and the
cumulative product are concurrent with responses that produced a higher magnitude
reinforcer, in alternate conditions of macrocontingencies and metacontingencies. In this study,
two microcultures were exposed to alternate conditions of macrocontingencies (as in Study 1)
and metacontingencies (as in Study 2). Results suggest that both the cultural consequence and
the cumulative product were effective in the selection of ethical self-control. When exposed in alternating conditions, though, it was not possible to replicate the same frequency of selfcontrol
responses as in the conditions of Study 2 where there was no exposure to
macrocontingencies. The data also suggest that macrocontingencies were not effective in the
selections of IBCs+APs, but were effective in the maintenance after they were selected in
metacontingency conditions. In macrocontingency conditions a larger number of school items
were produced, but the probability of producing items in metacontingency conditions were
lower than in macrocontingencies conditions, suggesting that the former was more effective
in the production of cultural consequences.
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