Cultural environmental phenomena have been studied while considering at least two
types of relations: metacontingency and macrocontigency relations. Macrocontingency
describes the relation between a cultural practice and the cumulative product of macro
behavior contingencies that constitute this practice. In macrocontigency, each individual
behavior produces an operating consequence besides contributing for the cumulative
product. The magnitude of this cumulative product varies with the number of
individuals that share cultural practice. Recent studies about macrocontingencies
addressed two variables considered relevant for cultural behavioral phenomena: the
competition between behavioral and the cumulative effect (CE) of macrobehavior, on
one hand, and cumulative effect intermittence on the other. Selection studies at cultural
level have evaluated analogous process to operant process, also including intermittent
schemes. In the proportion that macrocontingencies studies appear also to be important
to the knowledge of relevant phenomena for culture, (even though they may be
approached operant selection level, only) it appears to be relevant to add to this
investigations the manipulation of the cumulative effect intermittency. Present study
aimed to investigate the intermittent cumulative effect in FR 1, FR 2, E FR 3 schemes
over macrobehavior, under conditions of competition between individual consequences
of lesser magnitude associated to positive cumulative effect for culture, different in
nature from individual consequences. Participants were 46 college students, that
composed two groups and they made up three culturo-behavioral lineages, termed L1,
L2 and L3. They were exposed to several generations, three participants being exposed
simultaneously. The task required the participants, always individualizing, to chose one
horizontal line in an 10X10 matrix. Each session includes one sequence of successive
trials of lines choices by participants, and columns choices by computer, and
consequences liberation by researcher. All through the experiment, older participants
were replaced with new participants, compounding generations. The firs participant
replaced was P1, after P2, and so on. Each one participant was replaced with 20
sessions. The experiment was composed by 7 conditions, in a ABACADA delineament.
Each group was exposed to the same conditions sequence. Choices of odd rows
produced individual consequences (points exchanged for money) of greater magnitudes
not associated to CE production; choices of even produced individual consequences of
smaller magnitudes and contributed to the production of the CE that consisted of school
items for donation to a public school. The results showed the effectiveness of CE in the
installation and maintenance of self-control responses, after a long exposition to the
programmed macrocontigency. The intermittency of cultural consequence and change
of generations may have contributed to the need of a longer exposition.
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