Social Behavior and Cultural Selection Lab

This is a lab at Universidade Federal do Pará, in Belém, Brazil, part of the Behavior Theory and Research Graduate Program. This lab was founded by Dr. Emmanuel Tourinho when I was a PhD student. Afterward, together with Dr. Tourinho, I was one of the principal investigators, and it has reflected my own research over time.

The Social Behavior and Cultural Selection Lab focuses on the interplay between individual behavior and the broader cultural contexts in which it occurs, drawing on key concepts from behavior analysis such as macrocontingencies and metacontingencies to understand how aggregates of individual behaviors and interlocking behavioral patterns are selected and maintained over time. This framework allows the lab to examine how cultural-level processes shape, and are shaped by, the actions of individuals within social systems.

A significant strand of research addresses self-control, including ethical and cultural self-control, exploring how individuals choose behaviors with delayed or larger-scale benefits over immediate gratification, and how cultural practices support or undermine this capacity at both personal and collective levels.

The lab also investigates private events and the cultural determinants of psychological experience, examining how thoughts, feelings, and other covert behaviors are influenced by the cultural and social environments in which individuals are embedded, contributing to a more integrated behavioral account of subjective experience.

Finally, the lab applies these concepts to behavior-analytic therapy and culture, considering how clinical and therapeutic practices can be understood, evaluated, and improved by attending to the cultural contingencies that shape both client behavior and therapists' practices.

After I took a position at UNT, the lab is currently coordinated by Dr. Emmanuel Tourinho, with whom we still partner for research in cultural selection and social issues.