Steven Hayes’ functional contextualism

Functional contextualism is a pragmatic philosophy of science proposed by Steven Hayes and that has had great development in the field of behavioral psychology. It is associated with the theory of relational frameworks and acceptance and commitment therapy, also created by this same author.

The development of this philosophy left its mark on the study of behavior, so its contributions have been relevant to the emergence of new ways of doing therapy; Innovative perspectives for understanding mental disorders and their treatment.

What is contextualism?

Every behavior, no matter how small or irrelevant, develops in a context. We are contextual individuals, subjected and subject to the socio-historical context in which we live. We cannot simply detach ourselves or prevent it from, to a certain extent, shaping who we are, what we think and feel.

In contextualism, behavior is not understood as a set of parts that exist prior to the context, but is perceived as an aspect of the whole that can be discriminated and defined, taking as reference some pragmatic purposes. It is assumed that all organisms interact in and with a context.

Being-in-the-world we cannot place ourselves outside of it and know it from an observer’s perspective, independent of our own judgments, beliefs, intentions, purposes and history. Truth is seen pragmatically, and both models and theories are understood as means to achieve certain purposes.

The analytical unit of contextualism is the ongoing act-in-context and its approach is completely holistic, in which the entire event takes precedence. This totality refers to the context before its elements.

Think about a person who goes to the doctor. This action has a history (headaches) and takes place in a situational context (the doctor’s office). This act-in-context implies a place to come from and go to, a reason or story to go and a purpose to achieve.

Steven Hayes’ functional contextualism

Functional contextualism considers the organism as a whole in action, in which the functions that control behavior prevail.. It is a monistic philosophy, not a mentalistic one; functional, non-reductionist and ideographic.

This approach maintains that mental processes, such as thoughts and cognitive schemes, are configured from the life history of the individual, and that the relationships between the processes and actions of the organism respond to socially enhanced factors and not to mechanical factors. .

From this pragmatic philosophy, the criterion of validity of any theory is its effectiveness in achieving an objective; and that not only serves to predict, but also to control and influence, fostering the conditions that allow the prevention and change of behavioral alterations.

The distinctive features of this type of contextualism are: “the prediction-and-influence of psychological events with precision, scope and depth” (Hayes, Strosahl and Wilson, 2015). Psychological phenomena are considered interactions in and with a historical and situational context..

Contextual functionalism, then, seeks to predict and influence the interactions that the organism establishes in and with its context. From a clinical perspective, it is no use predicting and explaining things, it is also necessary to know how to change (influence) them.

The precision, scope and depth sought to understand, predict and influence mental events They are conceptual requirements to assess an explanation as acceptable that meets the basic objectives of prediction-and-influence.

In this context, precision is understood as the specificity of the variables; by scope to the intellectual economy of the theory and by depth to the degree of coherence achieved by the concepts developed at other levels of analysis.

With the application of functional contextualism in psychology, we seek to make this a science of applied analysis with clear, simple and generalizable interventions, which not only focus on the mental processes of the individual, but also on the context in which these manifest themselves. through acts with purposes and functions.

Basic assumptions

The fundamental ideas of this type of contextualism are the following:

The study of the organism or mental phenomena is carried out by analyzing its interactions in and with a historical and situational context..Understand operant responses in functional termsthat is, it has a specific purpose, a clear function to fulfill.The effects of history on behavior are inevitable.Humans learn through interaction with the environment.People learn language from interactions with the environment.Stimuli are not objects, they are events with behavioral functions. Behavior is a change of functional unit.

Behavior for functional contextualism

All behavior is a set of responses in which different variables intervene: cognition, biological conditions, context and language. The central ideas to understand how behavior is understood in functional contextualism are the following:

The behavior responds to a wholewhich can be defined for some pragmatic purposes. The behavior is viewed as functional in relation to the context. They are localized response patterns in a historical and situational context. Behaviors are not things, but functional changes that occur from one situation to another.

By way of conclusion, we can say that functional contextualism focuses on events or acts in a holistic manner, highlighting the role of context in understanding their nature.

How do you think your history and the contexts in which you live have shaped the way you are?

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