Behavior Analysis of Culture in Brazilian Psychology Graduate Programs: A Literature Review

Behavior analysis has a long and strong tradition in Brazil. Following the introduction of the concepts of metacontingencies and macrocontingencies, Brazilian researchers and universities developed prominent areas of research and training in the behavior analysis of culture. This article aims to review and characterize the Brazilian literature (in the form of articles, dissertations, and theses) related to the behavior analysis of sociocultural phenomena in general and the experimental studies with meta- and macrocontingencies as units of analysis (between 2015 and 2020) in particular. The choice of different descriptors and the inclusion of dissertations and theses extend previous reviews and help demonstrate the contribution of the country's graduate programs in training young scientists in the field. The results showed an increasing number of studies since 2002; the predominance of basic studies, mainly experimental; and a greater number of studies based on the concept of metacontingency. This analysis demonstrates the need for international and interinstitutional collaborations. We conclude that Brazilian graduate programs in psychology had a pivotal role in the development of interpretative and experimental research on metacontingencies. Furthermore, the growing impact of conceptual and experimental studies by these academic groups suggests their strong commitment to expanding the behavior analysis of culture by training a new generation of researchers and practitioners.