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PREVIEW - The Science of Consequences Book Club
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Enjoy a short preview of our latest full-length Book Club episode. Want to hear the whole thing and get 2.5 CEs for FREE? Subscribe to today at the premium $10+ levels for that plus other bonuses! As a follow-up from our episode on , we our...
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- [00:00]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Foreign.
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Rob
Hey, everybody. Welcome to ABA Inside Track Book Club Edition. This is a special preview of our full length winter 2025 book club episode on the science of consequences by Dr. Susan Schneider. So the full length episode is only available to our patron at the $10 and up level on patreon.com aba inside track. But for everybody, we wanted to make sure that you had a chance to listen to the beginning of the episode, which, surprise, is an interview with the author, Dr. Susan Schneider. So we're going to be talking with Dr. Schneider all about the creation of the book, where it came from, her ideas, some of the favorite parts that I had that we had as a group, and also some of her work that she's currently doing on climate change. So you're going to get to hear all of that and that's going to come in right now. All right, so I am here very, very excited to be talking with Dr. Susan Schneider about her book the Science of Consequences, which we did our whole book club episode about. We had a nice long discussion about it, but it's nice that we thought whatever we thought. But why don't we check in with Susan about the book as the person who created it or at the very least summed up her research, other people's research into a nice coherent whole. And speaking of that, Susan, would you mind just kind of introducing yourself to the audience and saying a little bit more about you than I think my bio I did probably won't have done it justice.
- [01:43]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Okay. And I haven't seen the bio, at least I don't remember, but. Right. How far back do you want me to go?
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Rob
Oh, as much as you feel like sharing leading up to the book, you know, this is your time. So you, you, you go into whatever detail you think is, is, is helpful.
- [02:01]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Okay. And I'd love to hear more about the discussion that the book club had too. Yeah, if you can bring any of that up, that would be great.
- [02:08]
Rob
I will, I will.
- [02:10]
Dr. Susan Schneider
I started out in engineering in the 1970s and 80s, but ran into some obstacles because of my gender. So it was good for a while. But yeah, again, there were enough issues that after a bit I switched over, I should say. I joined the Peace Corps and did that for a while. Yeah, so that was exciting. And then after that, I switched to behavior analysis. I had read B.F. skinner's book Beyond Freedom and Dignity in high school for a psychology class for which we got college credit in our senior year and been very impressed by it. So that was always kind of in the background for me as A possibility. So I got my PhD at University of Kansas working with Ed Morris and. And then had an academic career for a while, switched around and then was chatting with people about why there wasn't a book like the Science of Consequences out there that would try and integrate behavior analysis with related fields, including the important role it plays in nature, nurture relations, which I knew something about because I studied that in graduate school. Developmental psychobiology. And I worked for five years as a developmental psychobiologist at Florida International University. So I had that background. I did mathematical modeling of behavior for my dissertation and some of the research after that and various academic institutions. And I taught a wide range of classes, including cognitive and social and Love Teaching Intro, which of course covers everything. And so I thought, you know, here's learning Principles Operant and Pavlovian, both that are such a critical part of all these other areas of the behavioral sciences. And can we have a book for the public out there that will kind of integrate everything together with examples that's not too technical, that covers the range and that has some, you know, humor, ideally, and enough of interest, you know. Yeah. So I never thought I would do it. I never thought I would do it, but that's the way it worked out. I saw an opening there. I realized, yeah, actually, maybe I have enough background and all these interdisciplinary areas, as well as in the core of behavior analysis to do justice to this. So it took me 10 years, Rob.
- [04:58]
Rob
Wow.
- [04:58]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah.
- [04:59]
Rob
I mean, the book definitely reads as very well lived and well researched. So the 10 years is not as surprising in terms of the breadth of information there.
- [05:07]
Dr. Susan Schneider
So I am so glad to hear that. Yeah, that was part time at first, of course. I started it in the year 2000 and I finally finished it in 2011. The last couple of years I worked on it full time. I got an agent. I got a Manhattan agent. I was all excited about that. Yeah. Yeah. And created a website and read books about how to publish a book about science for the public. Yeah.
- [05:36]
Rob
Wow. So there's a lot going on. One of the things I was curious about, because we came to this book as a group, we have. We did an episode on storytelling. So. And your book was cited in one of the articles about why don't behavior analysts do more in storytelling. And your book was cited as an example of Here's a way to tell stories that are both scientific and readable and understandable. So we do. We did a poll for the year. We do four book clubs a year because books can take a long time to read and we put Science of Consequences as one of the options, and so that was one of the top choices. So we did that as our, our second book of the year. And it definitely had that storytelling vibe to it. But I'm wondering when you were writing it, you know, over the span of 10 years, I'm guessing there were a couple different variants, you know, because there were components of the book that I sort of was like, oh, I bet there's like a real good deep dive into some of the genetics, like even more than this. But there are also sections too that I wondered, like, this feels like it's getting a little technical. I wonder, is there a version that was, you know, let's gloss this over. Let's make this more pop psychology than behavior analytic or behavioral or, you know, biological or psychobiological. How. Whichever area of the book it was. Can you kind of tell me about how you went back and forth with making something that tried to hit that sweet spot in between really nice and scientific and really readable to non full time scientists?
- [07:07]
Dr. Susan Schneider
That's a really good question, Rob. And yeah, I went back and forth. There were so many judgment calls about things like that during the course. Course of this odyssey. Right. The, the nature nurture section was the hardest to try and hit the sweet spot because I wanted to cover a topic like epigenetics because behavior analysis principles are very much involved with what goes on with this phenomenon where environmental, you know, actions and experiences affect the likelihood that one of your genes will be expressed to produce the protein it codes for. And there was just. I tried my best, I tried my best to make it understandable and not too technical, but invariably when I got responses afterward about the book, if this came up, that was the section where people said, yeah, it was a little technical in the nature nurtured section. And yeah, I'm not surprised. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But overall. Right. The mathematical modeling section 2. I do refer to differential equations at one point, but I don't go into too much detail with that. Right, yeah. This is one of the reasons it took 10 years. I mean, first of all, of course you have to decide the range of your coverage and then start lining up references and topics you're going to include versus topics that you're not going to include. And that in itself was just. Yeah, took forever. You know, it helped to get some chapters written toward the beginning of this phase. Like chapter one, I actually wrote fairly early on in the process because I knew what I wanted to cover in that chapter. But the other chapters. Yeah, yeah. And the Length of the book related to, of course, how much I was going to cover. Yeah, at first it was, I think, more than the 16 chapters it ended up being. And then I peered that down, I think to 12 for a while, but that wasn't enough. And so. Yeah, yeah, just. Yeah, it's just an ongoing search for the happy medium where you cover the things that you think are most important to cover in a readable way. And you have chapters, hunks of chapters that fit reasonably neatly and that lead reasonably neatly one into the other, you know, to create that sense of story, like, we're going somewhere again, these are three overall sections to the book, of course, but. But within each section, I tried hard to have that sense of not just, okay, here's this area and then here's this area and plunk them down at random, you know, to have a more logical order.
- [10:06]
Rob
Okay. So that makes sense in terms of, you know, trying to do that storytelling piece of. There has to be an order to. I'm presenting this information in a way that's building, building. And then here's where it stops and we start the next related but different section.
- [10:18]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah, yeah.
- [10:19]
Rob
Now, I know a lot of the content of the book really relies on the research examples to, you know, tell like, so, like little mini stories within the overarching kind of, you know, scientific narrative that you're presenting. I'm curious how you chose those samples. Were they just sort of like, these are recent research articles that I think capture the point. They were ones that maybe you were at a dinner party and somebody mentioned. I read an article in, you know, in Nature about, you know, whatever the. The topic was, you know, some of the. Some of the animal research. Right. And. And you said, oh, that sounds like I'm going to look into that. That's going to capture it. Because someone who doesn't know science, like I do is bringing it up. So it must have valence for, you know, the, the broader audience, or was it kind of just like, nope, I like this research. That's the one that's doing it.
- [11:07]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah, I had done a lot of reading myself over the years at that point. I had kept not notes. I taught all these courses. I was reading the literature, and of course I did a lot of literature searches. I mean, the book ended up with over 700 references.
- [11:25]
Rob
Well, that's what my wife said because I usually finish the books first as the group because then I have to lead the discussion. And she's like, I'm not going to get this book is so long And I'm like, don't Worry, there's like 120 pages of references. It's not as long as it looks.
- [11:39]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Exactly. And that was the choice of the publisher to have that in that font. I think if they'd made it finer print, it would have been more typical. But. Right, but this way, of course, it's easy for people to track down a reference. Oh, yeah, right. Yes. But as to where I got them all from. Right, of course, sometimes just literature. Searching for examples a lot from my own reading and from my own teaching, I did have a number of people who very kindly helped me along the way, people who were experts. And in areas where I was especially less expert, like some of the applied areas, I knew the basics. I went to Kansas, after all, you know, and I taught some of that. But, yeah, so I had people also in other areas, like developmental psychobiology, that I could consult, and they sometimes had suggestions, too. But mainly, yeah, I. I would. I would get together things that I thought would work for a chapter and come up with a draft and then shoot it out there and then, you know, and. And see how. How the research findings that I had located, you know, fit in. Could I, in fact, write about this particular finding in a way that made it work for that chapter? Right. Yeah, it was. Yeah. And I kept detailed documents on my computer with ideas for each chapter, which again, changed when the chapter changed somewhat. But, yeah, and so I. I'd have a lot to pick from. And, you know, not everything made it to the final version. It was a winnowing process. I had more than I could use, basically. So I just did my best to pick examples that would illustrate the concepts. Well, I thought, and be fun to read about where possible, have applications to people's ordinary lives or to challenges like the last chapter. Or, of course, I included climate change and other societal level challenges. That's not typically an area that a lot of behavior analysts work on, but our principles apply there, like everywhere else. And so that was one of those areas where I had to read outside of the field.
- [14:09]
Rob
Now, I know one of the dangers, and this came up when we were sort of, you know, doing some of our own research, research review on storytelling or how to disseminate information. I mean, it's one of the things that we. We do on the show every week. Do you ever feel or did you ever get nervous that you were spending too much time trying to make interesting stories and then maybe not capturing the idea and. And if so, how did you kind of pull yourself back and kind of use an example to illuminate. Like, was, was there like a strategy that you tried to use? Did you sort of like put the example, describe it to yourself to kind of reflect on? Is that capturing the, the general idea of say, nature, nurture or some. Of using some of the consequence, you know, responses you lay out that relate to, say, climate change or, you know, other societal ills? That is sort of in the back.
- [15:03]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Half of the book.
- [15:04]
Rob
Like what, what were those steps? So, for example, if I were going to write another book. Well, I haven't read a book, but if I were going to write a book and I wanted to do good storytelling, I didn't make it too fluffy. I didn't just make it story after story and they don't really lead to anything. Like, I'm just curious because it feels like such a hard task.
- [15:23]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah, it was. It was, yeah. Yeah. I think Skinner's own article about how to discover what you have to say. Right. Really captures a lot of the nuance for anyone writing any kind of project. You know, you get the ideas down. You know, if it's a database book like this is, then you got your references somewhere and then you kind of shift them around and see what order might work and then you actually make a stab at writing and then you realize, oops, nope, that's not going to work. And you switch things around and I mean, sometimes things change to a different chapter entirely. Yeah, it was very much trial and error. I mean, I had a fair bit of writing experience at that point, but mainly academic writing. Right. Not through the public, but I've always been a reader and I like non fiction as well as fiction. And so I saw how people like Stephen Jay Gould, to make a, to give a shining example there, you know, was able to write very good science for the public in a very readable way. And there's a number of other people who've been very successful with that. Stuart Vice, Paul Chance, to name two behavior analysts who've been very successful in reaching the public with their books and so. And all kinds of other areas, of course. So I had models to go from and I tried to make my book kind of like theirs. Again, I didn't want to go academic, I didn't want it to be a textbook, but I, and I love Kieran Pryor, but I wanted it to be more in depth than, let's say, let's don't shoot the dog, your classic, you know, million book bestseller, I think. Yeah. Back in the day. Yeah. Such a wonderful accomplishment. But that was A short book that just took some of the basic principles and then had a great range of applications with people as well as with animals. But I wanted to do something more in depth than that. More like a Stephen Jay Gould, basically. So, yeah. And then as I actually started putting it together and then once you get a few chapters actually written, Rob, then you have a voice for that book. And then the other chapters all have to match that. So that really helped. Once I had the first few chapters written and they weren't big and they weren't like chapters one and two, although chapter one, I think was one of the first ones. They were scattered throughout the book there. But nonetheless, I've, you know, I, I had a way of writing for the book and a length too. I don't know if you noticed, but the chapters are roughly equivalent lengths. Books don't have to be like that. Sometimes authors have really short chapters and then a really long chapter.
- [18:40]
Rob
Oh, I think of, you know, reading Verbal Behavior and you get to chapter three. Why is this like 200 pages? It's not that, but it's like this is too long. It's only chapter three, man. Let's hurry it up.
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Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah, I didn't want really long chapters, but I didn't want really short ones either. I wanted, you know, again, a happy medium there. And once I had a first, a few chapters actually written, then that was a wonderful way for me to see, okay, here's how these remaining topics I want to cover can fit in to that kind of length and format. And, and, and, and then, you know, things just fell into place at one point. It was beautiful. The 16 chapters, the three sections. Yeah. And then it was just a matter of, you know, the writing did.
- [19:26]
Rob
Now did you find, when you, you're speaking about voice, did you find yourself writing and thinking, well, let me write this with the voice that I would teach in, which is going to be very. Writing a research paper or, you know, a letter to a friend.
- [19:39]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Right.
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Rob
Did you find that you were sort of capturing that voice or was your writing for the public voice different even than your teaching voice?
- [19:47]
Dr. Susan Schneider
It was kind of like teaching intro psych, I think. I mean, not that that can't be technical sometimes, but you know, you've got often students from all different areas. They're not all psych majors by any means. And so you have to reach them in the ways that get them interested in the topics and learning the science that's important for them to learn. But it's not like a senior level or graduate level course where you really get into the weeds and very technical and do academic readings. Right? So, yeah, I guess that's the closest I could say. I just, just loved teaching intro psych because I could make all these connections. And not just learning principles, of course, but that was one of the main ones because they are applying everywhere. I mean every single chapter in the psych textbook there's going to be learning principles, you know, opera, respondent or both. And, and I wanted students to see how everything fits together. And, and, and I valued these closely related sciences like cognitive and social and psychobiology and biology and economics for that matter. We. Behavioral economics and all that. And, and, and being able to show how all of this relates. I think it's just such a satisfying important thing because there's so many applications everywhere and it still is a source of joy when I see that somewhere and a source of disappointment when I don't.
- [21:28]
Rob
Yeah, I know this section. I think the three. Well, sorry, the four of us, we had four folks doing the discussion of, of the book. I know we found the first section the most interesting is not quite the word, but I mean certainly the second section was more on, you know, kind of the science of consequences specifically related to behavior and schedule. So again that, that was very, very, you know, familiar to all, to all of us, all of us behavior analysts. And then certainly the third chapter, we've done other reading on consequences and bigger picture things. It was very interesting. But I think it was that first chapter and really thinking about the nature nurture, the power of, you know, genes and how consequences can affect genes and genes therefore affect consequences and therefore it affects evolution that I think we all were just the most rapt interest about because it was so different, you know, nothing there because, you know, the goal was not to, to write something no one had ever spoken about necessarily was to summarize. But just seeing it all in one place was, was fascinating. I mean, I don't think you could, I was gonna, I was gonna ask the question like were you thinking of starting the book differently? But I don't know if you can because so much of what that, what the book is about has to do with that just universal consequence of human development and evolution. I, I'm, I'm sort of curious. Was that just something that you felt you, you'd been talking about an intro psych or you just thought that captured that idea of bringing together all the sciences. Were you ever worried that maybe that go beyond what people could handle in a book about consequences?
- [23:09]
Dr. Susan Schneider
That was certainly a challenging part to write but you absolutely hit the nail on the head there, Rob. This was so exciting for me personally when I first discovered it in the mid-1980s when I was a graduate student at University of Kansas. Right. Ed Morris has always been interested in that area, too. I took a graduate course in developmental neurobiology with a neuroscientist who was in the department at that time. And that just. Yeah. I could tell you if I, after the book tour, if I hadn't felt that it was important for me to work on climate change and really switch to that because it is such an existential crisis for the future. Yeah. For now, for that matter. Right. What I would have liked to have done would have been to go back to developmental psychobiology because it's just such a fascinating area and you have all these scientists from all these different areas working together productively, integrating these different sciences and showing how much flexibility there is. And so much of it is driven by learning principles. And so behavior analysis is a really important part of that mix. And it's just such an exciting area. But, yeah, I decided to do climate change instead. But I'm glad that I did get to work in that area for a while. Sure.
- [24:46]
Rob
I know one of the things that I was sort of going back and forth with while reading the book was whether I thought this should be classified as a radical behaviorist book or whether that's sort of a silly question in that. Well, radical behavior. At the end of the day, radical behaviorism is really what is happening in real life. But we have to give it a name so that, you know, the cognitivists and the mentalists of the world don't get too offended that we're honing in on their turf. Is that something you've ever felt in terms of writing the book or in general or. Or do you really think there is a place for like. No, this is radical behaviorism. This is psychobiology, like, you know, binning our sciences.
- [25:30]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah, I sometimes, yeah, you could see that there's reasons to do that, but I prefer just to have science and everyone working together productively with our different special backgrounds, of course, different areas of expertise. But I actually, back in 1987, I think I published a paper on the term radical behaviorism, history paper on how that term came to be. That actually, I think probably after the book is my most cited work, although I have of course, did a number of empirical papers and a number of other conceptual papers too. But yeah, that's. That's gotten a lot of reads now on ResearchGate was in the behavior analyst. Right. And of course, the term really means thorough, radical, not in the sense of extreme, but radical in the sense of including private events and not being, you know, other forms of behaviorism that did not. Skinner did always include private events. And so I, I hope I wrote the book in a way that, and I think from the feedback I've gotten that I seem to have succeeded to some degree anyway, and making it accessible and fear to all of these related sciences as well as the core behavior analysis.
- [27:03]
Rob
I, I, I definitely, I agree. It, it was a science book that happened to have a huge focus on behavior and the impact of everything that, you know, everything around us. You know, I mean, the organism in the environment. Right. You can't write about it without talking about environment and then internal external states.
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Dr. Susan Schneider
Right, exactly.
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Rob
Susan, I'm going to ask you. This is kind of related to one of the questions that I was, you know, planning to ask, but I think I have to tweak it a little bit. I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask it a little bit of a professional courtesy. I have to change it. So while we're talking about the idea of, you know, certainly genes and the environment and development and evolution as consequence, as well as respondent and operant conditioning, something I have run into a lot more recently. It's not a new phenomenon. I'm not, I didn't find it. You know, it's, it's been the same issue that's been going on since back in the 50s and the 60s when it comes to behavior versus mental states is just this return to the idea that operant behavior has to do with when we're being good and bad little, you know, humans and everything else is, well, but you can't explain the anxiety that people are having or the stress that people are having through operant principles and through the principles of behavior. That's its own magical thing. Often I am told this, and then somebody gives me a very specifically behavioral explanation of how they're going to treat the behaviors that are recurring. However, they just happen to magically live in the mind. So therefore, don't worry about it. Rob, that's not your, that's not your scene. How do I go about having these conversations with people in a way that is focused on the science of consequences rather than just my getting offended at their lack of understanding of operant behavioral principles? Because I'll be honest, I've got a professional development day coming up in about a week or two, and I'm already planning to stand up and yell at the speaker. Because I know that's what they're bringing to this talk and I'd rather not because I do like my job. So help me out here. How do I put it all together in a way like you did without just sort of making it like a fighting match?
- [29:27]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Oh, boy. Yeah. Yeah. And I agree on trying to avoid that if possible. Certainly. Oh gosh. We've tried so hard over the years to get operant principles accepted in colleges of education. Right. When you talk about emotions and things like anxiety, of course, I think it's helpful that cognitive behavioral approaches are the main data based way of addressing these. Right. And that certainly includes behavior analysis as well as cognitive and other parts of psychology. So. Yeah. If finding places where most people can agree is a good place to start. Right. Yeah. And to avoid the fighting. And at some level it's just language. If what. If what people do is effective, then how they talk about it may not be ideal. But if that's what you've been raised with, I mean, like Skinner said. Right. The organisms all always. Right. You know, and. And people just on the face of it, don't think about behavior environment relations, acting over time like behavior analysts are trained to do. Yeah. And so that. That's part of it too, I think. But yeah, I mean, this is not something I've had to do. I hand it to all of you who do. And again, just behavior analysts have always had to work across disciplinary lines. Right. And in some areas we've been very effective with that. Like speech language. Right. Pathology. Not to say it's always perfect, but we've had had a lot of success for decades in that. And some of the other areas too. Behavioral pharmacology, obviously. Whereas in education certainly we have. I mean, thank goodness for. Okay, yeah. You know the one I'm thinking about here, that's in a third of the schools now. I'm blanking on it.
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Rob
Pbi, you think of pbis?
- [31:40]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yes. Positive behavior support. Yes, exactly. Thank you. And I know that that's not just behavior analysis, but hopefully it's good science for the other aspects of behavioral science that's in there. And certainly there's a lot of positive reinforc. Which. Which sounds good to me. Again, I'm not an expert on that, although I do try and go to those talks at ABBA when I can. This was another source of great information for me over the years. I've been going to ABA every year since 1985.
- [32:11]
Rob
Wow.
- [32:12]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah.
- [32:13]
Rob
That's great.
- [32:14]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah. Yeah.
- [32:15]
Rob
Do you have like a shirt or something that, like, they can.
- [32:18]
Dr. Susan Schneider
I ought to. Well, was it the last one where it was my 40th year, so I did get a little sticker or something. That's good.
- [32:30]
Rob
That's good.
- [32:32]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah, yeah.
- [32:36]
Rob
So. So any sort of like, specifics when, you know, talking about things like, you know, feelings or sensitivities that you might use as a good example, having, having had so many examples in your book. Using so many examples to describe any that come to mind when you trying to talk about consequences and their impact on, you know, thoughts or those kind of human ephemera.
- [33:00]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Right. Well, first of all, for emotions, I, I cover the various places in the book, but especially in the chapter on classical conditioning. Right.
- [33:10]
Rob
Yeah.
- [33:10]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Because there's so much involved with classical conditioning, which would be nice to think it's in some of the colleges of education. I don't know, I think they just.
- [33:22]
Rob
Go Pavlov and dogs. Anyway, moving on. That' we're not doing any more with it.
- [33:26]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah. That's not going to be real helpful, is it? Yeah. Because there's, I mean, going back to Skinner's era, some of the research he did himself with emotions, with classical conditioning. Right. Conditioned suppression, things like that. Right. So. And I can't believe I'm remembering all this because, believe me, for many years now I have focused so much on climate change.
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Rob
Just, it's just, it's in there, it's in the repertoire or the relational frames or stimuli related for your, you know, cue your memory.
- [33:58]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Right. It must be, it's kind of encouraging. I'm getting up there in years now. So, so anyway, so, so, so there, there, there's there are so many examples. Right. Operants and Pavlovian processes interacting and. Yeah. Feelings are real and animals as well as people and how you deal with problematic feelings, you know, is often cognitive behavioral therapy, which is based in part on learning principles. Right. And it is for private events like thinking. Just a classic example there when you ask a kid to do a simple arithmetic problem in their head, like, how much is two plus two? And you know, you don't have to see them write it out, you know, or a simple multiplication thing. Yeah. You know that whether they say it out loud or just think it, that a lot of the same things are happening in the brain. And now with these amazing science fiction, neuropsychology, neuroscience techniques that they have, they can show this. Right. I mean, it doesn't really add to the explanation, but we can flesh out what's happening in the brain. And of course it's not just the brain, it's the rest of the nervous system. It's the, the glands, it's all the other body bodily systems. Right. That, that are involved too. That's, that's, There's a great book by the way, called Blaming the Brain. The. Yeah, the, yeah, because that's something else. I noticed sometimes that neuroscience now, I just love what they've accomplished in that area. But it kind of supersedes everything else when people are trying to explain behavior and we know behavior that, that is not a good or thorough approach that you need all the environmental aspects too. So. Yeah. Anyway, I'm, I think I'm kind of rambling here.
- [36:02]
Rob
No, but I, I, I, I, I sort of hear that that central idea of part of it is, you know, turning into the skid. And I think a lot of behavior analysts, when they, you know, they're freshly minted behavior analysts, or they're just focusing on the behavior and just opera and conditioning, it is hard to then be able to switch gears because so much of what that you're getting from your environment is people talking about everything's the brain and everything's these magical homunculi feelings. And how do you explain that without making it sound like you're discounting their existence? So I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna sort of take a, a page from the book and just turn into the skid and just immediately like, and you know what brain's behavior, bam. I agree it's all together, but let's focus on the what's going on in terms of like, bigger picture rather than getting too hung up on these are two different things or these don't go together the same way or the way you're describing it is not the right way or because we don't necessarily know how every aspect of the, you know, the neurons going, going across synapses to lead to behavior. But we know that's a piece of it. So let's just, let's all agree on that. And then like you said before, focus on, you know, what are the results we're getting? What are the changes we're seeing and. Okay, I like that.
- [37:14]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Exactly. Good.
- [37:15]
Rob
I, I agree, I agree with that completely. So I'm hoping it is not too hard, too hard to do. I think sometimes I'm sure you've, you face this across the years where people just, they, they want to die on that hill of no. The way I'm describing it is the only way and everyone else is wrong. Even though we're talking about the exact same thing in, in 99. Like, like, you know, the mouse and human genome being so similar.
- [37:39]
Dr. Susan Schneider
But yeah, it's so important to build bridges and find common ground. And so often in other areas, we have to use different terminology, for example, because that's what people in those areas are used to. And so. And for their part too, you know, when they're working at the edges of their discipline, they have to do the same thing. It's just a reality we all have to deal with, I think.
- [38:09]
Rob
So I.
- [38:10]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Good luck with that. What you do is so important. And again, you know, we have such a great science with so many applications, and there's just so much documented success out there. And I'm so glad that people like you are out there in the schools helping all these kids and teachers, you.
- [38:30]
Rob
Know, and the, the thing that I think makes me the most frustrated is so many of those techniques are very effective and I've seen their effectiveness. And while they're not being described through behavioral principles, that's okay. Like, I'm okay with that. You know, I've worked with enough professionals over my own career. It's, you know, similar to yours in some ways. Just you work with so many different people. You have to let some of those, you know, who's in charge, who's right kind of arguments go. But it just, sometimes, some years I feel like I'm great at it. And some years it just rubs. Like you just hear someone say, well, it's a little beyond behavior. And there's that tone of voice that you just, just, just getting under my skin, you know, talk about respondent, respondent condition. I'm like, oh, here we go. I'm having a, I'm having a little reaction. I'm salivating and I'm about to bite.
- [39:17]
Dr. Susan Schneider
You know, oh, I can empathize.
- [39:24]
Rob
So I know we spent a lot of time talking about the book, but I did want to also hear about how you made the shift into work on climate change and what that, that. What that entails as again, someone who is very aware of climate change. To be honest, I don't want to talk about climate change because it is very scary. Like you said, existential crisis. But I'd love to hear about kind of the work that you are doing right now and some of the learnings about consequences and how that is going to result in the better, brighter tomorrow. I know we all would, would like to think is around the corner if we, you know, again, if we think about our consequences.
- [39:57]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yes, indeed. Well, back in the 1970s, I had a course in solar engineering when I was an engineer at Illinois Tech. And then after I got my bachelor's and before I got my master's in mechanical engineering, I worked at US Steel and did pretty, excuse me, high level energy efficiency task for a summer job and the continuous caster in the steel mill. And so also I was, you know, I had a background in science generally. Okay. So in the late 1980s, then when Jim Hansen of NASA testified to Congress about the reality of climate change, I took it seriously. I read one of the first books for the public about climate change, Bill McKibben's book, the End of Nature. Wow. He was the presidential scholar at ABBA this year, of course, and I was on a symposium with him, which was a big thrill, right. And I started to follow it because I could see, yeah, this is real, this is going to be a problem in the 21st century. We need to act on this. And I've been an environmental activist and social justice activist my whole life, so that's been on my radar for a long time. Rob. I used to, you know, just kind of do that kind of activity on the side because I had jobs and then I had the book, and then for three years, a very full time job doing the book touring. And then when that started to get more manageable, I said, okay, what's the most important thing I could do with my life? I'm able to switch to what I think is most important. And again, it would have been nice to go back to developmental psychopathology, really, whatever. But there was just no question, this was around 2015, 2016, and yeah, we were clearly not doing enough for climate action. And there was not enough emphasis on the behavioral science side because, heck, in the 1970s, I studied solar engineering. The basic physics there hasn't changed. They have economies of scale now, they've got better methods of engineering these panels. But the basic science has been there for a long time. So in many respects, meeting this challenge of climate action is a behavioral problem, mostly policy, because that's been the most effective change process around the world for getting greenhouse gas emissions down and getting us moving toward this great transition to sustainability, including mainly renewable power. Right. All the other elements too. It's such a wicked problem. Again, there's just so many things that need to be done. It's not just a few. Right. And again, the worst problems are delayed. Right. I mean, we're suffering now because of all the greenhouse gases put up there in the 20th century, in the early part of the 21st century. Right. So it was just very clear to me that we needed more behavioral scientists working in this area. So I do all kinds of reading and of course, behavioral sciences all across the disciplinary range, from economics to all the variations of psychology, including behavior analysis, we all have an important role to play. And in fact, behavioral economics is, I would think, the interdisciplinary approach that dominates in behavioral science approaches. But a big part of that is community level change, where you have an OBM kind of project for sustainability in a local business, a local government, a school district or a particular school, neighborhoods, healthcare systems. That kind of level where it's not just individual by individual, but you can really scale up and then hopefully while you're scaling up these sustainability solutions. And these are behavior change projects. Right? Yeah. So this is our bailiwick here along with those of related behavioral sciences. Right. Hopefully people involved in those projects then start thinking more about this challenge and start electing policymakers, making the policy changes that we need to hopefully this goes together, change working from the bottom up there and change at the policy level from the top down, because we need it all as fast as possible. According to the ipcc, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is of course the main body of scientists. I mean, I do all kinds of things with climate change and have now for many years. One is tabling, and I always like to point out that according to the most recent IPCC report, we have to cut global greenhouse gas emissions 43% by 2030 compared to 2019, to stay on track for that one and a half degree limit in global warming, which we're already at 1.2 now. And in fact, this last year, temporarily hope at 1.5. And it's just, I mean, well, I.
- [45:51]
Rob
Could go on and on and on.
- [45:53]
Dr. Susan Schneider
About climate change, believe me. Anyway, I hope that answers the question.
- [45:58]
Rob
That does. I know one of the areas that I always feel a bit distraught when talking about climate change is so much, especially when you talk about something like behavioral economics and looking at sort of what are the incentives. It does feel that so many incentives these days are lined up against policies that can meaningfully impact climate change in a, in a positive direction. Positive by, you know, lowering the temperature.
- [46:25]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah.
- [46:26]
Rob
And it does feel like a lot of the behavioral changes that I or my family make, you know, we're using less micro, less plastics, we're trying to recycle more, we're composting more. It just feels like one of those, like, that's great. It's not going to do it. That's not really where the change needs to happen. I mean, is it really one of those situations of, of we don't want to change our behavior back to wasteful, you know, over consumerism. But is really the change going to have to. It really does just have to be at those kind of like big scale kind of interlocking behavioral contingencies. And if so, I mean, I mean it makes sense. It's an existential crisis.
- [47:02]
Dr. Susan Schneider
It is, it is electrifying everything is one of the big goals because you can make, make the power sources for the electricity renewable and I include nuclear in that because it is low carbon and I think it's got to be part of the mix realistically if we're going to get close to meeting this deadline basically. Right, yeah. For what individuals can do. There's been research on that, a lot of quantification out there. Again, I give a lot of talks about climate change. So I can say buying less stuff for the developed nations, although that's hard to quantify. There's a famous article by Wines and Nicholas in 2017 in environmental research Letters. That's a main, one of the main journals, right. That has basically the five big ones for individuals being having a sustainable family size using green energy, driving less, flying less and eating a more plant based diet. In particular eating less beef. Beef is just off the charts. It has a huge carbon footprint. Chicken is actually better than some dairy. A lot of people don't realize that we're vegetarians who think they're doing good by the planet. But some cheeses are really not good. I mean this is still candle we're talking about. Oh yes, yeah. Right.
- [48:43]
Rob
So yeah, you know, that really took me a second of like cheese comes from the ground. No, it's. Sorry about that. I really, I kind of was following the vegetarian path and I got a little.
- [48:56]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I've been mainly vegan for a number of years myself. I still new sustainable seafood which has a low carbon footprint and, and no one's asking anyone to give up beef or meat entirely. You know, it's just in some nations, like the US is one of them, we, you know, we need to cut down on our per capita consumption of these things at the same time as we need to try and bike more. I try and be a role model here. Right. I was a commuter cyclist from high school on wherever I could be. These E bikes now that are available are really revolutionizing transport around the world. So especially in cities of course, where you don't have really long distances to go and they're much more carbon friendly. I bought a used electric vehicle four years ago, used Chevy Bolt, which I love. And so that's also important. I'm getting a heat pump next year. I have heat pump, water heater, I have solar panels. And yeah, I cut down on mowing in California. Oh gosh. Lawn services there, they have laws now to try and get people and lawn services to get off fossil fuels because those things are really inefficient. Those lawn mowers and those leaf blowers in addition to being really noisy, which is funny because this is how places like Washington D.C. got ordinances and Sacramento either prohibiting them or limiting their use more because of the noise than because of the carbon pollution than the air pollution. But there's electric alternatives. And so you have. Right. You know, you take the, the curates approach with the rebates, like the inflation Reduction act focuses on for things like solar panels and electric vehicles, et cetera. And then you can have regulations, which has actually been pretty effective according to the climate policy books that evaluate all of this. And we need social norms to change. So people and related scientists who are expert on getting that to happen and social marketing, gosh, community based social marketing, this is a big thing in the behavioral sustainability world and we need to get more funding for that because there's really good messaging out there with framing and all this. That again, and not all that behavior analytic, although some of our principles are still there. But this is an important part of reminding people, you know, cues, things like that, stimulus control basically, as well as the incentive side. And then there's a lot of discussion about, okay, are we at the point now where we should be scaring people more, you know, so that, you know, this is your kid's future. This is already so harmful. Around the world is so unfair. Developing nations didn't cause this problem. They're suffering disproportionately. Where I was in the Peace Corps, I got sent to the South Pacific, they're losing their coral reefs. Okay. I could go on and on. Anyway, behavior analysis has an important role to play here. So that's one of the things I do is try and get more behavior analysts into this field, you know, and helping to get these community level changes that we need.
- [52:17]
Rob
That's. It's fascinating, Susan. I know we don't have enough time to go over all the different ins and outs, but I appreciate giving us kind of the 10,000 foot view of some of the work going on and some of the consequences at play there. So thank you so much for that.
- [52:30]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Thank you for giving me the opportunity. This really is something that everyone needs to work on to the degree that they can. I hope they will.
- [52:40]
Rob
And my last thing I wanted to ask is you mentioned, sort of offhand, I think some of it ended up in a little footnote at the bottom of the page on one of the sections is that you had lunch with B.F. skinner and you brought your own lunch and you shared it together. I'd love to hear a little bit more about that story before I let you go, if you don't mind.
- [53:02]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Absolutely. Rob. That's actually on my book website, scienceofconsequences.com I was very fortunate to get to know Skinner early on. So I knew him during the last 10 or so years of his life. We would get together at Alba sometimes and talk. But in this case, this was after I had written him, since I read that book when I was in high school, Beyond Freedom and Dignity. And I was in engineering school, graduate school at Brown University. And that wasn't that far from Harvard, of course. So, yeah. I forget if he suggested it or I did, but, you know, we agreed to get together and I went to his office right. At Harvard and we chatted. He was always interested in environmental issues. That was one of the things we had in common. And. Right. I had misunderstood his instructions. He was actually planning for us to go out to eat. But I took a lunch and so we split us like peanut butter and jelly or something. We ate it right there in this office and it was great. It was really so special for me.
- [54:19]
Rob
Oh, wow. Well, thank you. Thank you for sharing. I just thought that was the coolest anecdote. So thank you for sharing it with us and adding some more details. PB&J and Skinner. That's someone's blog or something. Well, Dr. Susan Schneider, thank you so much for, for taking the time to talk about the science consequences, to talk about your current work with climate change and to share some other. Some anecdotes from your. From your career. We really appreciate getting this chance. It was really, really excellent. I know you have a conference coming up this weekend, I believe you, you mentioned.
- [54:55]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Or there's a conference, the Citizens Climate Lobby Conference. And this probably won't be released before then, but it's a Saturday afternoon Eastern time, and that's a really good nonpartisan organization and I'm looking forward to it.
- [55:11]
Rob
Excellent. Well, Susan, thank you so very much for, for talking with us today. We really appreciate it and thank you for the book as well.
- [55:19]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Thank you for hosting. Rob really enjoyed this discussion.
- [55:22]
Rob
Thanks so much. We hope you enjoyed our preview of our Science of Consequences book club. We hope you enjoyed it so much that you want to hear the whole two hours together. The interview with Dr. Schneider, you've already heard, but you'd get a chance to hear all of our thoughts. Me, Dian, Jackie and Allan on the book, what did we like? What didn't we like? What did we learn, if anything, from this? How would we use this book in our own practice? But if you want to hear the whole thing, there's two ways to do it. One is you can wait until we release this episode next year. That's a long way to wait, isn't it? Or you could go over to patreon.com aba Inside Track and sign up. You can sign up at any level. We appreciate any support. But if you want to get the whole thing right now, as well as two Cesar Just for being a member, you need to sign up at our premium $10 and up level. That also give you access to vote in what will be kind of, I think in about June or late May, vote in our 202526 book club polls. So you'll get to choose what books you'll be listening to next year as well as getting CEs for all of those book clubs as well as all the bonuses at the $5 level. So voting on our listener choice polls, getting CES for those episodes and getting everything a week ahead of time. All right, well, we hope you enjoyed the preview. We hope you decide to sign up. If not, no worries. We'll be back with another fun filled episode in just a few days time. But until then, keep responding. Bye.