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Throughout the 21st century, economic inequality is predicted to increase as we face new challenges, from changes in the technological landscape to the growing climate crisis. It is crucial we understand how these changes in inequality may affect how people think and behave. We propose that economic inequality threatens the social fabric of society, in turn increasing moralization-that is, the greater tendency to employ or emphasize morality in everyday life-as an attempt to restore order and control. Using longitudinal data from X, formerly known as Twitter, our first study demonstrates that high economic inequality is associated with greater use of moral language online (e.g. the use of words such as "disgust", "hurt", and "respect'). Study 2 then examined data from 41 regions around the world, generally showing that higher inequality has a small association with harsher moral judgments of people's everyday actions. Together these findings demonstrate that economic inequality is linked to the tendency to see the world through a moral lens., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of National Academy of Sciences.)

Happiness is a valuable experience, and societies want their citizens to be happy. Although this societal commitment seems laudable, overly emphasizing positivity (versus negativity) may create an unattainable emotion norm that ironically compromises individual well-being. In this multi-national study (40 countries; 7443 participants), we investigate how societal pressure to be happy and not sad predicts emotional, cognitive and clinical indicators of well-being around the world, and examine how these relations differ as a function of countries' national happiness levels (collected from the World Happiness Report). Although detrimental well-being associations manifest for an average country, the strength of these relations varies across countries. People's felt societal pressure to be happy and not sad is particularly linked to poor well-being in countries with a higher World Happiness Index. Although the cross-sectional nature of our work prohibits causal conclusions, our findings highlight the correlational link between social emotion valuation and individual well-being, and suggest that high national happiness levels may have downsides for some., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Nathan H. Azrin (1930-2013) contributed extensively to the fields of experimental and applied behavior analysis. His creative and prolific research programs covered a wide range of experimental and applied areas that resulted in 160 articles and several books published over a period of almost 6 decades. As a result, his career illustrates an unparalleled example of translational work in behavior analysis, which has had a major impact not only within our field, but across disciplines and outside academia. In the current article we present a summary of Azrin's wide ranging contributions in the areas of punishment, behavioral engineering, conditioned reinforcement and token economies, feeding disorders, toilet training, overcorrection, habit disorders, in-class behavior, job finding, marital therapy, and substance abuse. In addition, we use scientometric evidence to gain an insight on Azrin's general approach to treatment evaluation and programmatic research. The analysis of Azrin's approach to research, we believe, holds important lessons to behavior analysts today with an interest in the applied and translational sectors of our science., Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40614-020-00278-4., (© Association for Behavior Analysis International 2021.)

A conditioned reinforcer is a stimulus that acquired its effectiveness to increase and maintain a target behavior on the basis of the individual's history-e.g., pairings with other reinforcers. This systematic review synthesized findings on conditioned reinforcement in the applied animal training field. Thirty-four studies were included in the review and six studies were eligible for a meta-analysis on the effectiveness of behavioral interventions that implemented conditioned reinforcement (e.g., clicks, spoken word, or whistles paired with food). The majority of studies investigated conditioned reinforcement with dogs (47%, n = 16) and horses (30%, n = 10) implementing click-food pairings. All other species (cats, cattle, fish, goats, and monkeys) were equally distributed across types of conditioned (e.g., clicker or spoken word) and unconditioned reinforcers (e.g., food, water, or tactile). A meta-analysis on the effectiveness of conditioned reinforcement in behavioral interventions found a medium summary effect size (Tau-U 0.77; CI 95% = [0.53, 0.89]), when comparing baseline, where no training was done, and treatment levels. Moderators of conditioned reinforcement effectiveness were species (e.g., horses) and research design (e.g., multiple-baseline designs). The small number of intervention-focused studies available limits the present findings and highlights the need for more systematic research into the effectiveness of conditioned reinforcement across species.

The aim of this study was to investigate the feasibility and effectiveness of procedures successfully used in human related applied behaviour analysis practices to the field of clinical animal behaviour. Experiment 1 involved functional analyses to identify the reinforcement contingencies maintaining jumping up behaviour in five dogs. Experiment 2 comprised teaching dog owners a noncontingent reinforcement intervention (i.e., time-based reinforcement) via behavioural skills training. Single-case experimental methods were implemented in both experiments. The results of Experiment 1 showed that access to a tangible (dogs D01, D02, D03, and D04) and owner attention (dog D05) were reliably maintaining the jumping up behaviour. Experiment 2 demonstrated that noncontingent reinforcement effectively reduced jumping in three out of four dogs (Tau -0.59, CI 90% [-1-0.15], p = 0.026, Tau -1, CI 90% [-1--0.55], p = 0.0003, and Tau -0.32, CI 90% [-0.76-0.11], p = 0.22 for dyads D01, D02, and D05, respectively), and that behavioural skills training was successful in teaching owners to perform a dog training intervention with high fidelity. Although the results are promising, more canine-related research into functional analysis and noncontingent reinforcement, as well as implementation of behavioural skills training with animal caregivers, is needed.

This paper describes the behavioral data of an experiment in which water flows (WFs) were first used as replacement of the traditional electric shocks to test free-operant avoidance in Betta splendens (Hurtado-Parrado et al. 2019 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2018.10.021). WFs with a duration of 10 s each were delivered with 30-s flow-flow (F-F) and response-flow (R-F) intervals in a custom-made shuttle tank. Fish escaped or avoided the WFs by changing compartments. Crossings during the WFs, interrupted the flows, were automatically scored as escape (Esc), and initiated a new R-F interval. Crossings that occurred during R-F or F-F intervals were scored as avoidance responses and also reset the R-F interval. We compared the effect of adding a warning stimulus - curtains of air bubbles - to the last 5 s of the R-F interval; i.e., signaled versus unsignaled avoidance. A unique development of the WFs procedure, and thus the data here described, is that crossings were further differentiated into subcategories; namely, early avoidance (EA) if a crossing occurred during the first 25 s of the R-F interval; late avoidance (LA) if a crossing occurred during the last 5 s of the R-F interval; and Flow-Flow avoidance (FF) if a crossing occurred anytime during the F-F interval. Here we present the data of six bettas across the different phases of the experiment; namely, baseline (BL - no WFs programmed), signaled avoidance (SA - warning stimulus scheduled), and unsignaled avoidance (UA - no warning stimulus scheduled). The dataset available at the Open Science Framework (OSF) repository (http://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/FMHXD (Hurtado-Parrado et al., 2019)) includes for each fish and per 20-min daily session the total number of crossings; frequency of each type of crossing (Esc, EA, LA, FF); total WF frequency and duration, the total time spent in each compartment, and an index of preference for each compartment based on the proportion of time spent in the tank's compartments.

Control of negative emotions (e.g., anger and fear) by political cues perpetuate intractable conflict by mobilizing public support for aggressive actions. Halperin et al. (2013) found that reappraisal - an adaptive form of emotion regulation - decreased negative emotions triggered by anger-inducing information related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and increased support for conciliatory statements. We tested these effects in the context of the conflict between the Colombian government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia-Ejército del Pueblo (FARC-EP). Reappraisal training reduced negative emotions produced by a presentation that illustrated FARC's violent actions, and increased support for conciliatory statements (with overall moderate effect magnitudes). We also found that negative emotions mediated the effects of reappraisal on the support for aggressive and conciliatory statements. These findings indicate a high degree of generality of the phenomena, especially considering the differences between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Colombian conflict. Our findings also show promise for replicating these effects on other types of intergroup conflicts and guiding effective public policy.

Despite the wide implementation of the elevated plus-maze (EPM) test to assess anxiety-related behaviors in rodents, the interpretation of these measures in gerbils has received limited attention. Here, male gerbils were treated with vehicle or diazepam, followed by a 20-min EPM session. EPM data were subjected to minute-by-minute, 5-min bins and factor analyses. During the first 5-min, gerbils avoided the closed arms in favor of the open arms and diazepam increased open-arms entries; furthermore, a single factor (escape behavior) explained all the analyzed measures. Only after 5-min, gerbils reduced open-arms exploration and three independent factors emerged for each subsequent 5-min bin. These findings suggest that EPM data from gerbils should be analyzed in at least two 5-min bins. Measures from the standard 5-min session seem to be related to an escape response from the EPM through the open arms. Once habituated, measures from the second 5-min bin seem to be related to a conflictive situation: keep trying to escape unsuccessfully (due to open-arms height) or seek protection in the closed arms (unsafe places). Diazepam seems to reduce this conflict by mitigating the escape response (Factor 1 - Anxiety) and increasing closed-arms approach (Factor 2) and risk assessment (Factor 3). Unlike mice and rats, a decrease in open-arms exploration and an increase in risk assessment could be interpreted as an anxiolytic-like effect in gerbils.

Despite step-down inhibitory avoidance procedures that have been widely implemented in rats and mice to study learning and emotion phenomena, performance of other species in these tasks has received less attention. The case of the Mongolian gerbil is of relevance considering the discrepancies in the parameters of the step-down protocols implemented, especially the wide range of foot-shock intensities (i.e., 0.4-4.0 mA), and the lack of information on long-term performance, extinction effects, and behavioral patterning during these tasks. Experiment 1 aimed to (a) characterize gerbils' acquisition, extinction, and steady-state performance during a multisession (i.e., extended) step-down protocol adapted for implementation in a commercially-available behavioral package (Video Fear Conditioning System-MED Associates Fairfax, VT, USA), and (b) compare gerbils' performance in this task with two shock intensities - 0.5 vs. 1.0 mA-considered in the low-to-mid range. Results indicated that the 1.0 mA protocol produced more reliable and clear evidence of avoidance learning, extinction, and reacquisition in terms of increments in freezing and on-platform time as well as suppression of platform descent. Experiment 2 aimed to (a) assess whether an alternate protocol consisting of a random delivery of foot shocks could replicate the effects of Experiment 1 and (b) characterize gerbils' exploratory behavior during the step-down task (jumping, digging, rearing, and probing). Random shocks did not reproduce the effects observed with the first protocol. The data also indicated that a change from random to response-dependent shocks affects (a) the length of each visit to the platform, but not the frequency of platform descends or freezing time, and (b) the patterns of exploratory behavior, namely, suppression of digging and rearing, as well as increments in probing and jumping. Overall, the study demonstrated the feasibility of the extended step-down protocol for studying steady performance, extinction, and reacquisition of avoidance behavior in gerbils, which could be easily implemented in a commercially available system. The observation that 1.0 mA shocks produced a clear and consistent avoidance behavior suggests that implementation of higher intensities is unnecessary for reproducing aversive-conditioning effects in this species. The observed patterning of freezing, platform descents, and exploratory responses produced by the change from random to periodic shocks may relate to the active defensive system of the gerbil. Of special interest is the probing behavior, which could be interpreted as risk assessment and has not been reported in other rodent species exposed to step-down and similar tasks., Competing Interests: The authors declare there are no competing interests.