Abstract
During the half century since Herrnstein (1961) wrote about the matching law, a molecular-molar controversy has been one of the fundamental problems in behavior analysis. The purpose of the present article is to explore further directions for this controversy through classifying it according to 3 points of view. The first of these concerns the principle of reinforcement. Is it the molecular contiguity between response and reinforcement or the molar correlation between response rate and reinforcement rate that controls behavior? The second concerns levels of analysis. Is it the molecular relation between single responses and single reinforcers or the molar relation between response rate and reinforcement rate that appropriately describes the functional relation between response and reinforcement? The third view concerns behaviorism. Several new post-Skinnerian behaviorisms have been proposed in the last two decades. We classify them as molecular or molar behaviorism according to criteria such as mechanismpragmatism and an efficient-teleological distinction. Which kind of behaviorism will provide more productive behavioral science? We summarize these 3 points of view and propose further directions for the molecular-molar controversy.
