Behavior and Social Issues

https://doi.org/10.1007/s42822-021-00071-1
ORIGINAL PAPER

Racial Issues and Behavior Analysis: Experiences

and Contributions From Brazil

Táhcita Medrado Mizael 1 & Caroline Luiza Coelho 2 &

Weslen Chaves Rodrigues 3 & João Henrique de Almeida 4

Accepted: 12 July 2021/

# Association for Behavior Analysis International 2021

Abstract
Racial disparities are a major social issue that affects not only Brazil but also the world.
Racial inequalities in Brazil are highlighted in several social indicators, such as living
conditions, years of education, mortality rates, and unemployment rates, among others.
The current article aims to highlight the Brazilian contribution to research exploring the
relationship between racial issues and behavior analysis to bring visibility to the work
of Brazilian researchers and professors. Four contributions of Brazilian researchers are
highlighted: (a) behavior-analytic accounts of racial prejudice, (b) stereotype threat (a
phenomenon that shows that the performance of an able individual can be impaired
when a negative stereotype about this person’s group is highlighted), (c) institutional
racism in the Brazilian Military Police Force, and (d) the use of latency-based measures
to assess racial biases. We finish with suggestions for future research and for increasing
collaboration between Brazilian researchers and researchers in English-speaking (and
other) countries, making our contributions more accessible to foreign researchers and
students.

Keywords racial issues . behavior analysis . institutional racism . stereotype threat . racial
prejudice . racial bias

* Táhcita Medrado Mizael

tahcitammizael@gmail.com

Caroline Luiza Coelho

carol.rovic@hotmail.com
Weslen Chaves Rodrigues
weslenchaves@hotmail.com
João Henrique de Almeida
emaildojoaoh@yahoo.com.br

Extended author information available on the last page of the article

 Behavior and Social Issues

According to Brazilian government agencies, Brazil’s racial groups are classified as

Black, White, Yellow (individuals with Asian ancestry), Indigenous (natives), or
without a declaration. Blacks are the sum of two subgroups, deemed “pretos” (black
skin) and “pardos” (brown skin). The racial classification of individuals in Brazil is
obtained through the census, mostly by self-identification—that is, the person them-
selves declares their race (Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada, 2003). Addition-
ally, an individual’s race is identified primarily by their skin color [not ancestry, as in
the United States].
Racial inequalities in Brazil are highlighted in several social indicators, such as
living conditions, years of education, mortality rates, and unemployment rates
(Datasus, 2018; Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística [IBGE], 2018a, 2018b).
The racial inequalities do not work alone but intersect with others, such as social
inequalities. Brazil ranks seventh in the world in terms of inequity, with 23.1% of total
income concentrated in the top 1% wealthiest individuals and 41.9% of the total income
possessed by the top 10% richest people (Forte, 2020). This article focuses on racism
and related phenomena directed at individuals of African descent, although we ac-
knowledge that other groups of people of color also suffer the consequences of racist
practices.
In a country where 56% of the population is Black (Afonso, 2019), Blacks’
underrepresentation in the media is evident. For instance, an analysis of 156 Brazilian
soap operas, from 1985 to 2014, found that more than 90% of soap opera actors and
actresses were White and that not a single Black man was a protagonist in a soap opera
(Campos & Feres, 2016). Soap operas are a central part of Brazilian entertainment, and
many children grow up watching this type of media.
Besides Black people being underrepresented, Black people are also negatively
portrayed. The work by Araújo (2000), for example, showed the disproportionate rate
at which Black people are portrayed as criminals. The problem is not restricted to soap
operas. In an analysis of the TV hosts (Santana & Salles, 2017), from seven Brazilian
channels, authors counted the number of Black and White presenters in a year (Santana
& Salles, 2017). Two hundred four programs were analyzed. Among the 272 pre-
senters, only 3.7% were Black and 96% were White. Additionally, if a whole day were
composed of these shows, Black presenters would be on air for 6 min.
According to many authors, the most plausible explanation for racial disparities (i.e.,
worse living conditions; fewer years of education; higher mortality rates, including
those from avoidable causes; a higher rate of unemployment, even when comparing
individuals with the same level of education; Datasus, 2018; IBGE, 2018a, 2018b)
between Black and White individuals is racism (e.g., Bento & Carone, 2002;
Hasenbalg, 1979; Hasenbalg & Silva, 1988; Telles, 2003; United Nations, 2018).
Within behavior analysis, the number of publications that address race and race-
related issues is still small. In a literature review conducted by Mizael et al. (2019) and
published in Portuguese on the topic, the authors searched for studies published in
Portuguese and English and found only 10 publications, nine of them published in
English, although of these were published in English but written by Brazilian re-
searchers (de Carvalho & de Rose, 2014; Mizael et al., 2016).
The current article aims to review the Brazilian literature on the relationship between
racial issues and behavior analysis, thus making the contribution of Brazilian re-
searchers and professors more accessible. To do that, we start by giving some
Behavior and Social Issues

information on Brazilian universities. Then, we summarize four Brazilian researchers’

contributions and finish with suggestions for future research and increased collabora-
tion between Brazilian and English-speaking researchers.

Racial Issues and Behavior Analysis in Brazil: The Beginning

The first study published by Brazilian researchers on the relationship between racial
issues and behavior analysis identified by Mizael et al. (2019) in their review was
carried out by de Carvalho and de Rose (2014). In this work, the authors used the
stimulus equivalence paradigm (Sidman, 1994; Sidman & Tailby, 1982) to investigate
racial biases. By training a set of stimulus–stimulus relations in a potential class, a
participant forms an equivalence class when all (trained and untrained) physically
different stimuli are established as interchangeable in a class. That is, if an individual
is trained to relate A to B and B to C, and then starts relating A to B, and B to C, but
also B to A, C to B, A to C, and C to A without being directly trained to do so, they
have formed a class composed of stimuli A, B, and C (for a broad explanation of
stimulus equivalence, see Sidman, 1994).
The study by de Carvalho and de Rose (2014) investigated the formation of
equivalence classes between positive symbols and Black faces by children who showed
racial bias in a prescreening test. The pattern observed was relating Black faces to
negative symbols and/or White faces to positive symbols. One of four children formed
classes between positive symbols and Black faces—that is, they started relating the
positive symbols with the Black faces after the teaching procedure (for more informa-
tion, see the section on stimulus equivalence in what follows).
The second study, an extension of de Carvalho and de Rose (2014), by Mizael et al.
(2016), aimed at reducing racial biases in children using the same procedure. This study
included some insights from the previous and other studies on equivalence class
formation and reorganization, adopting additional training and testing parameters. In
that study, 13 children who showed a preexperimental bias formed classes between a
positive symbol and Black faces. Additionally, there was a significant decrement in the
children’s choices to relate the negative symbol with the Black faces on the posttest.
Both studies cited previously were published in English in The Psychological Record.
Although de Carvalho and de Rose’s (2014) study was the first Brazilian study
published in an academic journal, one previous work focused on racial relations that we
know of: Regra (2003). Mizael et al.’s (2016) study, also advised by Professor Julio de
Rose, gained some visibility after they presented the study at Brazilian and foreign
conferences (such as the 25th Annual Conference of the Brazilian Association of
Behavioral Medicine and Psychology and the 8th Annual Conference of the European
Association of Behaviour Analysis). Of note, Professor de Rose has been an important
figure in disseminating the investigation of racial issues in Brazil. In 2017, after
participating in the country’s main event on behavior analysis, Encontro da Associação
Brasileira de Psicologia e Medicina Comportamental (the Meeting of the Brazilian
Association of Behavioral Medicine and Psychology), a group to unite researchers and
students interested in studying racial issues with the tools provided by behavior analysis
was formed. We believe this was an important step in providing initial tools to study the
 Behavior and Social Issues

topic. Next, we will summarize three contributions from Brazilian researchers that were
written and published in Portuguese.

Contributions Made by Brazilian Researchers

Behavior-Analytic Accounts of Racial Prejudice

Mizael and de Rose (2017) summarized the current behavior-analytic accounts of racial
prejudice. Initially defining racial prejudice as “a set of culturally conditioned negative
attitudes towards individuals that possess certain physical features, [skin] color or
ethnicity” (p. 366), the authors addressed three accounts of racial prejudice through
the study of verbal behavior (Skinner, 1957/2014), stimulus equivalence (e.g., Sidman,
1994; Sidman & Tailby, 1982), and relational frame theory (RFT; Hayes et al., 2001).

Prejudiced Racial Attitudes as Verbal Behavior

The first account was adapted from Guerin’s (1994) analysis of attitudes as verbal
behavior, using verbal operants, as defined by Skinner (1957/2014). In this sense,
prejudiced racial attitudes could be seen as tacts, intraverbals, and mands. A tact is
defined as “a verbal operant in which a response of given form is evoked (or at least
strengthened) by a particular object or event or property of an object or event” (Skinner,
1957/2014, p. 115).
In this context, saying “I do not like my hair” under the control of one’s actual hair,
and having as a consequence a generalized reinforcer, such as a friend’s attention, could
be seen as a tact. It is also common to hear an attitude emitted under the control of other
verbal behavior, rather than under the control of an event, object, or property of an
object or event. In this case, the attitude is considered to be an intraverbal.
An example of a prejudicial racial attitude emitted as an intraverbal could be saying
“Straight. Curly hair is ugly” (also having as a consequence a generalized reinforcer) in
response to the question “What kind of hair do you like?” Sometimes, however, the
consequence of emitting an attitude is specific, modeling the speaker or listener
behaviors. In a context where students recruited through affirmative action or racial
quotas are aversive stimuli to a given professor, the professor may say, “I do not like
students who get into college by racial quotas/affirmative action.” If this event is
contingent on reducing the number of students who are recruited as part of racial
quotas/affirmative action in their class, then it could be said that the function of this
professor’s attitude was a mand. Therefore, a mand is defined as “a verbal operant in
which the response is reinforced by a characteristic consequence and is therefore under
the functional control of relevant conditions of deprivation or aversive stimulation”
(Skinner, 1957/2014, p. 69).
The use of autoclitics is also widespread within the emission of prejudicial racial
attitudes. Autoclitics are a form of verbal behavior emitted under the control of another
verbal behavior by a speaker to describe, qualify, or quantify the speaker’s behavior,
modifying the effects of the verbal responses on the listener (Skinner, 1957/2014). In
this sense, it is common to see comments that relate underrepresented racial groups
with negative attributes followed by utterances such as “It was a joke,” “I did not mean
Behavior and Social Issues

to say that,” and the like after making such comments. In Brazil, an example of the use
of autoclitics made visible by the media was a YouTuber who lost the sponsorship of
some famous brands after emitting pejorative racial comments. He wrote in his Twitter
account, “Brazil would be more beautiful if there were no annoyance with racist jokes.
Since it is forbidden [to say racist jokes], the only solution is to exterminate Black
people” (Carta Capital, 2018). After being accused of being racist, he declared, “Many
times I was ironic, many times I was mocking friends, many times I just wanted to be
the ‘funny guy’, and those are things that I do not remember having written” (Carta
Capital, 2018). Therefore, expressions such as “I was ironic” and “I just wanted to be
‘the funny guy’” could be seen as autoclitics—that is, they could alter (reduce) the
adverse effects of racist slurs (or any pejorative comment) on the listeners.

Stimulus Equivalence

The second account was based on de Carvalho and de Rose (2014) and Mizael et al.
(2016). As previously mentioned, those studies used the stimulus equivalence paradigm
to address the strength of preexperimental relations or to decrease racial, ethnic, and
other types of preexperimental biases in children and adult participants (other examples
of research with similar aims are Dixon & Lemke, 2007; Moxon et al., 1993; and Watt
et al., 1991). In this view, racial prejudice can be seen as establishing equivalence
relations between groups of individuals and (usually) negative attributes (Mizael & de
Rose, 2017). For example, an individual may hear on the news that most Black people
in Brazil are poor. In another situation, they may hear that many poor individuals in
Brazil are illiterate. Hence, by relating “Black” to “poor” and “poor” to “illiterate,” they
may learn without being directly taught that Black individuals are illiterate.
Additionally, the transfer of functions may occur. When an equivalence class is
formed, if the functions of a stimulus in a class are extended to the other members of
such a class, then the transfer of functions has occurred (e.g., de Rose et al., 1988;
Hayes et al., 2001). Therefore, if I learned that poor individuals are “uncivil” or
“primitive,” after this type of training, I may also believe that Black and poor individ-
uals are uncivil and primitive. A stimulus equivalence account of prejudiced attitudes,
especially because of an uncountable number of emergent relations possible, presents a
perspective on how the functions related to some specific stimulus in one class can
rapidly be shared by the whole class. The possibility of emergent responding indeed
makes such an undesired phenomenon as racial prejudice literally outspread in any
given cultural community.

RFT

Although in the stimulus equivalence paradigm, the focus is on equivalence relations—

that is, in relations of substitutability—in RFT, more relations are studied. These
include hierarchical relations (e.g., the category “animals” is in a hierarchical relation
with exemplars of animals, such as dogs and cats), opposition relations (“The color
black is the opposite of white”), difference relations (e.g., “A is different from B”), and
comparison relations (e.g., “Adam is taller than Claire”), among others (see Törneke,
2010). Additionally, when the extension of the control of a member of a class to the
other members of this class is studied, the terminology “transformation of functions”
 Behavior and Social Issues

instead of “transfer of functions” is used, because the word “transfer” is not adequate to
illustrate the effects of relations other than equivalence (or coordination, the term used
in the RFT literature; e.g., Hayes et al., 2001). Therefore, if an individual learns that
“black is the opposite of white” and then learns that a “white lie” is a “good lie,” a lie
that is not hurtful or prejudicial to others, this person may start believing that black
things or Black people are harmful or prejudicial to others.
According to RFT, “prejudice involves a derived transformation of the functions of
individuals based on direct or verbal contact with the functions of a few members of a
conceptualized group” (Roche et al., 2001, p. 202). In this sense, if a person reads in a
newspaper the heading “Black man arrested for a felony,” this person may now believe
all Black individuals are criminals. The transformation of functions is particularly
important because it shows that there is no need for an actual negative experience
(e.g., being robbed by a Black individual) for a person to consider Black people and
other groups criminals (or relate them to other negative attributes).
In Mizael and de Rose’s (2017) article, Verbal Behavior, Stimulus Equivalence and
Relational Frame Theory, explanations for prejudiced behavior were listed as the
current accounts. Recently, however, Catania (2017, 2018) published an understanding
of racial discrimination through a behavior-analytic lens. In his account, he suggested a
separation of what he calls contingency-shaped discrimination and verbally governed
discrimination. A verbally governed behavior is mostly controlled by verbal anteced-
ents, whereas a contingency-shaped behavior is controlled by its consequences
(Catania, 1979). According to his account, verbally governed discrimination entails
what is called in a broad sense “prejudice.”
In sum, these accounts can be used to study racial and other types of prejudices, as
they inform researchers on, at least, some aspects to examine when delineating
programs for prejudice reduction (a more in-depth analysis of Catania’s, 2017,
2018, stimulus equivalence and RFT accounts of racial prejudice can be seen in
Mizael, 2020).

Stereotype Threat

Another contribution from Brazilian behavior analysts on the relationship between

behavior analysis and racial issues was made by de Souza (2018), who studied the
phenomenon called stereotype threat. Stereotype threat is a phenomenon well known in
experimental social psychology and can be defined as the threat of confirming a
negative feature associated with an individual’s assumed group. For example, in a
math test situation, a female undergraduate may fear performing worse than her male
colleagues, as in many cultures the idea that men are better than women in mathematics
is very widespread (Steele & Aronson, 1995).
In a seminal study, Steele, and Aronson (1995) showed that the performance of able
individuals was impaired when a negative stereotype about the individuals’ group was
enhanced. In this study, conducted in the United States, Black and White students were
given a part of the Graduate Record Examination. For half of the participants, the tests
were presented as being able to assess intellectual ability (experimental condition). For
the other half, the control condition, it was said that the test was nondiagnostic of ability
and that it aimed to investigate the psychological processes involved in problem
resolution. The results showed that the performance of Black and White participants
Behavior and Social Issues

in the control condition did not differ. However, in the experimental condition, Black
participants performed worse than their White counterparts. This difference was statis-
tically significant, showing how this contextual feature of presenting a task as an
intellectual evaluation impaired Black students’ performance.
Since this seminal study, a myriad of experiments has been carried out, replicating
the results with Black and White students, and with different populations (e.g., men,
women, Asians; Aronson et al., 1999; Osborne & Walker, 2006; Schmader, 2002; Shih
et al., 1999; for a review of studies on this topic, see Spencer et al., 2016). Therefore,
stereotype threat has been studied greatly, and there is evidence that it affects individ-
uals differentially, in a predictable and systematic way (see, e.g., Spencer et al., 2016).

Stimulus Equivalence and Stereotype Threat

The study by de Souza (2018) was an attempt to understand the phenomenon by using
a behavior-analytic lens. We will only describe a few of the analyses carried out in de
Souza’s study; readers are welcome to see the original work for further information.
The author interpreted stereotype threat as an immediate contextual feature that will
worsen performance on a given test. According to the author,

The stimuli used to induce stereotype threat are stimuli that, in the culture, are
associated with other stimuli with aversive functions due to their ties to negatively
valenced stereotypes. The systematic and broad pairing of conditioned aversive
stimuli (images of starvation, poverty, crime, dirt, diseases) with potentially
neutral stimuli, like skin color, makes these stimuli acquire the functions of the
aversive stimuli to which they were paired. (p. 91, our translation)

In this sense, even to point out someone’s skin color could be enough to evoke aversive
responses such as those evoked and elicited by images of crime, hunger, and poverty,
among others. Regarding how these associations are learned, the author states that they
could be established by classical conditioning or respondent generalization (which does
not require a direct pairing of an unconditioned stimulus with an aversive stimulus for
the unconditioned stimulus to gain the aversive function). This response pattern is also
subjected to operant contingencies—that is, to selection by its consequences. When a
person signals that the contingency is related to stereotypes associated with a person’s
group, respondent and operant responses related to aversive stimulation that were
acquired and strengthened in other situations are more likely to occur. This effect is
in accordance with the concept of stereotype lift as well: a better performance correlated
with signaling that a person’s stereotype is positive and associated with a given task
(e.g., Walton & Cohen, 2003).

Behavior-Analytic Interpretations of Stereotype Threat

Stimulus Equivalence and Stereotype Threat It was hypothesized by de Souza (2018)

that if there is an equivalence relation between the individual’s group and a
given negative attribute, there is the possibility that the effects of stereotype
threat will be seen consistently in an individual. According to de Souza,
stereotype threat could be seen as a situation where the context signals two
 Behavior and Social Issues

relations: the relation between an individual and their group and between their
group and the task. Hence, the relation between the individual and the task
emerges as a consequence of those two other relations (individual to group and
group to task).

RFT and Stereotype Threat According to de Souza (2018), at least five relational
frames could be identified in the stereotype threat phenomenon: coordination, opposi-
tion, comparison, hierarchy, and deictic. We will briefly address two of them, coordi-
nation and hierarchy. When two stimuli are related by coordination, they are considered
to be similar or the same (e.g., “John is good”). However, when stimuli are related by
hierarchy, one of them can contain the other (e.g., “An apple is a fruit”); this type of
relational frame describes containment, groups, categorizations, and kinship (Hayes
et al., 2001). According to de Souza’s analysis, the individual or group, from an RFT
perspective, could be coordinated with poor performance on a given task in the
stereotype threat context, diminishing the professor’s expectancy of students on this
task. Additionally, the student under threat (being assessed) and their group (in a
context in which the group is coordinated with poor performance) are related by
hierarchy. Another relation is that the activity or task and the individual’s self are also
related by hierarchy. When individuals’ relational repertoire gets more complex, they
can organize and categorize elements present in their environment. These categories
might include any stimuli (e.g., objects, people), and it is possible to establish functions
for these whole categories. Culturally, functions could be learned and could have
negative connotations, representing a bias against a minority or any group of individ-
uals. For example, if a group member who has some kind of stereotypical disadvantage
in a given task has this membership enhanced in a test situation, they will be more
susceptible to the threat.
Therefore, stereotype threat transforms individuals’ functions, such that those
functions act in coordination with stereotype-based attributions related to mem-
bers of those groups. Here again, this interpretation is consistent with the
phenomenon described as stereotype lift: When the group is associated with
good performance on a given task (e.g., men in mathematical tasks), the
establishment of a hierarchical relation between the group and the individual
who is part of this group produces better performance.
This interpretation is also aligned with practices shown to diminish the
adverse effects of stereotype threat, such as individuation practices (e.g., to list
hobbies, interests, and other individual characteristics before taking the test) and
providing role models (e.g., to say that a person from the individual’s group
performed well on the test). In the first case, the decrease in the effects of
stereotype threat happens because those practices make it harder to establish a
hierarchical relation between the individual and the group, and in the second
case, this happens because the provision of role models hinders the coordina-
tion of the group with aversive stimuli (de Souza, 2018).
When one thinks of the frequency with which students at all educational levels take
tests and the probability that enhancing an individual’s relation with group stereotypes
is related to worse performance by some groups, the potential contribution of behavior
analysis is highlighted. Behavior analysts could draw on this interpretation to expand it
and, more importantly, to delineate behavior-analytic-based interventions to ameliorate
Behavior and Social Issues

this problem. Behavior analysts interested in this topic could review the literature on the
strategies already recommended by social psychologists to reduce stereotype threat
(e.g., to remove cues that may trigger negative stereotypes, to value students’ individ-
uality, to provide role models of success, and to emphasize multiple or complex
identities; e.g., de Souza, 2018).
Institutional Racism in the Brazilian Military Police Force and the Behavior Analysis
of Culture

Mizael and Sampaio (2019) carried out a study to interpret aspects of institutional
racism using a behavior analysis of culture (e.g., Glenn et al., 2016). Institutional
racism is the failure of institutions and other organizations to provide adequate services
and products to a given segment of the population due to their race, color, ethnicity, or
culture. Institutional racism leads to restricting access to services, products, and
opportunities and to maintaining the racial inequality that in Brazil structures the
society (Onu Mulheres Brasil, 2006).
Mizael and Sampaio (2019) focused on the institutional racism present in the Brazilian
Military Police Force. The authors argued that many different sectors from this institution (e.g.,
policing, the board of directors, internal affairs) are organized hierarchically. In this institution,
it is plausible to assume that the contingencies present in the behavior of an individual interlock
with the contingencies present in the behavior of other individuals, forming interlocking
behavioral contingencies (IBCs). As this is an institution formed by many different sectors,
this suggests that the IBCs necessary for the police force to function adequately are highly
complex. Those IBCs, however, generate a direct effect that is dependent on such
interactions—for example, police stops, police patrols, and imprisonments, among others.
Those could, therefore, be considered aggregate products (APs).
When it comes to an institution, it is not the AP per se that maintains the
organization’s operations: A public health institution, for instance, cannot main-
tain its activities if the employees go to work but there is no funding to buy
vaccines and medication. That is why it is important to determine the cultural
consequences of an organization. The selecting environment is composed of
individuals or conditions external to an organization that are responsible for
producing those cultural consequences. Therefore, the selecting environment is
key to delineating the evolution of an organization (Glenn et al., 2016).
An analysis of the Brazilian Military Police Force’s organizational chart led Mizael
and Sampaio (2019) to argue that the police force’s primary selecting environment
seems to be drawn from bodies of the Department of Public Safety. Those bodies are
responsible for establishing and changing the police force’s guidelines, setting priorities
for resources, and appointing members to higher positions in the force. Those,
in turn, constitute potential cultural consequences for the police force. In sum,
several police officers’ responses form IBCs, generating as APs police stops,
imprisonments, patrols, and so forth. Other bodies of the Department of Public
Safety are affected by these APs and, therefore, act as selecting environments,
generating cultural consequences such as the appointment of positions, resource
distribution, and professional conduct guidelines.
When one considers a specific type of behavior of police officers, the police stop,
some analyses can also be drawn from a behavior analysis of culture. According to Pinc
(2007), a police stop can be defined as
 Behavior and Social Issues

an encounter between the police and the public, in which the adopted procedures
(by the police) vary following the circumstances and with the assessment, by the
police, of the person with whom they interact, which may be related to crime or
not. (p. 2007, our translation)
This type of stop is similar to the Terry stops (stop and frisk) conducted in the United
States. Because not all stops in Brazil are conducted under suspicion of a crime (at least
in theory), we chose to use the more general term “police stop.”
Brazilian police officers can choose to stop an individual based on a subjective
assessment. They also can choose when to use lethal force (e.g., Pinc, 2007). In the
Brazilian literature, studies show that all the police forces stop Black individuals
disproportionately, compared to other racial groups, especially Whites (e.g., Trad
et al., 2016; Weichert, 2017). Through its constitution, Brazil has seven different police
forces, but the military is known as being the most truculent. These studies led Mizael
and Sampaio (2019) to suggest that the Brazilian Military Police Force systematically
produces an AP that is indicative of institutional racism—that is, differential stops
based on the race of the individual.
Although many sources probably control this differential behavior, the authors
summarized some behavioral and cultural variables that could help researchers delin-
eate future studies. One of those aspects is the focus on specific locations to perform
stops based on the argument of “the war on drugs.” The argument of “the war on
drugs” works as an excuse for police officers to focus on individual drug sellers
although this type of search should be carried out in all areas of the cities. However,
given the possible differential consequences of stopping rich and poor individuals, the
police concentrate their searches on the cities’ peripheral areas, where the poor
population lives in favelas or underprivileged neighborhoods, and most of the residents
are of African descent.
Another variable relates to the selection of macrobehaviors—that is, behaviors
emitted by many individuals (Glenn et al., 2016). According to Mizael and Sampaio
(2019), at least three types of consequences are relevant when analyzing the behavior of
being stopped by the police: (a) filing a police report (i.e., to identify a felony
performed by the person stopped), (b) making complaints about the legality or the
appropriateness of a stop via formal channels or acquaintances that work in the police
force, which may lead to (c) investigating the police officer’s behavior.
Given the social and racial inequalities present in Brazil, one could argue that it is
less likely that a Black person would make a complaint than a White person. Therefore,
these differential consequences could make Black individuals function as discrimina-
tive stimuli for capture/arrest and police stops, sometimes to the point of favoring
abusive behavior by police officers. Moreover, one could argue that this differential
power of Whites and Blacks affects the presentation of cultural consequences for the
Brazilian Military Police Force by different bodies of the Department of Public Safety.
Consequently, one could argue that there would be no pressure to alter the IBCs that
maintain this form of institutional racism.
A type of intervention to remediate this situation could be to provide conditions that
allow Black individuals to make official complaints (e.g., making lawyers available for
a free consultation). Those differential consequences for differentially stopping Black
and White individuals could also make macrobehaviors possible. In this sense, the
behavior of stopping mainly Black, poor, and other socially excluded individuals by
Behavior and Social Issues

police officers leads to the cumulative effect of a disproportionate number of police

reports (and imprisonments) regarding individuals within these populations. The in-
struction to police “favelas” and peripheral neighborhoods, where the number of Black
individuals is higher, also contributes to the behavioral selection of this macrobehavior.
That is, a large number of police officers may work in those areas, leading to a
statistically greater number of Blacks stopped by the police than Whites. Once this
macrobehavior is established, factors such as impunity help to maintain these behav-
iors, leading to a chronic situation of institutional racism (specifically) and inequality
(in general).

Use of Latency-Based Measures to Assess Racial Biases

One of the uses of latency-based measures, such as the Function Acquisition Speed
Test (FAST; O’Reilly et al., 2012) and the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure
(IRAP; Barnes-Holmes et al., 2006), is identifying biases unlikely to be observed using
explicit measures. Explicit measures consist of any assessment where participants
respond to questions, having no time restrictions to report their attitudes on a given
topic. The so-called implicit measures can, therefore, be more efficient for investigating
racial and other types of biases because they can provide information about attitudes
and beliefs in conditions that the sociocognitive literature names as automatic (e.g.,
Greenwald & Banaji, 1995), minimizing, thus, the problem of social desirability. In this
sense, two Brazilian studies not yet published aimed to access implicit racial attitudes1
of college students (Coelho, 2020; Rodrigues et al., 2020).
Both studies used the FAST (e.g., O’Reilly et al., 2012). The FAST is a test based on
the assumption that the relational repertoire regarding some specific stimuli can be
fluent or not. The more fluent it is, the more accurately the participant can perform a
task that contains familiar stimuli.
Coelho (2020) investigated whether participants would respond more accurately to
relationships consistent with racist cultural stereotypes. The stimuli used were faces of
Black people and negative adjectives such as “bad,” “ugly,” “negative,” and “unfavor-
able,” and faces of White people and positive adjectives such as “good,” “beautiful,”
“positive,” and “favorable.” This first group of stimuli was considered the consistent
relations. On the other hand, the inconsistent relations with these stereotypes consisted
of the faces of Black people and positive adjectives, and the faces of White people and
negative adjectives. Additionally, the study used the FAST online self-application
strategy for the first time (i.e., without an experimenter present to enable a first analysis
of the remote use of the FAST).
The study sample consisted of 28 students from a Brazilian university who were not
studying psychology as a major or minor and who agreed to be part of a research study
on racism. The age of these students ranged from 18 to 24. The purpose of employing
the FAST self-application was to minimize the social control that a Black experimenter
(the author of the study) could exert over participants. The order of the presentation of
the consistent and inconsistent blocks was randomized.
The main data analyzed by Coelho (2020) were the slope values in each block for
each participant (calculated using Excel’s slope function), which reports the function

1
To review the studies that used the IRAP to assess racial biases, see Mizael and de Almeida’s (2019) study.
 Behavior and Social Issues

acquisition curves’ slopes. Thus, the greater the slope, the more fluent the functional
responses acquired on a given block. The higher the value of the FAST effect, the
greater the racial bias found in the participant’s performance.
One result was that 67% of participants responded more quickly on the consistent
block, compatible with racial stereotypes. Further analysis that separated participants
into two age groups (18–20 and 21–24 years old) showed that younger participants
responded more fluently on trials that reinforced racist stereotypes (80% of the
youngest participants). Older students responded in the opposite way (40% of the older
students had a positive FAST effect). Additionally, when the researchers considered the
length of time in the University (first and third semester versus fourth until tenth
semester), the results were more similar to the second analysis (i.e., participants at
the beginning of their programs responded more fluently in trials that reinforced racist
stereotypes; that is, 80% of the students at the beginning of the program). In contrast,
50% of participants in the middle/end of the program had a positive FAST effect. The
order of trial presentation was not a critical variable.
These data allow us to suppose that the time spent in a university, which could imply
different levels of exposure to political and social discussions, could be a relevant factor
in determining the FAST effect. However, given the peculiarities of each university and
each program, among other variables that could influence those results, it is necessary
to carry out more research to assess this hypothesis.
Rodrigues et al. (2020) also used the FAST to investigate racial prejudice. The
stimuli were standardized photos of human faces and written words. Faces expressing
neutral emotions were selected from the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces
(Lundqvist et al., 1988) and darkened digitally. The procedure of digitally altering
the color of the photos aimed to control for attractiveness and the absence of photos of
Black individuals for research purposes. Eighty-one undergraduate students were
participants. Results indicated that 63% of the participants had the most fluent perfor-
mance in blocks consistent with racial stereotyping. Additionally, 67% of White
participants and 57% of non-White participants were more fluent in the consistent
blocks. Both results corroborate racial stereotyping against Black individuals in Bra-
zilian universities; however, no statistical significance was observed in the results of the
second study.

Limitations of the Present Research and Suggestions for Future Studies

The present study did not update Mizael et al.’s (2019) review, which means that
publications not included in this article could be available, including book chapters.
Additionally, not all Brazilian studies on the topic were addressed, such as Castelli
(2016), Jardim (2018), and Regra (2003). Researchers interested in this topic could
plan, for instance, experiments to test the hypotheses made by Mizael and Sampaio
(2019). One idea is to expose police officers to matching-to-sample tasks to form
classes between Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color and positive
attributes, as in Mizael et al.’s (2016) study. Another suggestion is to compare the
analysis of the Brazilian police force with other forces, such as police departments in
the United States. Then, implicit or explicit measures can be used to assess these
Behavior and Social Issues

individuals’ behavioral patterns or even to describe and intervene on the ones with
destructive behaviors in their files.
A third suggestion is to propose other means to reduce police officers’ individual
biases and/or the institutional practices of the police force, aiming to ameliorate this
problem. For example, in the study conducted by Machado et al. (2021), the authors
analyzed strategies for reducing racial bias in the police force. One of these strategies is
the use of body-worn cameras (BWCs). BWCs are cameras affixed on the head or chest
of an officer used to record the interactions between citizens and the officer. According
to Machado et al., BWCs can be seen as an antecedent strategy that could evoke
socially accepted behavior and/or increase the value of escape from punitive conse-
quences. Another way to increase the probability of appropriate behavior (i.e., not
excessive use of force) is to observe or to contact direct contingencies following
excessive use of force (e.g., to be held accountable for inappropriate behavior). This
way, BCWs may become a discriminative stimulus for professional behavior.

Suggestions to Improve Collaboration Internationally

One suggestion is to increase the flexibility of journals in terms of the types of articles
that can be translated. Traditionally, journals accept translations of classic papers.
Perhaps if journals allowed translations of topics with few studies in the field, this
could increase the knowledge of English-speaking researchers regarding studies carried
out in non-English-speaking countries. Additionally, researchers from different coun-
tries interested in the same topic could form alliances and publish papers together,
maybe alternating the language of those publications. Calls for studies on race relations
in behavior-analytic journals are another way to provide basic conditions for re-
searchers and students to submit papers on these topics.
In Brazil, behavior analysis is not a discipline separate from psychology, but part of
the psychology curriculum. Hence, to increase the number of Brazilian studies, pro-
fessors must add the topic of race relations to the psychology curriculum, stressing their
importance, as there is evidence that race and race-related topics are rarely addressed in
Brazilian psychology courses, with a few exceptions (e.g., Espinha, 2017). Moreover, it
is of utmost importance that researchers and professors have an antiracist stance,
considering that not acting in a racist way is not enough to change the power dynamics
and the racial inequalities present in the country (e.g., Almeida, 2019; Davis,
1981/1983; Ribeiro, 2019).
Relating to new studies, and based on the literature previously discussed, an
important step could be to replicate the Mizael et al. (2016) study and add a measure
to assess generalization. This procedure could be done by adding a novel set of White
and Black faces in a task where participants would be instructed to choose which ones
should go with the negative or positive symbol. This effect could also be measured by
showing novel pictures of Black and White faces and asking participants which ones
they would like to play with, to go to lunch with, or to take break time together. A doll
test could also be employed to assess generalization. This procedure could be carried
out by presenting Black and White dolls and asking participants to relate them to
positively or negatively valenced stimuli.
Measures to evaluate whether a procedure leads to a change in physical interactions
could be of particular importance. A pre- and posttest measure of interactions between
 Behavior and Social Issues

White and Black children—that is, the amount of time children of different races spend
together—could be assessed in a school setting. Pictures of children or famous Black
and White individuals could also be used to see the necessary and sufficient conditions
to generate equivalence class relations between Black individuals’ faces and a positive
symbol among children who showed a negative racial bias in a screening pretest.
In a more traditional perspective analyzing human behavior, direct contingency
analyses could enable the proposal of several studies. Aversive control and
countercontrol (e.g., Delprato, 2002; Hunziker, 2011, 2017; Sidman, 1989) could offer
a better understanding of oppression and the creation of institutions that fight racism,
such as Black movements and the Black Panther Party. Even theoretical studies could
investigate why there are so few publications on these topics within behavior analysis.
Generally, considering exclusively the development of experiments based on RFT, re-
searchers could carry out studies focusing on the impact of several different frames. Experi-
mental procedures could investigate frames of opposition, comparison, hierarchy, and many
other relations, and how racism may involve those relations (e.g., a hierarchical relation where
Whites are in a superior position compared to other groups; an opposition relation between
Whites and Blacks, or people of color). RFT could enable the study of participants’ relational
history and create arbitrary histories in the laboratory setting (e.g., to relate a pseudo name with
negative attributes indirectly). Adding other more relationally complex frames than coordina-
tion could enable the comprehension of the impact of this contextual control on the transfor-
mation of functions and allow the comprehension of the interaction of different contextual
controls. For instance, after participants learn to indirectly relate the pseudo name with negative
attributes, they could learn that this name is in an opposition relation to another pseudo name.
Then, researchers could evaluate whether positive attributes of the second pseudo name
emerge. Arbitrary mini societies could also be established for participants with and without
any racial bias. Creating an arbitrary organization such as this and understanding its impact on
participants’ behavior could also be a valuable investigation to understand this phenomenon.
In a different vein, researchers could also investigate the social impacts of racial bias
on human beings. In this sense, researchers could use RFT to plan experiments focused
on understanding the psychological impacts of constant exposure to an oppressive
environment. Clinically, it would be relevant to understand the establishment of the
“deictic I” of these individuals (a type of relation involved in perspective taking). A
study could investigate, for instance, racially biased and nonbiased participants’
perspective-taking behavior toward racial minorities. Knowing how those who are
oppressed and their oppressors establish their deictic relations (I-you, here-there,
now-then) could highlight relevant variables to understand the frequent violent behav-
ior observed in many different cultures toward ethnic minorities.

Concluding Remarks

In English-language publications, it seems that the first study on the topic of race
relations published in a behavior-analytic journal was in 1973 (Hauserman et al., 1973).
It took more than 30 years for a new study addressing racial issues to be published in a
behavior-analytic journal2 (Guerin, 2005). In the studies conducted by Brazilian

2
We found a study published by Guerin (2003), but it was not in a behavior-analytic journal.
Behavior and Social Issues

researchers, there was an 11-year gap between the first and second studies on the topic
(de Carvalho & de Rose, 2014; Regra, 2003). Behavior analysts need to understand
why it took so long for researchers to investigate and be able to publish on the topic and
to remediate this absence of studies.
We hope these suggestions stimulate researchers to address this important social
issue and others, such as gender inequalities and social inequalities in general. We
conclude by saying that although it took a long time to start publishing on this topic, at
least some researchers in Brazil are committed to a world with fewer inequalities and
fairer relations, and we hope that the academic production within behavior analysis will
be able to evidence this commitment.

Author Note We would like to thank everyone who is fighting to reduce racial inequalities in Brazil and
abroad. We would especially like to thank Professor Julio de Rose for being a key person in the dissemination
of studies on the relation between behavior analysis and racial issues in Brazil and for reading and commenting
on a previous version of this article.

Funding Táhcita Mizael was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the São Paulo Research Foun-
dation (Grant 2020/02548-7) and also by the scientific program of the Instituto Nacional de Ciência e
Tecnologia sobre Comportamento, Cognição e Ensino, supported by CNPq (Grants 573972/2008-7 and
465686/2014-1) and FAPESP (Grants 2008/57705-8 and 2014/50909-8). Weslen Chaves was funded by
the Coordination of Superior Level Staff Improvement for general continued support (PROEX 23038.005155/
2017-67). His research was also funded by the São Paulo Research Foundation with a scientific initiation
research scholarship (Process 2018/06379-5).

Declarations

Conflict of interest The authors state that there is no conflict of interest.

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Behavior and Social Issues

Affiliations

Táhcita Medrado Mizael 1 & Caroline Luiza Coelho 2 & Weslen Chaves Rodrigues 3 &
João Henrique de Almeida 4
1
Institute of Experimental Psychology, Universidade de São Paulo (USP), São Paulo, Brazil
2
Faculty of Science and Humanities, Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP), São Paulo,
Brazil
3
Department of Psychology, Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCar), São Paulo, Brazil
4
Department of General Psychology and Behavior Analysis, Universidade Estadual de Londrina (UEL),
São Paulo, Brazil