ABSTRACT
Humans are distinguished from other animals by language and a large capacity for learning. Lingual behaviour consists in behavioural interactions between a speaker and a listener. In these interactions the speaker's behaviour is reinforced by the listener and the listener's behaviour is reinforced by the speaker or by aspects of the environment that control the speaker's behaviour. Human societies or cultures arise from interlocking contingencies in which people mediate reinforcements and punishments for others. Metacontingencies, which are contingencies applied to a group of individuals bound together by interlocking contingencies, have effects on the group similar to the effects the same contingencies would have on single individuals. Cultural practices also are analogous to genes: Practices that promote the survival of the culture in which they occur tend to be perpetuated along with their culture, and those practices that do not promote a culture's survival are eliminated when that culture becomes extinct.
