SOCIETY FOR THE EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOR: THE FIRST THIRTY YEARS (1957–1987)

Abstract

In the early and mid-1950s, the group of psychologists who had been attracted to the study of operant conditioning found that the journals that seemed most appropriate as out- lets for their work were not hospitable toward it.Both the Journal ofExperimental Psychology and the Journal of Comparative and Physiolog- ical Psychology did publish studies by some of the most creative contributors to the new field.But, by and large, few members of their edi- torial boards had much sympathy toward an approach that stressed the behavior of indi- vidual organisms and eschewed formal design and hypothesis testing, both hallmarks of most of the work being published in these journals.By the beginning of 1957, this unhappiness had become so intense that a group met at the annual meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association (EPA) and decided to start a new journal.This they did, the Journal of the Ex- perimental Analysis of Behavior UEAB) first appearing in early 1958.Ten years later, heartened by the success of their first venture into publishing, they founded a second journal, the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis UABA).In 1957, when the first journal was discussed, the group decided to assume complete responsibility for the business as well as the editorial aspects of the enterprise.Instead of turning to a professional publisher, they incorporated the Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (SEAB), with the Board of Editors of JEAB serving as the Board of Directors of SEAB.This account does not pretend to be a schol- arly history of SEAB and its two journals.It does not, for example, discuss important an- tecedents such as the Conferences on the Ex-

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